HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS AND DEVELOPMENTS IN

THE CONCEPT OF TRANSITION PERIODS

Structured to fulfill the task

Subject : History of Mathematics

Lecturer : Fridgo Tasman, S.Pd, M.Sc

Group Member Name :

Muhammad Rafi Wardihen (22029027)

Sabila Zata Amani (22029042)

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

FACULTY OF MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL SCIENCES

UNIVERSITAS NEGERI PADANG

 FOREWORD

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAPER TITLE
FOREWORD
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem statement
1.3 Purpose
CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
A. The Bernoulli Family
B. Abraham de Moivre
C. Brook Taylor
D. Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
E. Henry Martyn Taylor
F. James Taylor
G. Mary Taylor Slow
H. Richard Lawrence Taylor
I. Colin Maclaurin
J. Leonhard Euler
K. Alexis Claude Clairaut
L. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
M. Johann Heinrich Lambert
N. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
O. Gaspard Monge
P. Pierre-Simon Laplace
Q. Adrien-Marie Legendre
R. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
S. Augustin Louis Cauchy
T. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
U. Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor

HEIRLOOMS
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background
The world of science from time to time continues to grow rapidly, this is supported by the
help of technology that is also increasingly sophisticated, so that the findings of new findings
can be achieved by researchers, researchers and experts in science in the world. With the
many scientific findings that exist, there is a division of knowledge division that occurs as it
is today, for example in mathematics which is divided into several parts such as statistics,
calculus, geometry and others.
But behind all the knowledge that is well known and worldwide, many of us as students,
even teachers forget what we should know, namely about where it came from and who is the
inventor of the science we study today. As a student, we need to know the origin and
inventor of a science that must be studied so that not only do we know about the science but
the origin
The proposal and also the discoverer who can be known. With the above problems, in
this paper we will examine and explain a little about the history of the development of
mathematics through the figures of mathematical scientists and their discoveries in the
transition period.

1.2 Problem statement

1. What is the biography of the mathematical scientist in transition?
2. What was the result of the discoveries of mathematical scientists in the transitional
period?
3. What are the services of mathematical scientists in the transition period
1.3 Purpose
1. Can find out the biographies of scientists in the transition period
2. Can know the results of the discoveries of mathematical scientists in the transition period
3. Can know the application of mathematical scientists in the transition period
 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

A. The Bernoulli Family

One of principals contributions to mathematic in the eighteenth century was members of
Bernoulli family coming from Swiss. The family record starts from two brothers, Jakob
Bernoulli and Johan Bernoulli. They were among first mathematicians to realize the suprising
power of calculus and apply it to diversity problem. Jakob graduated from Basel University. He
also occupied at mathematical chair in Basel University. Among Jakob Bernoulli’s contibutions
in mathematic are polar coordinates, the derivation in both rectangular, and polar coordinate of
the formula for the radius of curvature of a plane curve, the study of catenary curve. Jakob was
one of students of mathematical probability. He wrote the book titled Ars conjectandi abou the
mathematical probability. There are several things in mathematic bearing Jakob’s name, they are
Bernoulli distributions and Bernoulli theorem in statistic, the Bernoulli numbers and the
Bernoulli polynomial, The lemniscate of Bernoulli encountered in any course in calculus. Jakob
also gave the solutions on the problem of isochrone curve which was published in Acta
Euditorum in 1960.

While Johan Bernoulli was more productive contributor to mathematic than his brother,
Jakob.He was one of the most successful teachers of his time. It was based on his material that
the first calculus book was published in 1696. It was from his material that the indefinite number
0/0 could be evaluated, which was then referred to as Lhopital's rule. Among Johan's works
included the topics of the optical phenomena of refraction and reflection, the determination of
the orthogonal trajectories, rectification of curves and quadrature of areas by series. The most
popular his note is bratichystochrone, the determination of the curve of quickest descents of a
weighted particles.

Johan had three sons. The first sons is Nicolaus who showed the great promises in
mathematic. He was called by St. Pettersburg Academy, but he died on 8 months after that. He
wrote on curve, differential equtions, and probability. He produced a paradox known as the
Petersburg paradox. After that the problem in the paradox was solved by Nicolaus' brother,
namely Daniel. Daniel was the famous of Johan’s son. He succeded Nicolaus at the Petersburg
paradox. Daniel took the part in the probability, astronomy, physic, and hydrodynamic.He
devised the concept of the moral expections, and in his hydrodynamic. He established the
kinetic thory of gases, studied the vibrating string, and pioneered the partial differential
equations. Johan (II) is the youngest of Johan's son. he studied law but he spent his later years as
a professor of mathematics at University of Basel. He was particularly interested in the
mathematical theory of heat and light.

Besides that, Jakob and Johan's nephew, Niocolas Bernoulli, was also a mathematician.
He writes about geometry and differential equations. He taught logic and law. Johan Bernoulli
( II ) had a son Johann (III) who like his father, studied law but then turned to mathematics. He
was called as professor of mathematics to the Berlin unuversity. He wrote on astronomy, the
doctrine of change, recurring decimals, and the indetermined equations.

B. Abraham de Moivre
Born
26 May 1667
Vitry-le-François, Champagne, France
Died
27 November 1754
London, England
Summary
Abraham De Moivre was a French-born mathematician who pioneered the development
of analytic geometry and the theory of probability.
Biography
Abraham de Moivre was born in Vitry-le-François, which is about halfway between
Paris and Nancy, where his father worked as a surgeon. The family was certainly not well off
financially, but a steady income meant that they could not be described as poor. De Moivre's
parents were Protestants but he first attended the Catholic school of the Christian Brothers in
Vitry which was a tolerant school, particularly so given the religious tensions in France at this
time. When he was eleven years old his parents sent him to the Protestant Academy at Sedan
where he spent four years studying Greek under Du Rondel.
The Edict of Nantes had guaranteed freedom of worship in France since 1598 but,
although it made any extension of Protestant worship in France legally possible, it was much
resented by the Roman Catholic clergy and by the local French parliaments. Despite the Edict,
the Protestant Academy at Sedan was suppressed in 1682 and de Moivre, forced to move, then
studied logic at Saumur until 1684. Although mathematics was not a part of the course that he
was studying, de Moivre read mathematics texts in his own time. In particular he read Huygens'
treatise on games of chance De ratiociniis in ludo aleae . By this time de Moivre's parents had
gone to live in Paris so it was natural for him to go there. He continued his studies at the Collège
de Harcourt where he took courses in physics and for the first time had formal mathematics
training, taking private lessons from Ozanam.
Religious persecution of Protestants became very serious after Louis XIV revoked the
Edict of Nantes in 1685, leading to the expulsion of the Huguenots. At this time de Moivre was
imprisoned for his religious beliefs in the priory of St Martin. It is unclear how long he was kept
there, since Roman Catholic biographers indicate that soon after this he emigrated to England
while his Protestant biographers say that he was imprisoned until 27 April 1688 after which he
travelled to England. After arriving in London he became a private tutor of mathematics, visiting
the pupils whom he taught and also teaching in the coffee houses of London.
By the time he arrived in London de Moivre was a competent mathematician with a good
knowledge of many of the standard texts. However after he made a visit to the Earl of
Devonshire, carrying with him a letter of introduction, he was shown Newton's Principia. He
realised instantly that this was a work far deeper than those which he had studied and decided
that he would have to read and understand this masterpiece. He purchased a copy, cut up the
pages so that he could carry a few with him at all times, and as he travelled from one pupil to the
next he read them. Although this was not the ideal environment in which to study the Principia,
it is a mark of de Moivre's abilities that he was quickly able to master the difficult work. De
Moivre had hoped for a chair of mathematics, but foreigners were at a disadvantage in England
so although he now was free from religious discrimination, he still suffered discrimination as a
Frenchman in England. We describe below some attempts to procure a chair for him.
By 1692 de Moivre had got to know Halley, who was at this time assistant secretary of
the Royal Society, and soon after that he met Newton and became friendly with him. His first
mathematics paper arose from his study of fluxions in the Principia and in March 1695 Halley
communicated this first paper Method of fluxions to the Royal Society. In 1697 he was elected a
fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1710 de Moivre was appointed to the Commission set up by the Royal Society to
review the rival claims of Newton and Leibniz to be the discovers of the calculus. His
appointment to this Commission was due to his friendship with Newton. The Royal Society
knew the answer it wanted! It is also interesting that de Moivre should be given this important
position despite finding it impossible to gain a university post.
De Moivre pioneered the development of analytic geometry and the theory of probability.
He published The Doctrine of Chance: A method of calculating the probabilities of events in
play in 1718 although a Latin version had been presented to the Royal Society and published in
the Philosophical Transactions in 1711. In fact it was Francis Robartes, who later became the
Earl of Radnor, who suggested to de Moivre that he present a broader picture of the principles of
probability theory than those which had been presented by Montmort in Essay d'analyse sur les
jeux de hazard (1708). Clearly this work by Montmort and that by Huygens which de Moivre
had read while at Saumur, contained the problems which de Moivre attacked in his work and this
led Montmort to enter into a dispute with de Moivre concerning originality and priority. Unlike
the Newton-Leibniz dispute which de Moivre had judged, the argument with Montmort appears
to have been settled amicably. The definition of statistical independence appears in this book
together with many problems with dice and other games.
In fact The Doctrine of Chance appeared in new expanded editions in 1718, 1738 and
1756. For example in [5] Dupont looks at the "jeu de rencontre" first put forward by Montmort
and generalised by de Moivre in Problems XXXIV and XXXV of the 1738 edition. Problem
XXXIV reads as follows:-
Any number of letters a, b, c, d, e, f, etc., all of them different, being taken promiscuously as it
happens: to find the probability that some of them shall be found in their places according to the
rank they obtain in the alphabet; and that others of them shall at the same time be displaced.

