Lot 65
Clairaut, Alexis (1713-1765)
Autograph letter signed to James Stirling
The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician
Auction: 23 October 2025 from 13:00 GMT
Description
dated Paris, 2nd October 1738, 3 pages, in French, evidently the first letter in any correspondence between them, apologising for inadvertent similarities between his recent memoir on ‘La figure de la Terre’ sent from Lapland to the Royal Society and Stirling's own article on the subject from the Philosophical Transactions, and requesting Stirling's comments on his second memoir on the subject, 18.5 x 22.5cm
Footnote
Clairaut accompanied Maupertuis on the French expedition to Lapland in 1736-7, eventually publishing his classic account of his findings, La théorie de la figure de la terre, in 1743. He provided indispensable assistance to the Marquise de Châtelet in her French translation of Newton's Principia, the first in the language, and saw it through the press in 1759 following her death several years previously. The memoir by Stirling that he refers to in his letter is his 'Of the Figure of the Earth, and the Variation of Gravity on the Surface', published in 1735 and considered 'an important contribution to the theoretical study of the earth's shape and its gravitational forces' (ODNB). Stirling was overtaken in his work on the subject by Colin Maclaurin and others, though it is clear from his surviving letters that he would have made a more substantial contribution but for his commitments as manager of the mines at Leadhills.
Published: Charles Tweedie, James Stirling: a Sketch of his Life and Works along with his Scientific Correspondence, Oxford, 1922, pp. 176-7.