Why read The Man Who Flattened the Earth?

Book cover of The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment

Book description

Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698 - 1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. With "The Man Who Flattened the Earth", Mary Terrall offers an elegant portrait of this remarkable man, revealing just how his private life and public works…

Explore

Topics

Genres

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Man Who Flattened the Earth as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Larrie D. Ferreiro

Author

When British scientist and novelist CP Snow lamented that society had become divided between scientific and literary cultures, he sought a way to bridge that gap. He needed to look no further than Mary Terrall’s hero, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, who was the very model of a modern scientist-artist.

Maupertuis achieved early scientific fame by leading a geodesic voyage to Lapland (modern-day Sweden and Finland) in 1736, where, after a year of fighting extreme cold and summer plagues of mosquitoes, he proved Newton’s theory that the Earth was flattened at the poles. Maupertuis became a regular fixture in the cafes…

From Larrie's list on The best books on voyages of discovery that were about science, not conquest.