Philippe de La Hire

Philippe de La Hire was a French painter, mathematician, astronomer and architect, born in Paris on 18 March 1640 and dying on 21 April 1718, whom Fontenelle called an academy unto himself. The son of the painter Laurent de La Hire, he studied painting in Venice, then in Paris became a disciple of Girard Desargues, from whom he learned geometrical perspective, and was taught by the Jesuit Honoré Fabri. He entered the French Academy of Sciences in 1678, computed astronomical tables and helped extend the Paris meridian in the mapping of France, and in 1683 took the chair of mathematics at the Collège Royal. He wrote on graphical methods in 1673, conic sections in 1685, epicycloids in 1694, roulettes in 1702 and conchoids in 1708, and his works on conics and epicycloids built on the teaching of Desargues. He also edited an essay on magic squares in 1705.