Charles Marie de la Condamine
Biography
Birth: 1701
Death: 1774
French mathematician, physicist, explorer, and geographer, educated at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. After having participated in exploratory missions to Africa, Asia and South America (1735-1745), he was elected member of the French Academy and the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1748 of the Royal Society. In 1751 was published his Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi a l'équateur, a journal of his travels. In 1754 he published one of the earliest western works on inoculation, Mémoire sur l'Inoculation, translated ínto english the next year as A Discourse on Inoculation.
Life with James Boswell
Boswell met him at Dr. Pringle's on 12/6-1763, describing him as "very old, and so deaf the he could hear only by the assistance of a horn." Pringle probably knew La Condamine from the Royal Society and/or his work in the field of inoculation.
Recommended literature
First editions of the original french edition of Condamine's travel journal is sometimes available via the AbeBooks search engine, as are copies of some of his other works. Try performing a search for author Condamine. The first 100 pages of Victor von Hagen's 1949 book South America Called Them: Explorations of the Great Naturalists deals entirely with la Condamine (Part I) - the second part is about Alexander von Humboldt. (Read it now!)
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