Description:
8vo, pp. xl, 305, [1] errata], [3] contents, [1] imprimatur; engraved headpieces throughout, and the vast majority of pages illustrated with engraved diagrams; some foxing throughout, only heavy in one or two places; ownership signature of Wm. Wilson, dated 1913, on front free endpaper; in contemporary calf, spine gilt in compartments with raised bands, gilt morocco lettering-piece; very light wear but an attractive copy.First edition of the best-known work of the French mathematician and physicist Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713-1765), in which he demonstrates that the shape of the Earth was that of an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles and wider at the equator, being held in hydrostatic equilibrium.
The observational underpinnings to Clairaut's conclusions came from an expedition he had taken in 1736 to Lapland, under the auspices of the Académie des sciences, in the company of Maupertuis, Celsius, and others, with the aim of measuring the length of one degree of latitude; Clairaut's role in the… Read More