Problem XXXV generalises Problem XXXIV by allowing each of the letters a,b,c,... to be
repeated a certain number of times. The "gamblers' ruin" problem appears as Problem LXV in
the 1756 edition. Dupont looks at this problem, and Todhunter's solution. In fact in A history of
the mathematical theory of probability (London, 1865), Todhunter says that probability:-
... owes more to [de Moivre] than any other mathematician, with the single exception of Laplace.
The 1756 edition of The Doctrine of Chance contained what is probably de Moivre’s
most significant contribution to this area, namely the approximation to the binomial distribution
by the normal distribution in the case of a large number of trials. De Moivre first published this
result in a Latin pamphlet dated 13 November 1733 (see [4] for an interesting discussion) aiming
to improve on Jacob Bernoulli’s law of large numbers. The work contains [1]:-
… the first occurrence of the normal probability integral. He even appears to have perceived,
although he did not name, the parameter now called the standard deviation …
De Moivre also investigated mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory of
annuities. An innovative piece of work by Halley had been the production of mortality tables,
based on five years of data, for the city of Breslau which he published in 1693. It was one of the
earliest works to relate mortality and age in a population and was highly influential in the
production of actuarial tables in life insurance. It is almost certain that de Moivre's friendship
with Halley led to his interest in annuities and he published Annuities on lives in 1724. Later
editions appeared in 1743, 1750, 1752 and 1756. His contribution, based mostly on Halley's data,
is important because of his [1]:-
... derivation of formulas for annuities based on a postulated law of mortality and constant rates
of interest on money. Here one finds the treatment of joint annuities on several lives, the
inheritance of annuities, problems about the fair division of the costs of a tontine, and other
contracts in which both age and interest on capital are relevant.
In Miscellanea Analytica (1730) appears Stirling’s formula (wrongly attributed to
Stirling) which de Moivre used in 1733 to derive the normal curve as an approximation to the
binomial. In the second edition of the book in 1738 de Moivre gives credit to Stirling for an
improvement to the formula. De Moivre wrote:-
I desisted in proceeding farther till my worthy and learned friend Mr James Stirling, who had
applied after me to that inquiry, [discovered that c = √(2 π)].

De Moivre is also remembered for his formula for

n
(cos x +i sin x)
which took trigonometry into analysis, and was important in the early development of the
theory of complex numbers. It appears in this form in a paper which de Moivre published in
1722, but a closely related formula had appeared in an earlier paper which de Moivre published
in 1707.
Despite de Moivre's scientific eminence his main income was as a private tutor of
mathematics and he died in poverty. Desperate to get a chair in Cambridge he begged Johann
Bernoulli to persuade Leibniz to write supporting him. He did so in 1710 explaining to Leibniz
that de Moivre was living a miserable life of poverty. Indeed Leibniz had met de Moivre when
he had been in London in 1673 and tried to obtain a professorship for de Moivre in Germany, but
with no success. Even his influential English friends like Newton and Halley could not help him
obtain a university post. De Moivre :-
... was the intimate friend of Newton, who used to fetch him each evening, for philosophical
discourse at his own house, from the coffee-house (probably Slaughter's), where he spent most of
his time.
 Indeed de Moivre revised the Latin translation of Newton's Optics and dedicated The
Doctrine of Chance to him. Newton returned the compliment by saying to those who questioned
him on the Principia [1]:-
Go to Mr De Moivre; he knows these things better than I do.
Clerke writes of his character in [3]:-
He was unmarried, and spent his closing years in peaceful study. Literature, ancient and
modern, furnished his recreation; he once said that he would rather have been Molière than
Newton; and he knew his works and those of Rabelais almost by heart. He continued all his life
a steadfast Christian. After sight and hearing had successively failed, he was still capable of
rapturous delight at his election as a foreign associate of the Paris Academy of Sciences on 27
June 1754.
De Moivre, like Cardan, is famed for predicting the day of his own death. He found that
he was sleeping 15 minutes longer each night and summing the arithmetic progression,
calculated that he would die on the day that he slept for 24 hours.

C. Brook Taylor
Quick Info
Born
18 August 1685
Edmonton, Middlesex, England
Died
29 December 1731
Somerset House, London, England
Summary
Brook Taylor was an English mathematician who added to mathematics a new branch
now called the 'calculus of finite differences', invented integration by parts, and
discovered the celebrated formula known as Taylor's expansion.
Biography
Brook Taylor's father was John Taylor and his mother was Olivia Tempest. John Taylor
was the son of Natheniel Taylor who was recorder of Colchester and a member representing
Bedfordshire in Oliver Cromwell's Assembly, while Olivia Tempest was the daughter of Sir John
Tempest. Brook was, therefore, born into a family which was on the fringes of the nobility and
certainly they were fairly wealthy.
Taylor was brought up in a household where his father ruled as a strict disciplinarian, yet
he was a man of culture with interests in painting and music. Although John Taylor had some
negative influences on his son, he also had some positive ones, particularly giving his son a love
of music and painting. Brook Taylor grew up not only to be an accomplished musician and
painter, but he applied his mathematical skills to both these areas later in his life.
As Taylor's family were well off they could afford to have private tutors for their son and
in fact this home education was all that Brook enjoyed before entering St John's College
Cambridge on 3 April 1703. By this time he had a good grounding in classics and mathematics.
At Cambridge Taylor became highly involved with mathematics. He graduated with an LL.B. in
1709 but by this time he had already written his first important mathematics paper (in 1708)
although it would not be published until 1714. We know something of the details of Taylor
thoughts on various mathematical problems from letters he exchanged with Machin and Keill
beginning in his undergraduate years.
In 1712 Taylor was elected to the Royal Society. This was on the 3 April, and clearly it
was an election based more on the expertise which Machin, Keill and others knew that Taylor
had, rather than on his published results. For example Taylor wrote to Machin in 1712 providing
a solution to a problem concerning Kepler's second law of planetary motion. Also in 1712 Taylor
was appointed to the committee set up to adjudicate on whether the claim of Newton or of
Leibniz to have invented the calculus was correct.
The paper we referred to above as being written in 1708 was published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1714. The paper gives a solution to the
problem of the centre of oscillation of a body, and it resulted in a priority dispute with Johann
Bernoulli. We shall say a little more below about disputes between Taylor and Johann Bernoulli.
Returning to the paper, it is a mechanics paper which rests heavily on Newton's approach to the
differential calculus.
The year 1714 also marks the year in which Taylor was elected Secretary to the Royal
Society. It was a position which Taylor held from 14 January of that year until 21 October 1718
when he resigned, partly for health reasons, partly due to his lack of interest in the rather
demanding position. The period during which Taylor was Secretary to the Royal Society does
mark what must be considered his most mathematically productive time. Two books which
appeared in 1715, Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa and Linear Perspective are
extremely important in the history of mathematics. The first of these books contains what is now
known as the Taylor series, though it would only be known as this in 1785. Second editions
would appear in 1717 and 1719 respectively. We discuss the content of these works in some
detail below.
Taylor made several visits to France. These were made partly for health reasons and
partly to visit the friends he had made there. He met Pierre Rémond de Montmort and
corresponded with him on various mathematical topics after his return. In particular they
discussed infinite series and probability. Taylor also corresponded with de Moivre on probability
and at times there was a three-way discussion going on between these mathematicians.
Between 1712 and 1724 Taylor published thirteen articles on topics as diverse as
describing experiments in capillary action, magnetism and thermometers. He gave an account of
an experiment to discover the law of magnetic attraction (1715) and an improved method for
approximating the roots of an equation by giving a new method for computing logarithms
(1717). His life, however, suffered a series of personal tragedies beginning around 1721. In that
year he married Miss Brydges from Wallington in Surrey. Although she was from a good family,
it was not a family with money and Taylor's father strongly objected to the marriage. The result
was that relations between Taylor and his father broke down and there was no contact between
father and son until 1723. It was in that year that Taylor's wife died in childbirth. The child,
which would have been their first, also died.
After the tragedy of losing his wife and child, Taylor returned to live with his father and
relations between the two were repaired. Two years later, in 1725, Taylor married again to
Sabetta Sawbridge from Olantigh in Kent. This marriage had the approval of Taylor's father who
died four years later on 4 April 1729. Taylor inherited his father's estate of Bifons but further
tragedy was to strike when his second wife Sabetta died in childbirth in the following year. On
this occasion the child, a daughter Elizabeth, did survive.
Taylor added to mathematics a new branch now called the "calculus of finite
differences", invented integration by parts, and discovered the celebrated series known as
Taylor's expansion. These ideas appear in his book Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa
of 1715 referred to above. In fact the first mention by Taylor of a version of what is today called
Taylor's Theorem appears in a letter which he wrote to Machin on 26 July 1712. In this letter
Taylor explains carefully where he got the idea from.
It was, wrote Taylor, due to a comment that Machin made in Child's Coffeehouse when
he had commented on using "Sir Isaac Newton's series" to solve Kepler's problem, and also
using "Dr Halley's method of extracting roots" of polynomial equations. There are, in fact, two
versions of Taylor's Theorem given in the 1715 paper which to a modern reader look equivalent
but which, the author of argues convincingly, were differently motivated. Taylor initially derived
the version which occurs as Proposition 11 as a generalisation of Halley's method of
approximating roots of the Kepler equation, but soon discovered that it was a consequence of the
Bernoulli series. This is the version which was inspired by the Coffeehouse conversation
described above. The second version occurs as Corollary 2 to Proposition 7 and was thought of
as a method of expanding solutions of fluxional equations in infinite series.
We must not give the impression that this result was one which Taylor was the first to
discover. James Gregory, Newton, Leibniz, Johann Bernoulli and de Moivre had all discovered
variants of Taylor's Theorem. Gregory, for example, knew that
1 3 1 5 1 7
arc tan x=x− X + X − X +.... .
3 5 7
and his methods are discussed in [13]. The differences in Newton's ideas of Taylor series
and those of Gregory are discussed in [15]. All of these mathematicians had made their
discoveries independently, and Taylor's work was also independent of that of the others. The
importance of Taylor's Theorem remained unrecognised until 1772 when Lagrange proclaimed it
the basic principle of the differential calculus. The term "Taylor's series" seems to have used for
the first time by Lhuilier in 1786.
There are other important ideas which are contained in the Methodus incrementorum
directa et inversa of 1715 which were not recognised as important at the time. These include
singular solutions to differential equations, a change of variables formula, and a way of relating
the derivative of a function to the derivative of the inverse function. Also contained is a
discussion on vibrating strings, an interest which almost certainly come from Taylor's early love
of music.
Taylor, in his studies of vibrating strings was not attempting to establish equations of
motion, but was considering the oscillation of a flexible string in terms of the isochrony of the
pendulum. He tried to find the shape of the vibrating string and the length of the isochronous
pendulum rather than to find its equations of motion.
Taylor also devised the basic principles of perspective in Linear Perspective (1715). The
second edition has a different title, being called New principles of linear perspective. The work
gives first general treatment of vanishing points. Taylor had a highly mathematical approach to
the subject and made no concessions to artists who should have found the ideas of fundamental
importance to them. At times it is very difficult for even a mathematician to understand Taylor's
results. The phrase "linear perspective" was invented by Taylor in this work and he defined the
vanishing point of a line, not parallel to the plane of the picture, as the point where a line through
the eye parallel to the given line intersects the plane of the picture. He also defined the vanishing
line to a given plane, not parallel to the plane of the picture, as the intersection of the plane
through the eye parallel to the given plane. He did not invent the terms vanishing point and
vanishing line, but he was one of the first to stress their importance. The main theorem in
Taylor's theory of linear perspective is that the projection of a straight line not parallel to the
plane of the picture passes through its intersection and its vanishing point.
There is also the interesting inverse problem which is to find the position of the eye in
order to see the picture from the viewpoint that the artist intended. Taylor was not the first to
discuss this inverse problem but he did make innovative contributions to the theory of such
perspective problems. One could certainly consider this work as laying the foundations for the
theory of descriptive and projective geometry.
Taylor challenged the “non-English mathematicians” to integrate a certain differential.
One has to see this challenge as part of the argument between the Newtonians and the
Leibnitzians. Conte in [7] discusses the answers given by Johann Bernoulli and Giulio Fagnano
to Taylor’s challenge. We mentioned above the arguments between Johann Bernoulli and Taylor.
Taylor, although he did not win all the arguments, could certainly dispute with Johann Bernoulli
on fairly equal terms. Jones describes these arguments in [1]:-
Their debates in journals occasionally included rather heated phrases and, at one time, a wager
of fifty guineas. When Bernoulli suggested in a private letter that they couch their debate in
more gentlemanly terms, Taylor replied that he meant to sound sharp and to “show an
indignation”.
Jones also explains in [1] that Taylor was a mathematician of far greater depth than many
have given him credit for:-
A study of Brook Taylor's life and work reveals that his contribution to the development of
mathematics was substantially greater than the attachment of his name to one theorem would
suggest. His work was concise and hard to follow. The surprising number of major concepts that
he touched upon, initially developed, but failed to elaborate further leads one to regret that
health, family concerns and sadness, or other unassessable factors, including wealth and
parental dominance, restricted the mathematically productive portion of his relatively short life.

