André Le Breton

In 1745 the publisher André Le Breton approached Diderot with a view to bringing out a French translation of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, after two other translators had withdrawn from the project. Diderot undertook the task with the distinguished mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert as coeditor but soon profoundly changed…

…in 1745, its intended publisher, André Le Breton, immediately embarked on plans for an expanded Encyclopédie. He secured the services of the mathematician Jean d’Alembert in 1745 and of the translator and philosopher Denis Diderot in 1746 to assist in the project. In 1747 Diderot undertook the general direction of…