Alexis Claude Clairaut (13 May 1713 to 17 May 1765) was a French mathematician, astronomer and physicist, and a prominent Newtonian whose work helped establish the validity of the principles and results that Isaac Newton had set out in the Principia of 1687. Born in Paris, he was a child prodigy who mastered Euclidean geometry and algebra by the age of nine and studied conic sections and the calculus at ten. He was one of the key figures in the expedition to Lapland that helped confirm Newton's deduction of the figure of the Earth, and deduced what is now known as Clairaut's theorem. He tackled the gravitational three-body problem and was 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 in differential geometry.
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Source Wikipedia: Alexis Clairaut
Proofs Credited
Source Clairaut's theorem, Wikipedia
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1. Wikipedia: Alexis Clairaut
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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's theorem, Wikipedia
Proofs Credited: Clairaut's Theorem (Gravity), Lead sectionQuote, Proofs Credited: Clairaut's Theorem (Gravity), Lead section
It was published in 1743 by Alexis Claude Clairaut in a treatise which synthesized physical and geodetic evidence that the Earth is an oblate ellipsoid.
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