D. Geoffrey Ingram Taylor

Quick Info
Born
7 March 1886
St John's Wood, London, England
Died
 27 June 1975
Cambridge, England

Summary
Geoffrey Taylor was a British physicist and mathematician who worked in fluid
dynamics and wave theory.

Biography
Geoffrey Taylor's father was Edward Ingram Taylor (born Paddington, London, 1855)
who was an artist who designed and decorated the public rooms in ocean liners. He was also a
painter of landscapes and did exceptional drawings of flowers. His mother, Margaret Boole (born
in Ireland about 1859), was the second daughter of George Boole and Mary Boole, so Geoffrey
was a grandson of George Boole and Alicia Stott was his aunt. He had a younger brother Julius
who was born about 1889.
Geoffrey Taylor attended school in Hampstead, and there he began to find his love of
science. At the age of 11 he attended a series of children's Christmas lectures on The principles
of the electric telegraph and these made a strong impression on him. He was introduced to
William Thomson at one of these lectures and Lord Kelvin told him he had been friendly with
Geoffrey Taylor's grandfather George Boole.
In 1899 Taylor went to University College School and in 1905 he won a scholarship to
study at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he read mathematics, attending lectures by A N
Whitehead, Whittaker and G H Hardy. After taking Part I of the Mathematical Tripos he moved
towards physics taking Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos. He then won a scholarship to
undertake research at Trinity College.
 One of his first pieces of research was a theoretical study of shock waves where he
extended work by Thomson. This contribution won him a Smith's Prize. He also undertook
experimental work, following a suggestion by J J Thomson, to test quantum theory. In 1910 he
was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College. The following year he was appointed to a
meteorology post, becoming Reader in Dynamical Meteorology, and his work on turbulence in
the atmosphere led to his publication Turbulent motion in fluids which won the Adams Prize at
Cambridge in 1915.
The British luxury passenger liner the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912 on its maiden
voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, in the United States. A little before midnight
on 14 April the Titanic, which was considered unsinkable, collided with an iceberg about 650 km
south of Newfoundland. The ship could float with four of its sixteen watertight compartments
flooded but at least five were holed by the iceberg. As a result of the disaster, the first
International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was held in London in 1913. One of its
proposals was to establish an International Ice Patrol to warn ships of icebergs in the North
Atlantic shipping lanes. The ship the Scotia was the first vessel sent on such a patrol in 1913, and
Taylor served as meteorologist on the ship. He took the opportunity to take a whole range of
measurements of pressure, humidity and temperature on which he was later to base his
theoretical model of turbulent mixing of the air.
The outbreak of World War I saw Taylor offer his services and he was sent to the Royal
Aircraft Factory at Farnborough to use his scientific skills in the design and operation of
aeroplanes. Here he worked on the stress on propeller shafts. This led him to think about the
limiting strengths of materials and this influenced some of his later projects. Taylor did not treat
this as an office job for a researcher, however, for he took a very active part learning to fly
aeroplanes and make parachute jumps.
After World War I Taylor returned to a lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge. One of
the topics he worked on at this stage was an application of turbulent flow to oceanography. He
also worked on the problem of bodies passing through a rotating fluid. In 1923 Taylor was
appointed to a Royal Society research professorship as a Yarrow Research Professor. This
enabled him to stop teaching which he had been doing for the previous four years. As Batchelor
writes in [3]:-
He was not a natural lecturer and not much interested in teaching...
 At this stage Taylor made a great many fundamental steps in the study of fluids. This
period is described in [3]:-
His investigations in the mechanics of fluids and solids covered an extraordinary wide range,
and most of them exhibited the originality and insight for which he was now becoming famous.
He undertook research on the deformation of crystalline materials, work which led on
from his World War I work at Farnborough. Among the many topics he studied was another
major contribution to turbulent flow, where he introduced a new approach through a statistical
study of velocity fluctuations. In 1925 Taylor married Stephanie Ravenhill; they had no children.
It was a marriage which lasted for 42 years until Stephanie's death in 1967.
During World War II Taylor again worked on applications of his expertise to military
problems such as the propagation of blast waves, studying both waves in the air and underwater
explosions.
Taylor continued his research after the end of the War, taking the opportunity to complete
some more thorough investigations into problems where previously the pressure of finding
solutions had prevented him from taking his study further. He retired in 1952 but, still supported
by the Royal Society, he continued his work at Cambridge with little evidence that his status had
in any way changed until 1972. In that year he suffered a stroke from which he only partially
recovered. During his last three years he suffered the frustrations of wanting to get back to
scientific work although his physical condition would not allow it.
Taylor received many honours during his life. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society in 1919, winning its Royal Medal in 1933 and its Copley Medal in 1944:-
... for his many contributions erodynemics, hydrodynamics, and the structure of metals, which
have had a profound influence on the advance of physical science and its applications.
Also in 1944 he was knighted and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1969. He was
elected to membership of academic societies in many countries including the United States,
France, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, India, Poland, and the USSR. He received honorary
degrees from more than a dozen universities throughout the world and over twenty Medals for
his outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. He published over 250 papers in his long
career on applied mathematics, mathematical physics and engineering. His contribution is
summed up in [3] as follows:-
Taylor's work is of the greatest importance to the mechanics of fluids and solids and to their
application in meteorology, oceanography, aeronautics, metal physics, mechanical engineering
and chemical engineering. The nature of his thinking was like that of Stokes, Kelvin and
Rayleigh, although he got more from experiments than any one of these three. He had the rare
honour of seeing his scientific papers, some previously unpublished, gathered together and
published in four thick volumes during his lifetime.
No biography of Geoffrey Taylor would be complete without describing some of his
interests outside mathematics. We have already mentioned his voyage on the Scotia when he was
a young man, but his love of boats went back earlier than this; it went back to his boyhood. He
loved messing about in small boats as a boy and his passion continued in later life when he
owned a 19 ton cutter in which he sailed with his wife to the Shetlands, to Norway, and to the
Lofoten Islands [1]:-
Travel always appealed to him, especially if it took him to strange places unknown to tourists
and "unspoiled" by material development. With his wife he explored Borneo in 1929 after
attending a Pacific Science Congress. He was a keen and perceptive botanist, and took a great
pleasure in the familiar plants of his well-stocked garden in Cambridge and in what he saw
elsewhere and abroad.

