CLAIRAUT, ALEXIS-CLAUDE, of the French academy of sciences, born at Paris in 1713, was one of the
most illustrious mathematicians in Europe. He read to the academy in 1726, when he was not thirteen years old, a memoir upon four new geometrical curves of his own invention; and supported the character of which he had thus laid the foundation by various publications from time to time. He published, Recherches sur les Courbes à double courbure, Paris, 1731, in 4to; Éléments de Géométrie, 1741, in 8vo; Théorie de la Figure de la Terre, 1743, in 8vo; Éléments d'Algèbre, 1746, in 8vo; Théorie de la Lumière, déduite du seul principe de l'attraction, 1754, in 8vo; Théorie du Mouvement des Comètes, Paris, 1760. He was concerned also in the Journal des Sçavans, which he furnished with many excellent articles. He died in 1765, at the comparatively early age of fifty-two. He was one of the academicians who were sent into Lapland to measure a degree of the meridian, with a view to the determination of the figure of the earth.