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Details
CLAIRAUT, Alexis Claude (1713-1765). Theorie de la figure de la terre, tirée des principes de l'hydrostatique. Paris: David fils, 1743.
8o (196 x 130 mm). Engraved title vignette, woodcut diagrams in text. Contemporary mottled calf (upper joint and corners repaired). Provenance: Berlin, Royal Society of Sciences (ink ownership inscription on title).
FIRST EDITION. Clairaut was a member of the French expedition to Lapland (led by P.-L.Moreau de Maupertius) to measure the length of a degree of latitude near the North Pole. His most famous work, Theorie de la figure de la terre, is "to some degree the theoretical epilogue to the Lapland expedition and to the series of polemics on the earth's shape -- an oblate ellipsoid, according to Newton and Huygens, and a prolate ellipsoid, according to Cassini" (DSB). Clairaut was a member of the Berlin Royal Society of Scienes, founded in 1700 and reorganised in 1743, under the presidency of Maupertuis. Bibliotheca Mechanica p.72; Graesse II:190; Poggendorff I:447.
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FIRST EDITION. Clairaut was a member of the French expedition to Lapland (led by P.-L.Moreau de Maupertius) to measure the length of a degree of latitude near the North Pole. His most famous work, Theorie de la figure de la terre, is "to some degree the theoretical epilogue to the Lapland expedition and to the series of polemics on the earth's shape -- an oblate ellipsoid, according to Newton and Huygens, and a prolate ellipsoid, according to Cassini" (DSB). Clairaut was a member of the Berlin Royal Society of Scienes, founded in 1700 and reorganised in 1743, under the presidency of Maupertuis. Bibliotheca Mechanica p.72; Graesse II:190; Poggendorff I:447.