Nicolas Flamel

Nicolas Flamel (prob. Pontoise, ca 1330 – Paris, March 22, 1418) was a successful French scrivener and manuscript-seller who developed a posthumous reputation as an alchemist due to his reputed work on the philosopher's stone.

According to the introduction to his work and additional details that have accrued since its publication, Flamel was the most accomplished of the European alchemists, and had learned his art from a Jewish converso on the road to Santiago de Compostela. As Deborah Harkness put it, "Others thought Flamel was the creation of 17th-century editors and publishers desperate to produce modern printed editions of supposedly ancient alchemical treatises then circulating in manuscript for an avid reading public." The modern assertion that many references to him or his writings appear in alchemical texts of the 16th century, however, has not been linked to any particular source. The essence of his reputation are claims that he succeeded at the two magical goals of alchemy: that he made the Philosopher's Stone, which turns base metals into gold and ordinary stones into precious gems, and that he and his wife Perenelle achieved immortality through the "Elixir of Life".