Clairaut

Clairaut, ALEXIS CLAUDE, mathematician, was born at Paris, 13th May 1713. He early exhibited a most remarkable aptitude for mathematics, and was considered worthy of admission to the Academy of Sciences when only eighteen years of age. Clairaut wrote a great number of scientific papers, but his fame rests principally upon his Théorie de la Figure de la Terre (1743), in which he promulgated the theorem that the variation of gravity on the surface of the earth, regarded as an elliptic spheroid, was altogether independent of the law of density; on his explanation of the motion of the lunar apogee, a point left unexplained by Newton; and on his computation of the time of the return of Halley's comet. He died at Paris, May 17, 1765.