Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist and astronomer (died 1771)

Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan

18th-century French geophysicist, astronomer, and chronobiologist

Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan was a French natural philosopher (physicist), born in the town of Béziers on 26 November 1678. De Mairan lost his father, François d'Ortous, at age four and his mother twelve years later at age sixteen. Over the course of his life, de Mairan was…