 Maupertuis's principle

Maupertuis's principle, named after the French philosopher and mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis, is a variational principle in classical mechanics that states that the path taken by a system moving from one state to another is the one that minimizes the action, or in some formulations, the one that extremizes the action. This principle can be seen as an early formulation of the principle of least action, which is a fundamental concept in physics.