TY - BOOK AU - Terrall,Mary TI - The man who flattened the earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the enlightenment SN - 9780226793627 (electronic bk.) AV - Q143.M28 T47 2002eb U1 - 509.2 22 PY - 2002/// CY - Chicago PB - University of Chicago Press KW - Maupertuis, KW - Moreau de Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis. KW - Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de. KW - Scientists KW - France KW - Biography KW - Science KW - BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY KW - Science & Technology KW - bisacsh KW - Natuurwetenschappen KW - gtt KW - Electronic books N1 - Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-392) and index; Portrait of a man of science -- From Saint-Malo to Paris -- Mathematics and mechanics in the Paris Academy of Sciences -- The expedition to Lapland -- The polemical aftermath of the Lapland expedition -- Beyond Newton and on to Berlin -- Toward a science of living things -- The Berlin Academy of Sciences -- Teleology, cosmology, and least action -- Heredity and materialism -- The final years N2 - Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's ca UR - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=348232 ER -