Pedro Vicente Maldonado

Pedro Vicente Maldonado (1704 to 1748) was an Ecuadorian scientist who collaborated with the members of the French Geodesic Mission and was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, topographer and geographer. He was born in Riobamba, in the Royal Audience of Quito, to a prominent family, and studied arithmetic, geometry, Latin, astronomy and music under the Jesuits at the Colegio San Luis in Quito. He explored little known regions between 1722 and 1724 and completed his first map in 1725. In 1736 he worked with the Spanish and French geodesic expedition that measured a degree of the meridian arc near the equator, and there he befriended Charles Marie de La Condamine. He became governor of Esmeraldas Province in 1742 and travelled to Europe in 1744, where the French Academy of Sciences received him as a member in 1747. He died in London in 1748 before he could be inducted into the Royal Society, and he is buried in St James's Church, Piccadilly.