Philippe de La Hire

Philippe de La Hire (1640 to 1718) was a French painter, mathematician, astronomer and architect whom Fontenelle called an academy unto himself. Born in Paris, the son of the artist Laurent de La Hire, he studied painting in Venice for four years from 1660 and was received as a master painter in 1670. He then learned geometrical perspective from Girard Desargues and mathematics from the Jesuit Honore Fabri, and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1678. As an astronomer he calculated tables of the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets, and in 1683 he extended the Paris meridian northwards to help map France and took the chair of mathematics at the College Royal. He wrote on graphical methods, conic sections, epicycloids, roulettes and conchoids, and his work also reached descriptive zoology, the study of respiration and physiological optics. A lunar mountain, Mons La Hire, is named for him.