E. Henry Martyn Taylor

Quick Info
Born
6 June 1842
Bristol, England
Died
16 October 1927
Cambridge, England
Summary
Henry Martyn Taylor was an outstanding English mathematician who lost the sight of
both eyes. He devised a Braille system to allow mathematical and other scientific works
to become available to the blind.
Biography
Henry Martyn Taylor was the son of James Taylor (1810-1898) and Eliza Johnson
(1808-1902). James Taylor was born on 12 March 1810 in Dublin, Ireland. He studied at
Erasmus Smyth's school in Dublin, and later was an Assistant Master at Sherborne School, 1834-
37. After that, he opened a private school at Bristol. He married Eliza Johnson (1808-1902) on
27 March 1837 at Chard, Somerset, England. Eliza had been baptised on 14 December 1808 at St
Nicholas (without), Dublin, Ireland. James and Eliza Taylor had five children: James Heber
Taylor (1840-1914); Henry Martyn Taylor (1842-1927), the subject of this biography, Alice
Mary Taylor (1844-1939); William Wilberforce Taylor (1848-1922); and Emily Jane Taylor
(1853-1943). James Taylor matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1839 and was awarded
a B.A. in 1843, being ordained a deacon in the same year. He was the headmaster of Kimbolton
Grammar School for the four years 1843-47, then headmaster of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar
School, Wakefield and Evening Lecturer at St Andrew's, Wakefield, 1847-75. Of the five
children, the eldest two were born in Bristol, the youngest two in Wakefield and the middle child
in Kimbolton.
The 1851 census shows the family living at 2 Almshouse Lane, Wakefield. James Taylor
gives his occupation as "Clergyman, Schoolmaster and Evening Lecturer of Parish Church". In
addition to the family, there are three boarders in the house, aged 10, 15 and 17, in addition to
three servants and a nurse.
Henry Taylor attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, the school of
which his father was the headmaster. This school was founded by Royal Charter of Queen
Elizabeth I in 1591 as a boys' school and still today (2021) is a boys' school. In fact when Henry
Taylor attended the school it had just moved to a new site in Northgate, Wakefield, a site which
it continues to occupy. Let us note one fact; James Taylor was the nineteenth headmaster of the
school, all nineteen being ordained priests. He was, however, the last ordained headmaster of the
school. At the time of the 1861 census, the family were living in a house which was part of the
Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. Henry Taylor completed his schooling in 1861, was admitted
as a sizar to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 9 February 1861 and matriculated at the College
beginning his study of the mathematical tripos in the Michaelmas term (October) of 1861. He
joined fellow student John William Strutt (later known as Lord Rayleigh) who also matriculated
in Trinity College in the Michaelmas term of 1861 to study the mathematical tripos. Taylor
became a scholar in 1863.
In the mathematical tripos of 1865 Taylor was third wrangler. The senior wrangler was
John William Strutt and the second wrangler was Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) who went on the
become a leading economist. It was announced that Strutt was the 1st Smith's Prizeman and
Taylor was the 2nd Smith's Prizeman. Shortly before graduating, Taylor accepted the position of
vice-principal of the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. This School
had only been founded a year earlier in 1864 to train naval architects. It was situated in South
Kensington but in 1873 it moved to Greenwich becoming the Royal Naval College. Taylor was
offered a fellowship by Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1866, which he accepted but continued to
work at the Royal School of Naval Architecture until 1869 when he was offered an Assistant
Tutorship on the staff at Trinity College. Among the pupils that Taylor taught at the Royal
School was William Henry White (1845-1913) who went on to become Chief Constructor of the
Admiralty and the designer of a great many British warships. Taylor remained close friends with
White for the rest of his life. While Taylor had been a scholar at Trinity College he published the
paper The method of inversion and when at the Royal School of Naval Architecture, he published
the paper Geometrical explanation of the equations for the longitude of the node, and the
inclination of the orbit both published in the Messenger of Mathematics in 1866. He joined the
London Mathematical Society on 19 March 1866.
There were two standard routes for Cambridge fellows at this time to set themselves up
for a career after the fellowship ended. One was ordination and the other was a law career.
Taylor chose to read for the Bar and was called to Lincoln's Inn in 1869. Although this qualified
him to practiced law, it does not appear that he ever did so, but the legal training proved useful in
his career at the university. We say that he does not appear to have practiced law since we have
found no evidence that he did so, but we note that at the time of the 1871 census he was at his
parents' home in Wakefield and gave his occupation as "Assistant tutor Trinity College. Barrister
at Law in practice."
His mathematical interests were mainly in geometry and he published Inversion, with
Special Reference to the Inversion of an Anchor Ring or Torus in the Proceedings of the London
Mathematical Society in 1873. The paper begins:-
We premise that a straight line inverts into a circle passing through the pole, and vice versa;
that a circle inverts into a circle, the two circles being subcontrary sections of a cone of the
second degree passing through the pole; and that the angles between lines and surfaces at their
points of intersection are the same as the angles between the inverse lines and surfaces at the
inverse points. A normal is a straight line cutting a curve or a surface at right angles; it will
therefore invert into a circle through the pole cutting the inverse curve or surface at the inverse
point at right angles. Such a circle we will call a normal circle. We will now prove that, if two
ormal at any two points of a surface intersect and be equal, the ormal at the inverse points of the
inverse surface also will intersect and be equal.
In 1874 Taylor became a Tutor at Trinity College. In the same year his elder brother,
James Heber Taylor, also came to live in Cambridge. James Heber Taylor had been a pupil at the
Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, and had been awarded a Lady Betty Hastings
Exhibition to Queen's College, Oxford, where he gained a first class in both classical and
mathematical Moderations and a second class in Litterae Humaniores. He then went to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he studied both the Classical Tripos and the Mathematical Tripos
with great success. He married Mary Elizabeth Pearce in August 1869 and after a while he
became headmaster of Brewood School, Staffordshire. He came to live in Little Trinity House,
16 Jesus Lane, Cambridge in 1874 where he worked as a private tutor. We could also give details
of Taylor's younger brother William Wilberforce Taylor who became a mathematician. He also
studied at both Oxford University, where he matriculated in 1868, and at Cambridge University
entering Trinity College in 1868 having obtained an exhibition. In the mathematical tripos
examinations of 1872 he was ranked 7th wrangler. He became a teacher of mathematics and in
1881 he was teaching at Ripon, Yorkshire. On 10 January 1889 he joined the London
Mathematical Society.
In 1876 Henry Taylor published a number of papers including On the generation of a
developable surface through two given curves, On a certain multiple integral, On the lines of
curvature of a surface, and On the relative values of the pieces in chess. Let us quote the first
few sentences of the last mentioned of these papers:-
The object of this paper is to ascertain the relative values of the pieces on a chessboard. If a
piece be placed on a square of a chessboard, the number of squares it commands depends in
general on its position. If we calculate the average number of squares which any particular
piece commands when placed in succession on every square of the board, it seems fair to assume
that this gives a not very inexact measure of the value of the piece. For special reasons the above
problem is stated in the following manner:- "A king and a piece of different colours are placed
at random on two squares of a chessboard of n2n2 squares; it is required the find the chance
that the king is in check." The ordinary chessboard has an even number of squares; and as some
of the results take different forms for odd and even values of n, the results are given merely for
even values of n, and the results for the ordinary chessboard of 64 squares deduced from them.
The post of Tutor at Trinity College was a ten year appointment and when that expired in
1884 he was appointed as a lecturer at the College. Let us note that at the time of the 1891 census
Taylor was living at the Rectory, Church Lane, Brington, Huntingdonshire. His sister Alice Mary
Taylor had married the Rev Thomas James Sanderson and they had eleven children. The 1891
census records Henry Taylor, his mother Eliza Taylor, and his sister Emily Jane Taylor all living
in the Rectory of All Saints Church Brington with the Rev Thomas James Sanderson, his wife
(Henry Taylor's sister Alice Mary) and the youngest five of their children. The family had a cook
and two housemaids also living at the Rectory. Although still employed as a lecturer at Trinity
College, Henry Taylor gives his occupation as "barrister."
In 1894 Taylor reached 25 years service at Trinity College, the maximum term allowed,
and so retired at that time. We list a few more of his papers up to 1894: Note on the Equation of
the Two Planes which can he drawn, through Two given Points to touch a Quadric (1879-80),
Note on Euclid ii, 12, 13 (1880), (with R C Rowe) Note on a Geometrical Theorem (1881-82),
On a six-point circle connected with a triangle (1882), and The Relations of the Intersections of
a Circles with a Triangle (1883-84).
Another aspect of his work at Trinity College is described in [1]:-
The 1870s were an active time of academic reform in Cambridge. The old Elizabethan statutes
had been partially modified by the first Victorian statutes in 1858; but a comprehensive change
was made by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877. Under that Act, each
college framed its own statutes for submission to the Privy Council. Accordingly, Trinity
proceeded with that duty in a long succession of meetings … When decisions had been
completed, the final drafting of the statutes was entrusted to three of the fellows: Prof Cayley,
whose reputation as a draughtsman long survived his retirement from practice at the Bar: Rev
