The project focuses on the life and work of P.-L. M. de Maupertuis (1698-1759) and situates it in the cultural history of Enlightenment science. Maupertuis operated in many different intellectual, social and institutional domains. He established his reputation in mathematics, went on to organize and carry out an expedition to measure the shape of the earth, and engaged in an extended controversy over his results. He made grand claims for his rational mechanics, tying it to metaphysics and theology, and wrote treatises on heredity and generation as well. This project makes up roughly half of a book-length biographical study of Maupertuis that puts his career and his writings in the context of the complex and cosmopolitan cultural politics of the Enlightenment. The specific topics to be addressed include: mechanics and mathematics in Paris in the 1720s and 1730s; the debate about the geodetical measurements obtained in Lapland, and the role of the debate in Maupertuis's construction of an identity as an heroic adventurer; and the period of his presidency of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The last aspect of this project will lead to a broad portrait of the cultural politics of Frederick the Great's Prussia, and the role of science in the King's vision of enlightened despotism ***
