Pitot, Henry

, an ingenious mathematician, descended of a noble family of Languedoc, was born in 1695. In his early mathematical studies, he appears to have had no instructor; but going, in his twenty-third year, to Paris, he formed an acquaintance with Reaumur. In 1724 he was received into the academy of sciences, in the Memoirs of which he wrote a great many papers, He wrote a valuable work, entitled “The Theory of working Ships,” 1731, which procured him to be elected a member of the Royal Society of London. In 1740, the states-general of Languedoc gave him the appointment of principal engineer to the province, and also that of inspector- general of the famous canal which forms a navigable junction between the Mediterranean sea and the bay of Biscay. One of his | greatest works Was that for supplying Montpelier with water from sources at the distance of three leagues. For this and other services the king honoured him with the order of St. Michael. He died in 1771, at the age of seventy-six. ¹