Mouton

Gabriel Mouton

Born: 1618 in Lyon, France
Died: 28 Sept 1694 in Lyon, France

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Mouton took holy orders and spent his whole career in St Paul's Church in Lyon. His most famous work Observationes published in 1670 studied interpolation and a standard of measurement based on the pendulum. His methods of interpolation were similar to those used by Briggs in the construction of his log tables.

Mouton also produced 10 place tables of logarithmic sines and cosines and an astronomical pendulum of remarkable precision.

Mouton was the first to propose the decimal system. He also suggested (1670) a standard linear measurement based on the length of the arc of one minute of longitude on the Earth's surface and divided decimally.

Other Web sites:

Rice University, USA

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. M Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik III (Leipzig, 1901), 76-77, 310, 389. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996