Philippe de La Hire

Who was Philippe de La Hire?

Philippe de La Hire was a French mathematician and astronomer. According to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle he was an "academy unto himself".

He was born in Paris, the son of Laurent de La Hire, a distinguished artist and Marguerite Coquin. In 1660, he moved to Rome to study painting. Upon his return to Paris, he began to study science and showed an aptitude for mathematics. He was taught by the French Jesuit theologian, mathematician, physicist and controversialist Honoré Fabri and became part of a circle formed by Fabri which included Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Claude Francois Milliet Deschales, Christiaan Huygens and his brother Constantijn, Gottfried Leibniz, René Descartes and Marin Mersenne. He became a member of French Academy of Sciences in 1678, and subsequently became active as an astronomer, calculating tables of the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets and designing contrivances for aiming aerial telescopes. From 1679–1682 he made several observations and measurements of the French coastline, and in 1683 aided in mapping France by extending the Paris meridian to the north. In 1683 La Hire assumed the chair of mathematics at the Collège Royal.