16 Facts About Alexis Clairaut

Alexis Clairaut was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had outlined in the Principia of 1687.

In that context, Alexis Clairaut worked out a mathematical result now known as "Alexis Clairaut's theorem".

Alexis Clairaut tackled the gravitational three-body problem, being the first to obtain a satisfactory result for the apsidal precession of the Moon's orbit.

Alexis Clairaut was born in Paris, France, to Jean-Baptiste and Catherine Petit Alexis Clairaut.

Alexis Clairaut gave a path breaking formulae called the distance formulae which helps to find out the distance between any 2 points on the cartesian or XY plane.

Alexis Clairaut was unmarried, and known for leading an active social life.

In 1849 George Stokes showed that Alexis Clairaut's result was true whatever the interior constitution or density of the Earth, provided the surface was a spheroid of equilibrium of small ellipticity.

In 1741, Alexis Clairaut wrote a book called Elements de Geometrie.

Alexis Clairaut saw this trend, and wrote the book in an attempt to make the subject more interesting for the average learner.

Alexis Clairaut believed that instead of having students repeatedly work problems that they did not fully understand, it was imperative for them to make discoveries themselves in a form of active, experiential learning.

Alexis Clairaut begins the book by comparing geometric shapes to measurements of land, as it was a subject that most anyone could relate to.

Alexis Clairaut covers topics from lines, shapes, and even some three dimensional objects.

Alexis Clairaut was able to incorporate Newton's inverse-square law and law of attraction into his solution, with minor edits to it.

Alexis Clairaut had at first deemed the dilemma so inexplicable, that he was on the point of publishing a new hypothesis as to the law of attraction.

Alexis Clairaut subsequently wrote various papers on the orbit of the Moon, and on the motion of comets as affected by the perturbation of the planets, particularly on the path of Halley's comet.

Alexis Clairaut used applied mathematics to study Venus, taking accurate measurements of the planet's size and distance from the Earth.