Maupertuis

Maupertuis, PIERRE LOUIS MOREAU DE, mathematician, was born at St Malo on 17th July 1698, and after five years in the army devoted himself to science. His able advocacy of Newton's physical theory, in opposition to that of Descartes, gained him admittance to the Royal Society of London in 1728. In 1736-37 he was placed at the head of the Academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Lapland, to obtain the exact measurement of a degree of longitude, whilst the same thing was being done in Pern by La Condamine. This operation Maupertuis described in De la Figure de la Terre (Paris, 1738). In 1740 he went to Berlin, on the invitation of Frederick II., who made him president of the Academy. Having accompanied the Prussian army to the field, he was taken prisoner at Mollwitz by the Austrians in 1741. He returned to Berlin in 1744; but his morbid amour-propre and tyrannical disposition excited general dislike. Besides being engaged in a bitter quarrel with König as to the merits of Leibnitz, he incurred the enmity of Voltaire, who satirised him in Micromegas and Diatribé du Docteur Akakia, which drove Maupertuis away to Basel to recoup his health, and to enjoy the society of the Bernouillis, but he died there, 27th July 1759. Maupertuis was a mathematician of good ability, but owed his celebrity as much to the idiosyncrasies of his manners and disposition as to his merit. His Works, 4 vols., appeared at Paris in 1752, and at Lyons in 1768. See Life by Beaumelle (1856).