Charles Marie de La Condamine was a French explorer, geographer, and mathematician. He spent ten years in territory which is now Ecuador, measuring the length of a degree of latitude at the equator an
La Condamine by Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1768) Pierre-Philippe Choffard (1759)
La Condamine (Carmontelle 1760)
Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi, a l'équateur, 1751
Mesure des trois premiers degrés du méridien dans l'hémisphere austral, 1751
Voltaire
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François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity and of slavery, Vol
Charles Marie de La Condamine
…December 1730 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences and was appointed Assistant Chemist at the Academy. In 1729 La Condamine and his friend Voltaire exploited a loophole in the French government’s lottery, which brought them large profits. In May 1731 La Condamine sailed with the Levant Company to…
Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1720s
Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille from 16 May 1717 to 15 April 1718 in a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick walls.
In the frontispiece to Voltaire's book on Newton's philosophy, Émilie du Châtelet appears as Voltaire's muse, reflecting Newton's heavenly insights down to Voltaire.
Pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1735