ABSTRACT
Newton's theory received much recognition with great hostility except in his own country. Euler, Clairaut, and D'Alembert were the first geometers to proceed beyond the point reached by Newton, and all three independently sent memoirs to the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1747, the prize for 1748 having been offered for an investigation of the inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn. After the confirmation of the Newtonian theory by Clairaut in connection with the motion of the moon's apogee, the same question was proposed by the Academy in 1752, and again Euler was successful in gaining the prize, though failing as before to reconcile the observed inequality with theory. Many other labours in astronomy, to say nothing of mathematics and physics, the chief of which may, perhaps, be considered the complete theory of Jupiter's satellites, which was the foundation of Delambre's tables, render Laplace's place second only to that of Newton among the benefactors of these sciences.
