La Hire

Philippe de La Hire

Born: 18 March 1640 in Paris, France
Died: 21 April 1718 in Paris, France

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Philippe de la Hire was a pupil of Desargues and worked on conic sections which he treated projectively. In 1708 he calculated the length of the cardioid. Other topics he made important contributions to were astronomy (he installed the first transit instrument in the Paris Observatory), physics and geodesy.

His maps of the Earth were made with the centre of projection, not at the pole, but at r/sqrt2 along a radius produced through the pole (where r is the radius of the Earth).

La Hire also wrote on magic squares.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Among the curves investigated by La Hire were the Cardioid, the Epicycloid, the Epitrochoid, the Hypocycloid and the Hypotrochoid

Other Web sites:

Rice University, USA

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. R Toton, La première oeuvre geometrique de Philippe de la Hire, Revue d'histoire des sciences 6 (1953), 93-111. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996