The Man Who Flattened the Earth by Mary Terrall, University of Chicago Press, £27/$39, ISBN 0226793605 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
THE man is Pierre-Louis Moreau Maupertuis, a mathematician who on an expedition to Lapland in 1736 confirmed Newton’s theory that Earth is flattened slightly towards the poles. This is a work of relentless scholarship, and even the most tenuous connections are exhaustingly followed up. In 369 pages there are 1172 footnotes.
Though Maupertuis’s career was eventful, Mary Terrall’s The Man Who Flattened the Earth is hard to stay with.
