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Alexis Clairaut
Summary
Alexis Claude Clairaut (alɛksi klod klɛʁo; 13 May 1713 – 17 May 1765) was a French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist. He was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had outlined in the Principia of 1687. Clairaut was one of the key figures in the expedition to Lapland that helped to confirm Newton's theory for the figure of the Earth. In that context, Clairaut worked out a mathematical result now known as "Clairaut's theorem". He also tackled the gravitational three-body problem, being the first to obtain a satisfactory result for the apsidal precession of the Moon's orbit. In mathematics he is also credited with Clairaut's equation and Clairaut's relation.
Clairaut was born in Paris, France, to Jean-Baptiste and Catherine Petit Clairaut. The couple had 20 children, however only a few of them survived childbirth. His father taught mathematics. Alexis was a prodigy – at the age of ten he began studying calculus. At the age of twelve he wrote a memoir on four geometrical curves and under his father's tutelage he made such rapid progress in the subject that in his thirteenth year he read before the Académie française an account of the properties of four curves which he had discovered. When only sixteen he finished a treatise on Tortuous Curves, Recherches sur les courbes a double courbure, which, on its publication in 1731, procured his admission into the Royal Academy of Sciences, although he was below the legal age as he was only eighteen. He gave a path breaking formulae called the distance formulae which helps to find out the distance between any 2 points on the cartesian or XY plane.
Clairaut was unmarried, and known for leading an active social life. His growing popularity in society hindered his scientific work: "He was focused," says Bossut, "with dining and with evenings, coupled with a lively taste for women, and seeking to make his pleasures into his day to day work, he lost rest, health, and finally life at the age of fifty-two.
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