Жозеф Игнас Гийотин: Врач, политик и изобретатель гильотины.

French physician, politician and freemason
Joseph Ignace Guillotin

Joseph Ignace Guillotin (ʒɔzɛf iɲas ɡijɔtɛ̃; 28 May 1738 – 26 March 1814) was a French physician, politician, and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out executions in France, as a less painful method of execution than existing methods. Although he did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for it. The actual inventor of the prototype was a man named Tobias Schmidt, working with the king's physician, Antoine Louis.

The association with the guillotine so embarrassed Guillotin's family that they petitioned the French government to rename it; when the government refused, they instead changed their own family name. By coincidence, another person named Guillotin was indeed executed by the guillotinehe was J. M. V. Guillotin, a doctor of Lyon. This coincidence may have contributed to erroneous statements that J I Guillotin was put to death on the machine that bears his name; however, in reality, Guillotin died at home in Paris in 1814 of natural causes, aged 75, and is now buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He was married to Louise Saugrain, sister of the physician and chemist Antoine Saugrain.

Joseph Guillotin was initiated into Freemasonry, in 1765 at "La Parfaite Union" lodge in Angoulême. Very active as a mason, he joined several other lodges. As a deputy of the Grand Lodge from 1772 he took part in the birth of the Grand Orient of France and attended all its conventions until 1790. In 1773, he became Worshipful Master of the lodge "La Concorde Fraternelle" in Paris. In 1776, he founded the "La Vérité" lodge and often attended Les Neuf Sœurs.

Guillotin features in Andrew Miller's Costa prize winning novel Pure. He is also a primary character in the 1992 novel Dr Guillotine, written by the actor Herbert Lom. He is also the main character in the French drama series La Révolution.