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Charles Marie de La Condamine (28 January 1701 – 4 February 1774) was a French explorer,
geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" ...
, and mathematician. He spent ten years in territory which is now Ecuador, measuring the
length of a degree of latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pole ...
at the equator and preparing the first map of the
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology co ...
region based on
astro-geodetic Geodetic astronomy or astronomical geodesy (astro-geodesy) is the application of astronomical methods into geodetic networks and other technical projects of geodesy. Applications The most important applications are: * Establishment of geodetic da ...
observations. Furthermore he was a contributor to the '' Encyclopédie''.''


Biography

Charles Marie de La Condamine was born in Paris as a son of well-to-do parents, Charles de La Condamine and Louise Marguerite Chourses. He studied at the
Collège Louis-le-Grand In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children betwee ...
where he was trained in humanities as well as in mathematics. After finishing his studies, he enlisted in the army and fought in the war against Spain (1719). After returning from the war, he became acquainted with scientific circles in Paris. On 12 December 1730 he became a member of the
Académie des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...
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 The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Elizabeth I of England approved its initial charter on 11 September 1592 when the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581) merged, because their charters had expired ...
to Constantinople (now Istanbul), where he stayed five months. After returning to Paris, La Condamine submitted in November 1732 a paper to the Academy entitled ''Mathematical and Physical Observations made during a Visit of the Levant in 1731 and 1732''.


In South America

Three years later he joined the
French Geodesic Mission The French Geodesic Mission to the Equator (french: Expédition géodésique française en Équateur, also called the French Geodesic Mission to Peru and the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission) was an 18th-century expedition to what is now Ecuador ...
to territory which is now Ecuador which had the aim of testing a hypothesis of Isaac Newton. Newton had posited that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but bulges around the equator and is flattened at the poles. Newton's opinion had raised a huge controversy among French scientists.
Pierre Louis Maupertuis Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (; ; 1698 – 27 July 1759) was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He became the Director of the Académie des Sciences, and the first President of the Prussian Academy of Science, at the ...
,
Alexis Claude Clairaut Alexis Claude Clairaut (; 13 May 1713 – 17 May 1765) was a French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist. He was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had out ...
, and
Pierre Charles Le Monnier Pierre Charles Le Monnier (; 23 November 1715 – 3 April 1799) was a French astronomer. His name is sometimes given as Lemonnier. Biography Le Monnier was born in Paris, where his father Pierre (1675–1757), also an astronomer, was professor ...
traveled to Lapland, where they were to measure the length of several degrees of latitude orthogonal to the arctic circle, while
Louis Godin Louis Godin (28 February 1704 – 11 September 1760) was a French astronomer and member of the French Academy of Sciences. He worked in Peru, Spain, Portugal and France. Biography Godin was born in Paris; his parents were François Godin and El ...
,
Pierre Bouguer Pierre Bouguer () (16 February 1698, Croisic – 15 August 1758, Paris) was a French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomer. He is also known as "the father of naval architecture". Career Bouguer's father, Jean Bouguer, one ...
, and La Condamine were sent to South America to perform similar measurements around the equator. On 16 May 1735, La Condamine sailed from
La Rochelle La Rochelle (, , ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''La Rochéle''; oc, La Rochèla ) is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department. With ...
accompanied by Godin, Bouguer and a botanist, Joseph de Jussieu. After stopovers in Martinique, Saint-Domingue, and Cartagena, they sailed southward through Panama, arriving at the Pacific port of
Manta Manta or mantas may refer to: * Manta ray, large fish belonging to the genus ''Manta'' Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * Manta (comics), a character in American Marvel Comics publications * Manta (''Uridium''), a spaceship in the Bri ...
on 10 March 1736. La Condamine's associations with his colleagues were unhappy. The expedition was beset by many difficulties, and finally La Condamine split from the rest and made his way to Quito, Ecuador separately, following the
Esmeraldas River The Esmeraldas River is a river in northwestern Ecuador that flows into the Pacific Ocean at the city of Esmeraldas. Among its tributaries is the Guayllabamba River which drains Quito. Charles Marie de la Condamine Charles Marie de La Conda ...
, becoming the first European to encounter rubber in the process. La Condamine is credited with introducing samples of rubber to the ''
Académie Royale des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...
'' of France in 1736. In 1751, he presented a paper by
François Fresneau François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters" * Francis II of France, King ...
to the Académie (eventually published in 1755) which described many of the properties of rubber. This has been referred to as the first scientific paper on rubber. He joined the group again on 4 June 1736 in the city of Quito. The meridian arc whose length La Condamine and his colleagues chose to measure passed through a high valley perpendicular to the equator, stretching from Quito (now the capital of Ecuador) in the north to Cuenca in the south. The scientists spent a month performing
triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...
measurements in the Yaruqui plains—from 3 October to 3 November 1736—and then returned to Quito. After they had come back to Quito, they found that subsidies expected from Paris had not arrived. La Condamine, who had taken precautions and had made a deposit on a bank in Lima, traveled in early 1737 to Lima to collect money. He prolonged this journey somewhat to study the cinchona tree with its medicinally active bark (containing the anti-malarial drug quinine), the tree being hardly known in Europe. Because cinchona only grows at high altitudes the plants did not survive. He described how the plants were brought to France:de la Condamine (1738
"Sur l'arbre du quinquina"
(On the quinquina tree) ''Histoire de l'Académie royale des Sciences'', pages 226-243.
On June 3rd I spent the whole day on one of these mountains ear Loja in present-dat Ecuador Though assisted by two Americans of the region whom I took with me as guides, I was able to collect no more than eight or nine young plants of ''Quinquina'' inchonain a proper state for transportation. These I had placed in earth taken from the spot in a case of suitable size and had them carried on the shoulders of a man whom I kept constantly in my sight, and then by canoe. I hoped to leave some of the plants at Cayenne n Guianafor cultivation and to transport the others to the King's garden in France.
He collected valuable seeds, sarsparilla, guaiacum, ipecacuanha, cacao, vanilla and simarouba. After returning to Quito on 20 June 1737, he found that Godin refused to disclose his results, whereupon La Condamine joined forces with Bouguer. The two men continued with their length measurements in the mountainous and inaccessible region close to Quito. When in December 1741 Bouguer detected an error in a calculation of La Condamine's, the two explorers got into a quarrel and stopped speaking to each other. However, working separately, the two completed their project in May 1743.


