He wrote influential works on economics, mathematics, physics, astrology, astronomy, philosophy, and theology; was Bishop of Lisieux, a translator, a counselor of King Charles V of France, and one of the most original thinkers of 14th-century Europe.

[7] Nicole Oresme was born c. 1320–1325 in the village of Allemagnes (today's Fleury-sur-Orne) in the vicinity of Caen, Normandy, in the diocese of Bayeux.

The fact that Oresme attended the royally sponsored and subsidised College of Navarre, an institution for students too poor to pay their expenses while studying at the University of Paris, makes it probable that he came from a peasant family.

[8] Oresme studied the "arts" in Paris, together with Jean Buridan (the so-called founder of the French school of natural philosophy), Albert of Saxony and perhaps Marsilius of Inghen, and there received the Magister Artium.

Around 1369, he began a series of translations of Aristotelian works at the request of Charles V, who granted him a pension in 1371 and, with royal support, was appointed bishop of Lisieux in 1377.

He rejected the physical argument that if the Earth were moving the air would be left behind causing a great wind from east to west.

[16] From this, he argued that it was very probable that the length of the day and the year were incommensurate (irrational), as indeed were the periods of the motions of the moon and the planets.

Oresme maintained that this disproves the claims of astrologers who, thinking "they know with punctual exactness the motions, aspects, conjunctions and oppositions… [judge] rashly and erroneously about future events.

Mediaevalist Chauncey Wood remarks that this major elision "makes it very difficult to determine who believed what about astrology".

[19] These first three parts are what Oresme considers the physical influences of the stars and planets (including sun and moon) on the earth, and while he offers critiques of them, he accepts that effects exist.

[20] In discussing the propagation of light and sound, Oresme adopted the common medieval doctrine of the multiplication of species,[21] as it had been developed by optical writers such as Alhacen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Pecham, and Witelo.

For the sake of clarity, Oresme conceived the idea of visualizing these concepts by plane figures, approaching what we would now call rectangular coordinates.

In virtue of this transposition, the theorem of the latitudo uniformiter difformis became the law of the space traversed in case of uniformly varied motion; thus Oresme published what was taught over two centuries prior to Galileo's making it famous.

(See also Harmonic series) Oresme was the first mathematician to prove this fact, and (after his proof was lost) it was not proven again until the 17th century by Pietro Mengoli.

"[33] Buridan and Albert of Saxony each subscribed to the classic interpretation of flux being an innate part of an object, but Oresme differs from his contemporaries in this aspect.

Like his predecessors Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Peter of Auvergne (and quite unlike Aristotle), Oresme favours monarchy as the best form of government.

[36] Like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Auvergne and especially Marsilius of Padua, whom he occasionally quotes, Oresme conceives of this popular participation as rather restrictive: only the multitude of reasonable, wise and virtuous men should be allowed political participation by electing and correcting the prince, changing the law and passing judgement.

[40] Oresme favours moderate kingship,[41] thereby negating contemporary absolutist thought, usually promoted by adherents of Roman law.

[43] Although he heavily criticises the Church as corrupt, tyrannical and oligarchical, he never fundamentally questions its necessity for the spiritual well-being of the faithful.

[47] In Part 4, Oresme provides a solution to a political problem as to how a monarch can be held accountable to put the common good before any private affairs.

Though the monarchy rightfully has claims on all money given an emergency, Oresme states that any ruler that goes through this is a “Tyrant dominating slaves”.

In a 1920 Essay on Medieval Economic Teaching, Irish economist George O'Brien summed up the favorable academic consensus over Oresme's Treatise on the origin, nature, law, and alterations of money: The merits of this work have excited the unanimous admiration of all who have studied it.

Roscher says that it contains 'a theory of money, elaborated in the fourteenth century, which remains perfectly correct to-day, under the test of the principles applied in the nineteenth century, and that with a brevity, a precision, a clarity, and a simplicity of language which is a striking proof of the superior genius of its author.'

'Oresme's completely secular and naturalistic method of treating one of the most important problems of political economy,' says Espinas, 'is a signal of the approaching end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance.'