Coutts Trotter, conspicuous for his share in the rganization of the University, especially in the
domain of natural science: and H M Taylor, whose legal training proved of high value. Then,
and for many years to come, Taylor had a prominent (if not foremost) part in giving effect to the
necessary changes in the old system. Independent in thought, and scrupulously just, he
maintained the even tenor of his views, devoted to progress yet mindful of the ancient ways, fair
in constructive act, and straight in opposition. Those statutes are now under repeal; their actual
initial working owed much to the prudent wisdom of a band of reformers, among whom Taylor
held a not unworthy place.
Although as we have seen above, most of Taylor's publications were on geometry, his
expertise ranged over a wide range of mathematics and he displayed this expertise in helping his
friends. He proofread and helped improve a number of books written by his colleagues such as
The Theory of Sound (1877) by John William Strutt who writes in the Preface:-
My best thanks are due to Mr H M Taylor of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has been good
enough to read the proofs. By his kind assistance several errors and obscurities have been
eliminated, and the volume generally rendered less imperfect than it would otherwise have been.
Horace Lamb had been tutored by Taylor at Trinity College and the two remained close
friends throughout Taylor's life. Lamb published Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the
Motion of Fluids in 1879 and later editions were published under the title Hydrodynamics. Lamb
dedicated the books to Taylor, writing in the Preface to the Fourth Edition (1916):-
It is again a satisfaction to me to inscribe on the fly-leaf the name of Mr H M Taylor, whose
kindly encouragement first led me to write on the subject, and whose help in revision I had
gratefully acknowledged on former occasions.
We also note that Lamb's admiration for Taylor led to him naming his third son, born in
1883, Henry Taylor Lamb. Andrew Forsyth had also been tutored by Taylor and in the Preface to
his book A Treatise on Differential Equations (1885) he wrote:-
I wish to express the very great obligations under which I lie to my friend and former tutor Mr H
M Taylor, of Trinity College, Cambridge, for his kindness in the revision of the proof-sheets. He
has caused the removal of obscurities and has made many valuable suggestions of which I have
continually availed myself.
In the Preface to his Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable (1893), Andrew Forsyth
writes:-
Mr H M Taylor, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, had read the proofs with great
care: the kind assistance he has given me in this way has proved of substantial service and
usefulness in correcting the sheets. I desire to ecognize most gratefully my sense of the value of
the work which these gentlemen [Taylor and William Burnside] have done.
In the late 1880s Taylor began working on an edition of Euclid's Elements and
Cambridge University Press began publishing it in separate volumes. The first three volumes
were then published as Euclid's Elements of Geometry Books I-VI in 1893. It contains three
Prefaces, the Preface to Books I-II is dated 1 October 1889, the Preface to Books III-IV is dated
8 January 1891, and the Preface to Books V-VI is dated 16 March 1893. The Preface to Books I-
II begins:-
It was with extreme diffidence that I accepted an invitation from the Syndics of the Cambridge
University Press to undertake for them a new edition of the 'Elements of Euclid'. Though I was
deeply sensible of the honour, which the invitation conferred, I could not but recognise the great
responsibility, which the acceptance of it would entail. The invitation of the Syndics was in itself,
to my mind, a sign of a widely felt conviction that the editions in common use were capable of
improvement. Now improvement necessitates change, and every change made in a work, which
has been a text book for centuries, must run the gauntlet of severe criticism, for while some will
view every alteration with aversion, others will consider that every change demands an apology
for the absence of more and greater changes.
He ended the Preface to Books V-VI as follows:-
I hereby acknowledge the great help I have received in this portion of my work from friends, and
especially from Dr Forsyth and from my brother Mr J H Taylor. To the latter I am indebted for
the Index to Books I-VI, which I hope may prove of some assistance to persons using this edition.
The review [10] of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry Books III-IV begins:-
It is only of late years that the University of Cambridge has taken the wise step of giving greater
scope to the teaching of geometry by not insisting on the actual proofs of propositions as
presented in Euclid’s text. All the definitions, axioms, and postulates, together with the sequence
of propositions which he adopted, are retained, but in solving them “no proof will be accepted
that assumes anything not proved in preceding propositions.” The work under consideration is
published in the “Pitt Press Mathematical Series,” and it will be found to contain some
important changes, both with regard to the proofs and method of arrangement. In the first few
propositions of Book III the author has introduced several proofs which seem preferable to those
generally adopted, while their order of sequence has been extensively changed. The alterations
in the remaining propositions of this book have not been carried to any extent, but several
outlines of alternative constructions have been inserted in cases where they may be most
instructive.
Taylor continued to work on producing editions of further of Euclid's Books but tragedy
struck him around the time he left his lectureship at Trinity College in 1894, when he rapidly lost
the sight of both of his eyes. Although it is always a little difficult to know precisely what
medical conditions afflicted people in past times, it would appear that Taylor suffered from
detached retinas, a condition which causes total blindness. With much assistance from those
around him, Taylor tried to carry on with mathematical research, something which he had always
hoped to be able to spend more time on when retired from his lectureship. Some of his papers,
which he dictated after becoming blind, are: On a Series of Cotrinodal Quartics (1896-97); On
the Degeneration of a Cubic Curve (1896-97); On the Intersections of Two Cubics (1897-98);
On the condition that five straight lines meet a sixth (1902); A problem of arrangements (1903);
On a paperfolding puzzle (1904); On some geometrical dissections (1906); and On the order of
the boats after a bumping race (1909). He also published the pamphlet Collisions at Sea: A
Steamship's Lights Might Tell Her Course (1895) which is advertised as "by H M Taylor, M.A.,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Barrister-at-Law, sometime Vice-Principal of the Royal
School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering." Taylor wrote Sir Isaac Newton - A Short
Biography for Volume 19 of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In 1898, four years after he became blind, Taylor was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society of London. Of course undertaking mathematical research became increasingly difficult
since he could not read current research papers and books. He did, however, get much pleasure
from reading Braille novels and it became a passion for him to develop a Braille system to allow
mathematical and other scientific works to become available to the blind. Of course, developing
the system was not enough for then scientific works had to be translated into Braille [7]:-
One Braille notation was devised by the eminent Cambridge mathematician, Henry Martyn
Taylor, who was overtaken by blindness in 1894, when engaged in the preparation of an edition
of Euclid for the Cambridge University Press. By means of his ingenious and well thought out
Braille notation he was enabled to transcribe many advanced scientific and mathematical works,
and in 1917, with the assistance of Mr Emblen, a blind member of the staff of the National
Institute for the Blind, he perfected it. It was ecognized as so comprehensive that it was soon
adopted as the standard mathematical and chemical notation, and is universally used by
English-speaking people.
Cambridge Borough Council had on it representatives of Cambridge University and
Taylor served on the Borough Council in that capacity. Remarkably he served as mayor of
Cambridge during 1900-01 and in the following years was Chair of the Finance Committee of
the Borough Council. He also served as a borough magistrate. At the time of the 1901 census he
was living in Trinity College, but by the 1911 census he, along with his brother William
Wilberforce Taylor and his sister Emily Jane Taylor, were borders at the Nelson Hotel,
Mudeford, Christchurch (at that time in Hampshire, but now in Dorset). He had a home,
however, at The Yews, Newnham, Cambridge and he died at his home in October 1927. A
memorial inscription, in Latin, is at Trinity College. An English translation reads:-
Sacred to the memory of Henry Martyn Taylor, Fellow of the College for sixty-one years and at
one time Lecturer and Tutor. At the age of fifty-one he lost his sight; but undiscouraged and
eagerly he kindled a torch of hope for those who shared his darkness. His invention of new
symbols for Braille enabled them to compensate for the loss of their eyes with their fingers and
to follow mathematics more clearly than they could have done by any light. Although blind and
almost sixty years old he became Mayor of Cambridge, and he dealt with College affairs
assiduously to the last. He was born on 6th June 1842 and died on 16th October 1927, being by
then Senior Fellow.
Let us end with Horace Lamb's description of Taylor's character [9]:-
Taylor was singularly modest and devoid of personal ambition. He did not seek positions of
honour and responsibility, but if they came his way he applied himself conscientiously to the
duties which he had undertaken. Throughout his life he was a loyal friend and a fair opponent,
generous and just in his thoughts, as in his dealings. Before his blindness he had shared in the
usual recreations of his time, "real" tennis, cricket, shooting, fishing, billiards, in all of which he
was proficient. He was also fond of foreign travel and mountain excursions. But the privation
when it came did not provoke a murmur, and he maintained the steady even temper
characteristic of him. The last few years of his life were clouded by increasing infirmity, and he
died on October 16, 1927. The funeral service in the Chapel of Trinity College drew together a
large company of friends and former colleagues to pay the last tribute of affection and respect to
a noble and lovable character.

