Abstract
In this chapter, we give an overview of Leonhard Euler’s work as a geographer. In particular, we shall linger on it relation with the famous French geographer and astronomer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, with whom he collaborated during his first stay at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1727–1741). Delisle, who played an important role in Euler’s involvement in geography and astronomy, introduced a method for drawing geographical maps which was used in the two atlases published under Euler’s direction. This led Euler to write a memoir in which he worked out the mathematical theory that underlies Delisle’s method.
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Notes
- 1.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France indicates several possible variants of his name: Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, Joseph Delisle, Delisle le cadet or Delisle le jeune (both meaning “the young”, to distinguish him from his older brother Guillaume Delisle who was also a geographer), Joseph-Nicolas de L’Isle, and Joseph-Nicolas de Lisle. Delisle also used the form De l’Isle de la Croyère (see for instance the article Aurores boréales in the collection [6]), after his mother’s name, Nicole-Charlotte Millet de la Croyère.
- 2.
Philippe d’Orléans, also known as Le Régent, ruled France while King Louis XV, the great-grandson of Louis XIV, was still a minor (Louis XV became king of France at the age of 5).
- 3.
Jean-Dominique (or Giovanni Domenico) Cassini (1625–1712), also known as Cassini I, the famous Italian astronomer who did his most important work in France, was the oldest of several geographers and astronomers of the family Cassini who were based at the Paris observatory. See also Note 5, Chap. 3 of the present volume.
- 4.
In this chapter, the translations from the French are mine.
- 5.
Johann Daniel Schumacher (1690–1761) was an Alsatian (born in Colmar) who emigrated to Saint Petersburg where he was appointed by Peter the Great as the chief librarian of the tsar’s library which had opened in 1703. In 1721, the tsar sent Schumacher to Western Europe with the mission of meeting the best scientists and inviting them to join the Imperial Academy. Schumacher became later the head of the Chancellery of the Academy, where he continued to play an important role until his death. He is a good representative of the non-academic personnel appointed by the Russian court for the supervision of the Academy. Euler and his colleagues were unhappy with the strong involvement of the State in the Academy’s affairs and they sometimes expressed their disagreement with this politics.
- 6.
Peter the Great and Joseph-Nicolas Delisle had already met in the summer of 1717, during an extended visit which the monarch made to Paris. The meeting took place when the tsar visited the observatory.
- 7.
With a salary of 1800 roubles per year, Delisle was the best-paid member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg, see [16, p. 7].
- 8.
On the front page of his 1738 publication in Saint Petersburg [6], Delisle, after his name, writes: Professeur de mathématiques au Collège Royal de France et Premier professeur d’astronomie dans l’Académie impériale des sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg.
- 9.
The translation of the title of the atlas is the following: Russian atlas containing a general map and nineteen particular maps of the whole Russian Empire and of the limiting countries, constructed according to the general rules of geography and the most recent observations, edited by the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg.
- 10.
Jean Fernel (1506–1558) was a medical doctor, astronomer and mathematician. In 1550, he made the first experiments for the measure of an arc of meridian in France. The measure was carried out by elementary means, by counting the number of revolutions made by a wheel on a road between Paris and Amiens. It turned out that these primitive methods gave satisfactory results [26, p. 102].
- 11.
Willebrord Snellius (1580–1626) was a mathematician, philosopher, physicist and astronomer who taught mathematics at the University of Leyden. He is well known for the so-called Snell (or Snell–Descartes) law in optics. In 1614, Snellius, using, for the first time, a triangulation, made a measure of an arc of a meridian in the Netherlands, between Alkmaar and Berg op Zoom, two cities that were considered to be separated by one degree of a meridian; cf. [3, p. 148]. From this measure, Snellius was able to give an estimate of the circumference of the Earth, a result which is highlighted in his book Eratosthenes Batavus [29], whose title means The Dutch Eratosthenes, in honor of the great Greek mathematician Eratosthenes (c. 276–195 BC) to whom is attributed the first known method for measuring the circumference of the Earth.
- 12.
Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671) was an Italian Jesuit astronomer. As a churchman, he tried to defend Ptolemy’s geocentric system of the universe against Copernicus’ heliocentric one. Between 1646 and 1664, he worked out a series of measurements on the surface of the Earth which turned out to be rather deficient. He was more successful in his description of the visible face of the moon.
- 13.
Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy (1707–1788) was trained in astronomy by Delisle, during one year, before the latter left Paris to Saint Petersburg. In 1741, he was elected astronomer at the Academy of sciences, after Joseph-Nicolas Delisle’s name was erased, as it was initially planned, since the latter stayed in Russia for more than four years. It was in 1743, after he was elected perpetual secretary of the Academy, that Jean-Paul Grandjean changed his name to de Fouchy.
- 14.
The memoir was published in 1735. Let us recall that, in general, there was a (sometimes quite long) lapse of time between the moment when Euler presented his memoirs and the moment where they appeared in print. This was due in fact to the large backlog that the journal of the Academy accumulated, due to the amount of writings they received, precisely from Euler, who was extremely prolific.
- 15.
Gottfried Heinsius (1709–1769) was a German mathematician and geographer who stayed in Saint Petersburg, as a member of the Academy of Sciences, between 1736 and 1743.
- 16.
Johann Kaspar Wettstein (1695–1759), like Euler, came from Basel, and the two men were friends since their childhood. Later, Wettstein moved to England where he became chaplain to the royal family. Euler and Wettstein kept close relations.
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Papadopoulos, A. (2022). Euler, Delisle and Cartography. In: Caddeo, R., Papadopoulos, A. (eds) Mathematical Geography in the Eighteenth Century: Euler, Lagrange and Lambert. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09570-2_6
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