Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
On returning to France Maupertuis continued to investigate problems in geometry.
Working with the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernouilli (1667-1748), he became
interested in the shape of the Earth and attempted more rigorous and clearer mathe-
matical proofs of Newton's explanations of its flattening. He was only partially
successful and came to the conclusion that this problem could only be tackled by
more accurate geodesy. In 1729 the Paduan scholar and polymath Giovanni Poleni
(1683-1761) suggested that the cause of the discrepancy between Cassini's meas-
urements and Newtonian theory was in the accuracy of the measurements, and in
1733 Poleni was awarded a prize by the Academy of Sciences. In accepting the
prize, he presented a booklet on the topic to the Academy and simultaneously a
commentary appeared in Holland on Poleni's results. Maupertuis followed up these
discussions, reporting them to the meetings of the Academy.
The debate in the Academy was hard fought, with the iconoclastic, young
Maupertuis and Clairaut lined up against a powerful establishment headed by the
Cassinis. They scorned Maupertuis and dubbed him “Sir Isaac Maupertuis.”
People
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759)
Pierre Maupertuis (
Fig. 21
) was a charming man, unusually small, possessing gravity and
austerity whilst also capable of being gay and passionate. Evidently he was attractive to
women, although a difficult man to live with. At first he studied music but converted to
mathematics and combined the two interests in his dissertation called “On the form of musi-
cal instruments.” He became an enthusiastic proponent of Newtonian physics and spent ten
years on measurements of the shape of the Earth in order to prove Newtonian theory.
In 1738 he visited Voltaire in Prussia and became a member of the Berlin Academy, but
then in 1741 he was caught up in the war between Prussia and Austria and was taken prisoner
at the Battle of Mollwitz. Luckily he was recognized by an officer and released, taking up
residence in Berlin in 1745. He is known for proposing the
Principle of Least Action
which
gave a means to calculate the route taken by a body in orbit, or a light ray through a lens.
Maupertuis attracted many prominent scientists to Berlin and published some important
works on embryology and genetics, but everything soon went wrong in the “affaire König”,
described by E. A. Fellmann in the
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
as the ugliest of all
scientific disputes. Voltaire was brought into the affair and charged Maupertuis with plagia-
rism, error, persecution, and tyranny. He made fun of Maupertuis' expedition to Lapland and
his amorous proclivities, satirizing him in a short story entitled
Micromegas
(1752). This
story, regarded as one of the first works of science fiction and reminiscent of Jonathan
Swift's
Gulliver's Travels
(1726), concerns an enormous visitor from a planet of Sirius who
ridicules the small size and small minds of people on Earth, especially an expedition of
astronomers (Maupertuis and his expedition, with the two sisters, returning from Lapland).
Maupertuis was crushed, withdrew from Berlin, and in ill-health made his way towards
home but unfortunately died in Switzerland before he could reach it.
People
Samuel König (1712-57)
Samuel König, a Swiss scientist and mathematician, was a protégé of Maupertuis', who
introduced him to Emilie de Châtelet and Voltaire. His quarrelsome nature may be indicated
by the dispute that he maintained with Emilie (apparently about the non-payment of tutorial
fees). Maupertuis apparently set aside this dispute and proposed König for membership
of the Berlin Academy, but König repaid him in false coinage by attacking the Principle of
Least Action and ascribing it, not to Maupertuis but to Leibnitz, stating he had evidence
that this priority was claimed in a letter from Leibnitz to Hermann. When challenged,
König stated he could produce a copy, but strangely the original was unobtainable. He said
