Editing René Descartes (section)

====Sweden====
[[File:Dispute-of-queen-cristina-vasa-and-rene-descartes.png|thumb|250px|right|Descartes in conversation with [[Queen Christina of Sweden|Queen Christina]] in [[Stockholm]]]]

By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe's most famous philosophers and scientists.<ref name=":5" /> That year, [[Queen Christina of Sweden]] invited him to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love.<ref name="Åkerman 1991">{{cite book |author-last=Åkerman |author-first=Susanna |year=1991 |title=Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine |chapter=Christina and Descartes: Disassembling A Myth |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E-V5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA44 |location=[[Leiden]] and [[Boston]] |publisher=[[Brill Publishers]] |series=Brill's Studies in Intellectual History |volume=21 |pages=44–69 |doi=10.1163/9789004246706_004 |isbn=978-90-04-24670-6 |issn=0920-8607}}</ref> Descartes accepted, and moved to the [[Swedish Empire]] in the middle of winter.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Math and mathematicians: the history of math discoveries around the world|last=Bruno|first=Leonard C.|date=2003|orig-year=1999|publisher=U X L|others=Baker, Lawrence W.|isbn=978-0-7876-3813-9|location=Detroit, Mich.|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mathmathematicia00brun/page/103 103]–04|oclc=41497065|url=https://archive.org/details/mathmathematicia00brun|url-access=registration}}</ref> Christina was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish ''The Passions of the Soul''.<ref name="Smith">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Smith |first=Kurt |title=Descartes' Life and Works |encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |date=Fall 2010 |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/ |access-date=2 May 2005 |archive-date=23 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210323211048/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

He was a guest at the house of [[Pierre Chanut]], living on [[Västerlånggatan]], less than 500 meters from Castle [[Tre Kronor (castle)|Tre Kronor]] in [[Stockholm]]. There, Chanut and Descartes made observations with a [[Evangelista Torricelli|Torricellian]] mercury barometer.<ref name="Åkerman 1991"/> Challenging [[Blaise Pascal]], Descartes took the first set of barometric readings in Stockholm to see if [[atmospheric pressure]] could be used in forecasting the weather.<ref>''Modern meteorology: a series of six lectures: delivered under the auspices of the Meteorological Society in 1878'', 1879, [https://archive.org/details/modernmeteorolog00mete/page/72/mode/2up?q=Stockholm p. 73].</ref>