Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de, French mathematician and astronomer, born at St. Malo; went to Lapland to measure a degree of longitude, to ascertain the figure of the earth; wrote a book “On the Figure of the Earth”; was invited to Berlin by Frederick the Great, and made President of the Academy of Science there; was satirised by Voltaire much to the annoyance of the king, who patronised him and prided himself in the institution of which he was the head (1698‒1759).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Maupeou * Maur, St.