In classical mechanics, Maupertuis' principle (named after Pierre Louis Maupertuis), is that the path followed by a physical system is the one of least length (with a suitable interpretation of path and length).
Pierre Louis Maupertuis | Maupertuis' principle | Maupertuis |
His advice ignored, King John II decided to engage the English at Nouaillé-Maupertuis, south of Poitiers.
Barbour and Bertotti conjectured that Jacobi's principle and a mechanism they called best matching were construction principles for a fully Machian theory.
By measuring the length of the arc, Maupertuis' team was able to prove that the Earth is, indeed, flattened at the poles as sir Isaac Newton had predicted.
Maupertuis had already appeared as a character in Lane's Doctor Who/Sherlock Holmes crossover novel, All-Consuming Fire.