Note 17 — NOTES.1
Gertrude Carman Bussey translation
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759) was a French mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. He supported the Newtonian theory against the Cartesians. In 1740 he became president of the Academy of Berlin. He was the head of the expedition which was sent by Louis XV to measure a degree of longitude in Lapland. Voltaire satirized Maupertuis in the “Diatribe du Docteur Akakia.”21