| Physical description |
1 online resource (ix, 408 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-392) and index. |
| Contents |
Portrait of a man of science -- From Saint-Malo to Paris -- Mathematics and mechanics in the Paris Academy of Sciences -- The expedition to Lapland -- The polemical aftermath of the Lapland expedition -- Beyond Newton and on to Berlin -- Toward a science of living things -- The Berlin Academy of Sciences -- Teleology, cosmology, and least action -- Heredity and materialism -- The final years. |
| Summary |
Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's ca. |
| Language notes |
English. |
| Subject |
Maupertuis, 1698-1759.
|
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Scientists -- France -- Biography.
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Science.
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Electronic books. |
|
Biography |
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Biographies |
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Biographies. |
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Biographies. |
| ISBN |
9780226793627 (electronic bk.) |
|
0226793621 (electronic bk.) |
|
0226793605 |
|
9780226793603 |
|
1282932942 |
|
9781282932944 |
|
9786612932946 |
|
6612932945 |
|
0226793605 |
|
9780226793603 |
|
0226793613 |
|
9780226793610 |
| Standard Number |
9780226793603 |
|
