MAUPERTUIS, PIERRE LOUIS MOREAU de.

Accord de Differentes Loix de la Nature qui avoient jusqui'ici paru incompatibles (15 Avril 1744).

Paris, L'Imprimerie Royale, 1748. 4to. Recent blue boards. Issued in "Histoire de L'Academie Royale des Sciences, Année 1744, Paris", pp. 417-426. Bound with the engraved frontispiece and titlepage to the volume.

First edition. In this importent paper "Agreement of several Laws that had hitherto seemed to be incompatible" he showed that the behavior of light during refraction - when it bends on entering a new medium - was such that the total path it followed, from a point in the first medium to a point in the second, minimised a quantity which he again assimilated to action. These results were instances of his later (1748) formulated "The principle of least action".

Order-nr.: 38730