Reaumur, Rene Antoine Ferchault de, a French physicist and naturalist; born in La Rochelle, France, Feb. 28, 1683. He went to Paris in 1703; in 1708 was chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences; and for nearly 50 years continued to be one of its most active members. As a natural philosopher he is celebrated for the invention of an improved thermometer, which he made known in 1731, but his greatest work is "Natural History of Insects" (6 vols.) Died in Maine, France, Oct. 18, 1757.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia,
1912.