* Astronomy

Alexis Claude de Clairaut (or Clairault) (7 May 1713 - 17 May 1765) was a prominent French mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, and intellectual.
He obtained an ingenious approximate solution of the problem of the three bodies; in 1750 he gained the prize of the St Petersburg Academy for his essay Théorie de la lune; the team made up of Clairaut, Jérome Lalande and Nicole Reine Lepaute successfully computed the date of the 1759 return of Halley's comet.
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