2 along a radius produced through the pole (where r is the radius of the Earth).
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La Hire was elected to the Académie Royal des Sciences in 1678. In 1683 he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Collège Royale. Four years later he was appointed, in addition, to the chair of architecture at the Académie Royale.
Much influenced by the work of Desargues, La Hire worked on conic sections which he treated projectively. He published his first work on conic sections Nouvelle methode en géometrie pour les sections des superficies coniques et cylindriques in 1673. In 1675 he published a more comprehensive work on conic sections Sectiones conicae which contained a description of Desargues' projective geometry. In 1708 he calculated the length of the cardioid.
Other topics to which he made important contributions included astronomy, physics and geodesy. In astronomy he installed the first transit instrument in the Paris Observatory. He also produced tables giving the movements of the Sun, Moon and the planets.
He did much work on surveying, in particular taking measurements of the French coastline. He designed an instrument to find the level at a site. He was also a major contributor to a project to map France.
La Hire's maps of the Earth were made with the centre of projection, not at the pole, but at r/2 along a radius produced through the pole (where r is the radius of the Earth).
La Hire also wrote on magic squares.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
Click on this link to see a list of the Glossary entries for this page
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List of References (5 books/articles)
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| Mathematicians born in the same country
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| Cross-references to History Topics | Longitude and the Académie Royale |
| Cross-references to Famous Curves | |
| Honours awarded to Philippe de la Hire (Click a link below for the full list of mathematicians honoured in this way) | |
| Lunar features | Mons La Hire |
| Paris street names | Rue LaHire (13th Arrondissement) |
| Other Web sites |
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JOC/EFR December 1996
The URL of this page is: |
School_of_Mathematics_and_Statistics University_of_St_Andrews,_Scotland |
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/La_Hire.html
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