F. James Taylor
Quick Info
Born
19 June 1851
Keith, Scotland
Died
29 January 1910
Institution Place, Dollar, Scotland
Summary
James Taylor was a Scottish mathematics teacher who taught at Dollar Academy.

Biography
James Taylor was born in Keith which is a small town about 70 km north west of
Aberdeen. His father was Robert Taylor. He was educated at Keith Grammar School then sat the
Aberdeen University Bursary Competition. This involved compulsory papers on Mathematics,
Latin and English. The two compulsory mathematics papers comprised one on Arithmetic and
one on Euclid. He also elected to take the two special Mathematics papers, one of which was on
Euclid and one on Algebra. After winning a bursary he studied at Aberdeen University,
graduating in 1874 with First Class Honours in Mathematics.
After graduating, Taylor was appointed Mathematics Master at New College, Southsea,
Portsmouth. He remained there only for one year, for in 1875 he returned to Scotland when he
was appointed to the position of Mathematics Master at Morrison's Academy, an independent
school in Crieff. He spent three successful years teaching at Morrison's before being appointed as
Mathematics Master at Dollar Institution in 1878.
James Taylor married Isabella M Ogilvie (born in Fochabers, Morayshire about 1859).
They had several children: William J Taylor, Margaret E Taylor, Robert C Taylor, George C
Taylor.
In addition to his role as a teacher of mathematics, Taylor took in boys as boarders. Every
year he advertised in the national press. Here is a typical such advertisement:-
DOLLAR INSTITUTION.- James Taylor, M.A. (Honours), Mathematical Master, receives
Boys as Boarders, and personally superintends their Home Lessons. Terms, &c. on
application. ROSEMOUNT, Dollar.
The article [1] contains two parts. The first is an appreciation of his contributions to the school
written by a colleague, the second is an appreciation by a former pupil
Here is the appreciation written by a colleague:-
Mr James Taylor, M.A. - familiarly and affectionately known to the Dollar boys as
"Jimmy" - was a native of Keith, Aberdeenshire, and was educated in his boyhood at the
grammar school there. In his eighteenth year he entered, as a bursar, Aberdeen University,
where he graduated in 1874, with first-class honours in Mathematics. This distinction gained for
him the Mathematical Mastership of New College, Southsea, Portsmouth, but his stay there was
short, as he was chosen, from a large number of candidates, to a similar position in Morison's
Academy, Crieff, where he taught with much acceptance until 1878, the year of his appointment
to Dollar.
His work here was the work of his life; and his memory cannot fail of exciting the
warmest sentiments of gratitude among those who were his pupils while the smallest regard for
learning subsists among them; and, by those who had the pleasure of his friendship, his name
will always be mentioned with honour. From the first he was a favourite with his pupils, and he
retained the respect and affection of the members of all his various classes throughout the whole
of his thirty-two years as their teacher. A former pupil writes: "The pains he took to make the
veriest duffer see through his problems was very great. He was tireless in this respect, and many
pupils have to thank him for the grounding they got under his excellent tuition."
Among his colleagues he was full of geniality, took a frank part in educational
controversy, but may have over-rated the value of the study of Mathematics and Science as
compared with that of Classics and Modern Languages. When Mr Taylor took pen in hand, he
showed that he possessed the gift of lucid expression, as is illustrated in the series of articles on
"The Transit of Venus" in 1882, which he contributed to The Dollar Magazine of that year.
Other articles of his prove that he had a firm grasp of the subject he was handling, and he was
able to unfold his meaning clearly, fully, ad distinctly.
Short and fragmentary is the account I have been able to give of one who may be said to
have died at his post, doing his duty to the last. I wish, particularly in the name of those most
nearly related to him, to off all his old pupils grateful acknowledgement of their loyalty,
affection, and generous appreciation of him as their teacher and friend.
The Edinburgh Mathematical Society was founded in February 1883 and Taylor was
present at the first meeting, becoming a founder member. He remained a member of the Society
until around 1898. Somewhat confusingly another James Taylor, who was a Mathematical
Master at Edinburgh Academy, joined the Society in November 1886 so for around 12 years the
Society had the rather confusing situation of having two members with precisely the same name
(neither appears to have had a middle name).
Taylor died on Monday 29 January 1910 at Institution Place, Dollar. His funeral took
place on Wednesday 2 February at Dollar Cemetery.

G. Mary Taylor Slow

Quick Info
Born
15 July 1898
Sheffield, England
Died
26 May 1984
Malvern, England
Summary
Mary Taylor Slow was a British mathematician and physicist who worked on the theory
of radio waves and the application of differential equations to physics.

