BIOGRAPHY OF PEDRO VICENTE MALDONADO

PEDRO VICENTE MALDONADO

Pedro Vicente Maldonado Palomino and Flores, (Riobamba, November 24, 1704 - London November 17, 1748) was an Ecuadorian scientist who collaborated with members of the French Geodesic Mission. Besides political physicist and mathematician, was an astronomer, surveyor, and geographer.

Biography

His parents were Don Pedro Atanasio Verdugo and Maria Maldonado Palomino Flores, a couple with a favorable economic and social situation. One of his brothers was Joaquín Ramón Maldonado Flores Palomino and I Lises Marquis.

His first studies in his native city, and in 1718 traveled to Quito and entered the St. Louis College of the Jesuits, where he learned arithmetic, geometry, Latin, astronomy and music. The May 19, 1721 received a master's degree at the Gregorian University, and returned shortly to Riobamba to teach at the college of the Jesuits.

Maldonado early became interested in the knowledge of nature, and between 1722 and 1724, conducted explorations into unknown regions to study in detail its geography, its first map was made in 1725. He returned back to Riobamba to manage their properties, and remained there until 1730, when he settled in Quito. On February 5, 1730 he married the daughter of the governor of Popayan, and so is linked to a powerful family clan.

He returned in 1734 to Riobamba and was elected mayor of first vote of the council, and later was named deputy mayor. Despite occupying these administrative positions, did not neglect his scientific observations. That same year presented a road project to the viceroy of Peru, to communicate the Royal Audience of Quito to Panama. That was the first of several trade routes projects and land transport undertaken by Maldonado.

In 1736 he collaborated with the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission, whose primary objective, until 1743, was the determination of the value of a degree of meridian in the vicinity of the equator. Maldonado became friends with many of them, especially with La Condamine.

Two years later took over as Governor of Esmeraldas, but the January 20, 1742 delivered a general power of attorney to his brothers to exercise the government of Esmeraldas and settled again in Quito, where he remarried after being widowed. He married in 1743 and María Ventura Martinez de Arredondo.

In 1744 he visited Europe Maldonado. In Spain, in 1746, was received by Philip V of Spain, who awarded him the title of "Gentle Man" of the Royal House and the Government of Atacames confirmed for two generations, with income flood. In Madrid he went to Paris, where he printed his General Map and was received by the Academy of Sciences as a member, after the reports on its merits given the geodesic who met in Quito on March 24, 1747. The same year he toured the Netherlands, and in August 1748 moved to London, where he was invited to participate in meetings of the Royal Scientific Society as one of its members, but died before joining. His remains were buried in the church of St. James, leaving a big gap in all scientific means