Return to Europe

Insufficient funds prevented La Condamine from returning to France directly. Thus La Condamine chose to return by way of the
Amazon River The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of ...
, a route which is longer and more dangerous. His was the first scientific exploration of the Amazon. He reached the Atlantic Ocean on 19 September 1743, having made observations of astronomic and topographic interest on the way. He also made some botanical studies, notably of
cinchona ''Cinchona'' (pronounced or ) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. All are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America. A few species are reportedly nat ...
and
rubber tree ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now pan ...
s. In February 1744 he arrived in
Cayenne Cayenne (; ; gcr, Kayenn) is the capital city of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic coast. The city's mot ...
, the capital of French Guiana. He did not dare to travel back to France on a French merchant ship because France was at war (the
Austrian Succession War The War of the Austrian Succession () was a European conflict that took place between 1740 and 1748. Fought primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, Italy, the Atlantic and Mediterranean, related conflicts included King George's ...
of 1740–1748), and he had to wait for five months for a Dutch ship, but made good use of his waiting time by observing and recording physical, biological and ethnological phenomena. Finally leaving Cayenne in August 1744, he arrived in Amsterdam on 30 November 1744, where he stayed for a while, and arrived in Paris in February 1745. He brought with him many notes, natural history specimens, and art objects that he donated to the naturalist Buffon (1707–1788). La Condamine published the results of his measurements and travels with a map of the Amazon in ''Mém. de l'Académie des Sciences'', 1745 (English translation 1745–1747). This included the first descriptions by a European of the
Casiquiare canal The Casiquiare river () is a distributary of the upper Orinoco flowing southward into the Rio Negro, in Venezuela, South America. As such, it forms a unique natural canal between the Orinoco and Amazon river systems. It is the world's largest ...
and the curare arrow poison prepared by the
Amerindian The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
s. He also noted the correct use of quinine to fight malaria. The journal of his ten-year-long voyage to South America was published in Paris in 1751. The scientific results of the expedition were unambiguous: the Earth is indeed a spheroid flattened at the poles as was believed by Newton. La Condamine and Bouguer failed to write a joint publication, and Bouguer's death in 1758 put an end to their relationship. The other expedition member, Godin, died in 1760. Being the only surviving member, he received most of the credit for the expedition which drew a great deal of attention in France, as he was a gifted writer and popularizer. On a visit to Rome La Condamine made careful measurements of the ancient buildings with a view to a precise determination of the length of the Roman foot. He also wrote in favour of inoculation, and on various other subjects, mainly connected with his work in South America. La Condamine had contracted smallpox in his youth. This led him to take part in the debate on vaccination against the disease and to propagate inoculation against smallpox. Assisted by the clarity and elegance of his writing, he presented several papers at the Academy of Sciences in which he defended his ideas with passion. He became a corresponding member of the academies of London, Berlin, Saint Petersburg and Bologna, and was elected to the l'
Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
on 29 November 1760. In August 1756, he married, with papal dispensation, his young niece Charlotte Bouzier of Estouilly. La Condamine had many friends, the closest one being Maupertuis, to whom he bequeathed his papers. La Condamine died in Paris on 4 February 1774, following a hernia operation.


Works


South America

*''Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi à l'équateur'' (Paris 1751, Supplement 1752) *''Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur del'Amérique méridionale'' (Paris 1759) *"Mémoire sur quelques anciens monumens du Perou ic du tems des Incas", in: ''Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres'' II (1746), Berlin 1748, S. 435–456
PDF
.


Others

*''La figure de la terre déterminée'' (Paris 1749) *''Mesure des trois premiers degrés du méridien dans l'hémisphère australe'' (Paris 1751) *''Histoire de l'inoculation de la petite vérole'' (Amsterdam 1773)


References

* * *
Victor Wolfgang von Hagen Victor Wolfgang von Hagen (St. Louis, Missouri, United States, February 29, 1908 – Italy, March 8, 1985) was an American explorer author, archaeological historian, naturalist and anthropologist who traveled in South America with his wife (Chri ...
: ''South America called them; explorations of the great naturalists: La Condamine, Humboldt, Darwin, Spruce''. New York: Knopf, 1945 *Robert Whitaker: ''The Mapmaker's Wife''. London: Doubleday, 2004. (The full story of the expedition to South America, drawn from the original documents.) *Neil Safier, ''Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America'', Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008.


External links


French Academy of Sciences biography
* * * * Voyages of Discovery : The Figure of Earth (BBC documentary) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKulxEp2aqk {{DEFAULTSORT:La Condamine, Charles-Marie de Scientists from Paris 1701 births 1774 deaths 18th-century French astronomers French geographers Explorers of South America La Condamine, Charles Marie de Members of the Académie Française Members of the French Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Royal Society Contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–1772)