Biography
Mary Taylor's parents, John Edward Taylor and Sarah Hett, were both school teachers.
John Edward Taylor (1856-1932) studied at the University of London and was awarded an M.A.,
a B.Sc., an a B.D. (Hons). He became an Associate Member of the Institution of Electrical
Engineers. He had married Caroline Shepherd on 15 March 1878 in St George the Martyr
Church in Southwark, England: they had two children, a son Edward E Taylor (born 1879, who
became an advertising manager for a corset manufacturer) and a daughter Mary Emma Taylor
(born 1881). Caroline Taylor died on 5 May 1896 at the age of 39 and John Edward Taylor
married Sarah Hett, the daughter of Charles Hett, the foreman in a silver refinery, and Mary
Bennett in 1897. John Edward Taylor was headmaster of the Sheffield Central School and the
Taylor family lived at Sandon Cottage, 92 Brunswick Street, Sheffield. Mary had a younger
sister, Dorothy Taylor (born 1903).
Mary attended Pomona Street Elementary School in Sheffield before continuing her
education at Sheffield High School. While at the school she won a Clothworker's Scholarship
which allowed her to study at Girton College, Cambridge, which she entered in 1916.
Taylor was awarded a BA by Cambridge in 1919, having studied both the Mathematical
Tripos and the Natural Science Tripos. She was Class I in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos in
1917, took Part II of the Tripos, and completed her undergraduate studies in 1920 after taking
courses in both the Mathematical Tripos and the Natural Science Tripos. She continued to study
at Cambridge and was awarded a research fellowship. In 1922 she was appointed as an assistant
lecturer in mathematics at Girton College, a post she held for two years. As well as teaching
mathematics, Taylor became interested in the theory of radio waves and began research on the
topic under the direction of Edward Appleton who was at this time working at the Cavendish
Laboratory in Cambridge. We note that Edward Appleton won the Nobel Prize in 1947 for his
research into the ionosphere, part of the earth's upper atmosphere.
In 1924 Appleton left Cambridge to become the Wheatstone professor of physics at
King’s College, University of London. Taylor left Cambridge and went to Göttingen in Germany
where she continued to study aspects of electromagnetic waves. She was awarded her doctorate
by the University of Göttingen in 1926 and was awarded a Yarrow Research Fellowship which
enabled her to remain at Göttingen undertaking research with Richard Courant. Taylor returned
to England in 1929 and was appointed as a Scientific Officer at the Radio Research Station in
Slough, Berkshire. The Radio Research Station was part of the government Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research and of the National Physical Laboratory. There she carried out
research on her specialist topics of the magneto-ionic theory of radio wave propagation and also
in differential equations, particularly their applications to physics. She published The Appleton-
Hartree formula and dispersion curves for the propagation of electromagnetic waves through an
ionized medium in the presence of an external magnetic field Part 1: curves for zero absorption
(1933) which has the following Abstract [5]:-
This paper gives dispersion curves derived from the Appleton-Hartree formula in the case of
zero absorption. The value of the magnetic field is taken as that of the earth’s field at Slough.
The curves are drawn to show the value of the squares of the indices of refraction and
attenuation as functions of the electron density for a series of twelve frequencies, which are
chosen to illustrate the various classes of curve and the boundary curves separating the classes
and, in the case of frequencies above 1.321 megacycles per second, the various regions of short
and ultra-short waves. The derivation and general properties of the Appleton-Hartree formula
and the various possible modes of propagation are also discussed. The dispersion curves are
classified according to the infinities they contain and a diagram is given to show how the classes
of curve holding for any angle of inclination of the direction of propagation to the magnetic field
H depend on the ratio of the longitudinal component of H to H itself. The use of the zeros and
infinities of the dispersion curves in the interpretation of propagation phenomena is described
and a olarizatio diagram is given, showing how the possible propagation of zero, one or two
basic modes for any frequency depends on the electron density. The olarization corresponding to
each dispersion curve is shown graphically and the general properties of the polarisations of the
basic propagation modes are discussed.
There is a Discussion following Taylor's paper [5] in which R A Watson Watt writes:-
The author's interim report of progress in her heroic investigation of the theory of
propagation of electromagnetic waves in an ionised medium under an external magnetic field is
timely and valuable. I was, some years ago, so strongly impressed by the need for such a general
investigation and by the formidable difficulties of bringing together adequate mathematical and
physical skill and adequate computing facilities for bringing the problem to numerical solution
that I suggested to the Radio Research Board that the work should be taken up at Slough, where
close contact with experimental work would be a valuable guide to the mathematical
investigator.
The results now presented ... are of a kind required by all investigators concerned with
the mechanism of return of wireless waves from the ionosphere, and this paper will stand as a
source from which initial data for new investigations can be obtained without duplication of
effort.
As part of the same Discussion, E V Appleton writes [5]:-
All experimental workers in the field of ionospheric investigations will welcome Dr Taylor’s
exhaustive representation of illustrative magneto-ionic dispersion curves. It is only by having the
theory so fully worked out for us at the first stage that we are able to make the next step and
consider the effects of collisional friction in differentiating between the attenuation experiences
of the ordinary and extraordinary rays in their ionospheric journeys.
In the following year she published The Appleton-Hartree formula and dispersion curves
for the propagation of electromagnetic waves through an ionized medium in the presence of an
external magnetic field. Part 2: curves with collisional friction. This paper has the following
Acknowledgements [6]:-
This work was carried out at the Radio Research Station, Slough, as part of the programme of
the Radio Research Board of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and is
published by permission of the Board. Thanks are due to Mr R A Watson Watt, Superintendent of
the Station, for his interest in the work and for the provision of facilities for conducting it; to
Prof E V Appleton and Prof D R Hartree for valuable discussion, and suggestions as to the
presentation of the paper; to Dr L J Comrie, for advice on the arrangement of the calculations;
to Miss A C Stickland for assistance in the calculations and to Mr E C Slow for help in drawing
the curves.
In a Discussion at the end of [6], E V Appleton writes:-
I do not think it is possible to over-estimate the usefulness of the author's elucidation of the
magneto-ionic formula to experimental workers in this field. The wave-lengths chosen for the
graphical illustration are most suitable and illustrate the variety of phenomena we are to expect.
E C Slow, mentioned in the above Acknowledgements, is Ernest Clive Slow (1905-
1991), known as Clive. He was awarded an O.B.E. in 1964. In 1934 Taylor married Clive Slow
and as a consequence had to leave her position at the Radio Research Station under the Civil
Service rules which were in force at that time. Mary and Clive Slow had two daughters. She
worked for the Wireless Engineer as an abstractor and translator. She moved with her husband to
Malvern when he was appointed to a post in the Air Defence Research and Development
Establishment. Mary Slow then taught mathematics in local schools, in particular Worcester
Grammar School for Girls, and Lawnside, Malvern. She was a member of the London
Mathematical Society and the Cambridge Philosophical Society. She published a number of
papers in the Proceedings of the Physics Society the most important of which are [5] and [6].
In [1] there is a brief biography of Clive Slow which also explains Mary Taylor Slow’s
contributions:-
Ernest Clive Slow: Clive started his working life in the shadow of the Portsmouth Dockyard,
following his father as an apprentice engineer there. He set about educating himself and was
rewarded with a London B.Sc. (external) and then found his first job at the Slough Radio
Research Station, where his work with Watson-Watt and Wilkins drew him into the radar story,
and provided him with a wife, Dr Mary Taylor, a brilliant mathematician. She it was who had
done most of the calculations for Watson-Watt and Wilkins when he was presenting his evidence
about ‘Death Rays’ and the possibility of aircraft detection to the Tizard Committee. When they
married, under Civil Service Rules, she had to resign her post, losing for the Scientific Civil
Service one of its most outstanding mathematicians. Clive was seconded to Bawdsey Research
Station, and from thence he went to ADEE at Christchurch at the outbreak of war. He remained
with the Establishment on its subsequent move to Malvern. During his time at Christchurch, he
did most of the design work, including the aerial system for the Army GL2 equipment and saw it
into production at EMI (aerials and display system) and Metro Vickers (Transmitter). At
Malvern, he oversaw the development of a 25cm radar for close control of the Bofors gun.
The following quote appears in [7]:-
Dr Mary Taylor, a brilliant mathematician. She it was who had done most of the calculations for
Watson Watt and Wilkins when he was presenting his evidence about 'Death Rays' and the
possibility of aircraft detection. When she married Slow, under Civil Service Rules, she had to
resign her post, losing the Scientific Civil Service one of its most outstanding mathematicians.

H Richard Lawrence Taylor

Quick Info
Born
19 May 1962
Cambridge, England
Summary
Richard Taylor is a British mathematician who works in America in the field of number
theory.

