Antoine Cavalleri
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Antoine Cavalleri (1698–1765) was a Jesuit professor of mathematics at Cahors during much of the French Enlightenment in the 18th century, until late in the reign of Louis XV.[1]
During the early years of the 18th century Isaac Newton's work on gravity was still incompletely accepted in France and Descartes' vortex theory had not yet been conclusively superseded.[2] One result was the difficulty of formulating and establishing a coherent and compelling explanatory theory of tidal action. The French Académie Royale des Sciences both supported practical research into tidal effects, and offered a prize for the best essay to establish the topic on a sound mathematical and theoretical footing.
Three essays were selected for prizes, all of them by supporters of Newtonian theory. They were Daniel Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler, and Colin Maclaurin. However, it was rumoured by Pierre Louis Maupertuis that the reason that Cavalleri was added to the list of winners was that one influential judge among those selecting the winning essays was René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, who favoured Decartes' vortex theory, and who insisted that at least one winner should be a supporter of that view, though by that time it was rapidly losing ground and leading workers in the field already were rejecting it. As a sop for Réaumur, his colleagues consented to include an arbitrary choice of essay supporting the vorticist view. Cavalleri not only was fairly prominent in his own right, but had recently won two prizes from the Académie de Bordeaux for his essays: "Opacité et diaphanéité des corps" in 1738 and "Chaleur et froideur des eaux minérales" in 1739, so he was a convenient choice.[3]