Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Also known as Pierre Louis Maupertuis, de Maupertuis,P.L.M., Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
AI overview
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was an 18th-century French mathematician, philosopher, and writer who made contributions across multiple intellectual fields. He matters because he exemplified the wide-ranging curiosity of Enlightenment thinkers and helped advance mathematical and philosophical knowledge during a pivotal period in European intellectual history.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1698
- Died
- 1759
- Works
- 73
Top works
- Essai sur la formation des corps organisés
- Figura telluris
- Vollständige sammlung aller streitschriften
- Elements de geographie
- Sur les figures des corps celestes
via Open Library + Wikidata
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 34,535x
- Going deeper with convolutions
· 2015 · cited 32,499x
~19 min read
Article
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (/ˌmoʊpɛərˈtwiː/; French: [mopɛʁtɥi]; 1698 – 27 July 1759) was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He became the director of the Académie des Sciences and the first president of the Prussian Academy of Science, at the invitation of Frederick the Great.
Maupertuis made an expedition to Lapland to determine the shape of the Earth. He is often credited with having discovered the principle of least action – a version of which is known as Maupertuis's principle – which he expressed as an integral equation that describes the path followed by a physical system. His work in natural history is interesting in relation to modern science since he touched on aspects of heredity and the struggle for life.
Gallery (6)
Connections
Categories
1698 births1759 deaths18th-century French astronomers18th-century French biologists18th-century French male writers18th-century French mathematicians18th-century French philosophersCommons link from WikidataFrench fellows of the Royal SocietyFrench geodesistsFrench male non-fiction writersFrench physicists