a French soldier, physician, scientist, medievalist and writer, best known for his adaptations of "romans chevaleresques" of the Middle Ages, which contributed to the rise of the Troubadour style in the French arts. A friend of Voltaire and Buffon, he frequented the salon of Mme de Tencin and composed several odes as well as adaptations of chivalric romances, which he translated and adapted from Spanish and Old French. He was also the author of one of the first treatises on electricity in French, and collaborated on volumes VI and VII of the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and D’Alembert.
