Charles Étienne Louis Camus

Charles Étienne Louis Camus was a French mathematician and mechanician, born at Crécy-en-Brie near Meaux on 23 August 1699 and dead on 2 February 1768. After leaving the Collège de Navarre in Paris he studied mathematics, civil and military architecture and astronomy. In 1727 he presented a memoir on masting ships to the Academy of Sciences, which named him joint mechanician, and in 1733 he became an associate of the Academy. In 1736 he joined Maupertuis and Clairaut on the expedition to Lapland to measure a degree of the meridian arc. He was professor of architecture from 1730, later professor of geometry, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Architecture from 1760 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London from 1765. His Cours de mathématique appeared in three parts between 1749 and 1752, covering arithmetic, geometry and statical mechanics, and in 1757 he published the measurements of the meridian degree between Paris and Amiens.