Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de (1698–1759)

French mathematician. He was an ardent Newtonian. In 1736 he led a party seeking to verify Newton's theory that the Earth was flattened at the poles. His analysis of the data was completed in 1739 and the result vindicated Newton's theory (though it was later found to be inaccurate).

He was born in St Malo, educated in Paris, and served for some time in the army. In 1723 he was elected to the Academie des Sciences, and became FRS in 1729. Newton's theory was tested by sending one expedition to Lapland to measure a degree of the meridian. Another party, under La Condamine, went to Peru to measure a degree there. Maupertuis formulated the principle of ‘least action’. His theory of pessimism, in Essai de philosophie morale (1749), was later developed by Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and others.