Biography
Richard Taylor’s parents are John Clayton Taylor and Gillian Mary Schofield. John
Taylor is a mathematical physicist, now Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the
University of Cambridge. Richard’s mother, Mary Taylor, was a piano teacher. Richard was born
in Cambridge but, when he was two years old, the family moved to Oxford where Richard was
brought up and attended school. He attended Magdalen College School where he was taught
mathematics by Tony Middleton who later became a Lecturer in Mathematics for Physics at
Brasenose College, University of Oxford. Taylor said [12]:-
I became interested in mathematics very early, I suspect. My father is a theoretical physicist.
There was always a culture of mathematical science in the family. I don’t remember exactly, but
certainly as a teenager I was interested in mathematics. I just enjoyed reading recreational
books on mathematics and trying to do math problems and finding out about more advanced
mathematics. There wasn’t any one thing that struck me as particularly interesting. I guess
already in high school it was clear that I was better than most of the other kids in mathematics.
He also wrote about his early experiences of mathematics in [11]:-
Although never a star at them, I greatly enjoyed the mathematics Olympiads, which gave me my
first experience of working on problems which took more than a few minutes to solve. But the
biggest influence on my early scientific development was undoubtedly my father, who taught me
never to be satisfied until I had really understood something completely. I also learnt from him
not to fear asking simple-minded questions.
After completing his school studies at Magdalen College School, Taylor returned to Cambridge
where he matriculated at Clare College in 1980. He worked hard at his mathematical studies but
also found time for other interests. He was president of 'The Archimedeans' in 1981 and 1982.
This is a Cambridge mathematical society founded in 1935 which aims to promote cooperation
between all Cambridge mathematical societies. He also enjoyed travelling, particularly to places
where he could indulge his love of mountaineering. He visited the Alps, the Indian Himalayas
and later the volcanoes of Ecuador and the large Karakoram mountain range. It was number
theory which attracted him most among the mathematical topics he studied. He wrote [11]:-
It also became clear to me that number theory was the field that I found most exciting. I was
attracted by the combination of simple problems, beautiful structure and the variety of
techniques that were employed.
He was. however, somewhat unsure of his own abilities [12]:-
... as you go on, you're always mixing with people who are more talented in mathematics. It is
never clear if you have a real talent or just appear talented in the group you are currently
mixing with. I really enjoy mathematics. I think great interest in mathematics and determination
to persevere accounts for more than people often give credit for. If you are very keen on working
on mathematical problems, you usually get good at it, and I think this can make up for a fair
amount of mathematical talent. I have certainly known people who are far brighter
mathematicians than I am, but if they have thought about a problem for two days and can't solve
it, they get bored with it and want to move on.
Taylor graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1984 and, after some doubts as to
whether he was good enough to undertake research in an area as demanding as number theory,
he decided that he would undertake graduate studies at Princeton in the United States. There he
chose to work with Andrew Wiles who had taken up a post at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton in 1981, then was appointed a professor at Princeton University in the following year.
Taylor spent four years at Princeton 1984-88, during which time he undertook research for a
Ph.D. advised by Wiles. Taylor was awarded his Ph.D. in 1988 for his thesis On congruences
between modular forms. Two papers coming from the work of his thesis appeared in 1989,
namely On Galois representations associated to Hilbert modular forms, and Representations of
Galois groups associated to Hilbert modular forms.
After graduating from Princeton, Taylor became a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
and a Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship funded a postdoctoral year 1988-89 at the
Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques outside Paris. One of the major attractions of returning
to the University of Cambridge was the fact that John Coates, who had been Andrew Wiles'
thesis advisor at Cambridge in the 1970s, had been appointed to the Sadleirian Chair of
Mathematics at Cambridge in 1986. Taylor, still a fellow of Clare College, was appointed
Assistant Lecturer (1989-92), Lecturer (1992-94), then Reader (1994-95) at Cambridge
University during the six years 1989-95. Taylor moved to Oxford in 1995 when he was
appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry. The announcement was as follows:-
Savilian Professorship of Geometry, Richard Lawrence Taylor, FRS (MA Cambridge, Ph.D.
Princeton), Reader in Number Theory, University of Cambridge, has been appointed to the
professorship with effect from 1 October 1995. Dr Taylor will be a fellow of New College.
Taylor married Christine Jiayou Chang in 1995. Christine Chang, who was an algebraist,
had graduated from Harvard University and, in 1993, had been awarded a NSF Graduate
Fellowships to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Taylor wrote in [11]:-
In 1994 I had the wonderful good fortune to meet Christine Chang, who has made my life much
happier. We married in August 1995 and now have two children: Jeremy (born in 1998) and
Chloe (born in 2000). ... In an effort to combine our two scientific careers I left Cambridge
University following my marriage to Christine, first for the Savilian chair of geometry at Oxford
and then a year later for Harvard University.
As he explains in the above quote, after only one year at Oxford, Taylor moved to the
United States when he was appointed as a Professor at Harvard University. He explained the
reasons for his move in the interview [12] which he gave shortly after arriving in Harvard to take
up the professorship:-
I guess I got the formal offer [from Harvard] in the spring [of 1996] from the dean, but we'd
obviously talked about it with the faculty [at Harvard] for some time before that. One strong
personal reason is that my wife's American and would like to be in America. Also it's a great
department. Like I say, it's difficult to imagine a better collection of colleagues in my subject
than there is here. By all accounts, the students here are very bright. I don't really have personal
experience, but I'm sure it's true. I actually visited for six months a couple of years ago, and one
thing I like is the sun. Somehow in Britain for half the year, it's extraordinarily dark. That's
partly because it's further north and partly because there is more cloud cover. I've heard people
complain that in the winter it's cold here, but at least you see the sun. And I like the energy;
people are very energetic and enthusiastic here. Something I noticed is that in Britain it's cool to
pretend you never do any work. Students there obviously do work because they learn the same
stuff as anybody else, but they like to pretend they do nothing. Whereas [in the United States],
people in Princeton would come to me and tell me they had spent the last twenty-four hours in
the library. Here, they seem to pretend they work harder than they do. I suspect that people work
the same in both places; it's just the gloss they put on it.
In 2002 Taylor was appointed as Herchel Smith Professor of Mathematics at Harvard. He
continued to hold this role for the next ten years. From August 2010 to December 2011, he was a
visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In January 2012, he left his position at
Harvard to be named the Robert and Luisa Fernholz Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton. Taylor joined the Mathematics Department in the School of
Humanities and Sciences of Stanford University in July 2018 when he was appointed as the new
Barbara Kimball Browning Professor. This endowed chair is the highest honour that Stanford
University can bestow on a faculty member.
For Taylor's 1996 reply to the question, "What are your Major Research Interests and
Achievements?",
To understand the outstanding contributions which Taylor has continued to make we first
list prizes and awards he has won and then give the citation for some of these. These awards
include: London Mathematical Society Whitehead Prize (1990); the Ostrowski Prize (2001); the
Fermat Prize (2001); the American Mathematical Society, Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number
Theory (2002); the Göttingen Academy of Sciences Dannie Heineman Prize (2005); the Shaw
Prize in Mathematics (2007); the Clay Research Award (2007); and the Breakthrough Prize in
Mathematics (2015). Other honours include: elected a fellow of the Royal Society (1995);
elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2012); elected to the National Academy
of Sciences (2015); and elected to the American Philosophical Society (2018). Let us now give
some information about some of these prizes and the citation for Taylor.
a. The Ostrowski Prize.
The Ostrowski Foundation was created by Alexander Ostrowski, for many years a
professor at the University of Basel. He left his entire estate to the foundation and
stipulated that the income should provide a prize for outstanding recent achievements in
pure mathematics and the foundations of numerical mathematics. The prize is awarded
every other year.
b. The Ostrowski Prize: Citation for Richard Taylor.
Taylor has been a major contributor to some of the most spectacular developments in
number theory over the last ten years. A particularly fascinating and rewarding theme in
number theory has been the application of automorphic forms to arithmetic problems
related to l-adic Galois representations. Taylor's extraordinary creativity and impressive
technical command of both algebraic geometry and automorphic representation theory
allowed him to make deep and profound discoveries in this area. He is best known for his
input to the work of Andrew Wiles, proving the Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture in
sufficiently many cases to imply Fermat's Last Theorem. In a series of papers, jointly
with Diamond, Conrad and Breuil, Taylor recently completed the proof of that
 conjecture: every rational elliptic curve is covered by a modular curve. The Taniyama-
Shimura-Weil conjecture is an instance of the Global Langlands Program, relating
automorphic representations and Galois representations. Another major achievement of
Taylor, together with Michael Harris, is the proof of the Local Langlands Conjecture for
GL(n)GL(n), which establishes a similar correspondence over the completions of Q. A
third and related series of papers, partly in collaboration with N Shepherd-Barron and K
Buzzard, concerns a programme laid out by Taylor to prove the Artin Conjecture on the
holomorphicity of L-functions of certain two-dimensional representations of the Galois
group of the rational numbers.
c. The American Mathematical Society Cole Prize in Number Theory.
The Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory is awarded every three years for a
notable research memoir in number theory that has appeared during the previous five
years (until 2001, the prize was usually awarded every five years). The awarding of this
prize alternates with the awarding of the Cole Prize in Algebra, also given every three
years. These prizes were established in 1928 to honour Frank Nelson Cole on the
occasion of his retirement as secretary of the American Mathematical Society after
twenty-five years of service. He also served as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin for twenty-
one years.
d. The Cole Prize in Number Theory: Citation for Richard Taylor.
The Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory is awarded to Richard Taylor of Harvard
University for several outstanding advances in algebraic number theory. He led an effort
to extend his earlier work with Wiles, to show that all elliptic curves over QQ are
modular, i.e., are factors of the Jacobians of modular curves. In his book with M Harris,
he established the local Langlands conjecture, giving a complete parametrization of the
nn-dimensional representations of a Galois group of a local field. He has also made
important progress on 2-dimensional Galois representations, establishing the Artin
conjecture for an infinite class of nonsolvable cases, and increasing our understanding of
the conjectures of Fontaine-Mazur and Serre.
e. The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.
The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics was launched by Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg and Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner at the Breakthrough Prize ceremony in
 December 2014. It aims to recognize major advances in the field, honour the world's best
mathematicians, support their future endeavours and communicate the excitement of
mathematics to the general public.
f. The Breakthrough Prize: Citation for Richard Taylor.
The Breakthrough Prize is awarded to Richard Taylor, Institute for Advanced Study, for
numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the
Taniyama-Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and
the Sato-Tate conjecture.
In October-November 2013 Taylor delivered three lectures in the University of California
Los Angeles Distinguished Lecture Series.
1. Title: Reciprocity laws.
Abstract: Reciprocity laws provide a rule to count the number of solutions to a fixed
polynomial equation, or system of polynomial equations, modulo a variable prime
number. The rule will involve very different objects: automorphic forms and discrete
subgroups of Lie groups. The prototypical example is Gauss' law of quadratic reciprocity,
which concerns a quadratic equation in one variable. Another celebrated example is
the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture which concerns a cubic equation in two variables. I
will start with Gauss' law and work my way up to somewhat more complicated examples.
At the end of the talk I hope to indicate the current state of our knowledge.
2. Title: Galois theory and locally symmetric manifolds.
Abstract: I will describe recent results showing that one can attach Galois
representations to classes in the cohomology of the certain locally symmetric (real)
manifolds, namely the quotients of the space of totally positive real symmetric matrices
by congruence subgroups of GL(n,Z). I will discuss both my joint work with
Harris, Lan and Thorne concerning cohomology with rational coefficients and the work
of Scholze on cohomology with coefficients in a finite field. If time permits I will give
some indication of the proofs.
3. Title: Reciprocity laws for regular, self-dual motive.
Abstract: I will discuss recent work with Stefan Patrikis proving the automorphy of
regular self-dual motives over the rational numbers. In previous work with Barnet-Lamb,
Gee, and Geraghty this was shown modulo an irreducibility hypothesis on the
 corresponding l-adic representations. The innovation in the more recent work is a simple
trick that allows us to by-pass this irreducibility hypothesis that can be hard to check in
practice.

I. Colin Maclaurin
Quick Info
Born
February 1698
Kilmodan (12 km N of Tighnabruaich), Cowal, Argyllshire, Scotland
Died
14 June 1746
Edinburgh, Scotland
Summary
Colin Maclaurin was a Scottish mathematician who published the first systematic
exposition of Newton's methods, written as a reply to Berkeley's attack on the calculus
for its lack of rigorous foundations.

Biography
Colin Maclaurin was born in Kilmodan where his father, John Maclaurin, was the
minister of the parish. The village (population 387 in 1904) is on the river Ruel and the church is
at Glendaruel.
John Maclaurin was more of a scholar than one would expect of a parish minister, for he
had translated the Psalms into Gaelic. He had three sons. John, the eldest, following in his
father's steps, became a minister; he was a public spirited man of profound learning, and
corresponded with Jonathan Edwards, the American metaphysician. The second son, Daniel,
died young after having given signs of extraordinary genius. Colin was the youngest. His father
died when Colin was six weeks old. Colin Maclaurin's mother inherited a small estate in
Argyllshire and it was on the estate that Colin spent the early years of his life. His mother wanted
a good education for Colin and his brother John, so the family moved to Dumbarton where the
boys attended school.
In 1707, when Colin was nine years old, his mother died so the task of bringing up Colin
and his brother John fell to their uncle Daniel Maclaurin who was the minister at Kilfinan on
Loch Fyne.
Colin became a student at the University of Glasgow in 1709 at the age of eleven years.
He was one of around 400 students. This may seem an unbelievable age for someone to begin
their university education, but it was not so amazing at this time as it would be today. Basically
Scottish schools and universities competed for the best pupils at that time, rather than a
university education being seen as following a school education as is the norm today.
Certainly Maclaurin's abilities soon began to show at Glasgow University. His first
encounter with advanced mathematics came one year after he entered university, when he found
a copy of Euclid's Elements in one of his friend's rooms. This was the standard text for
mathematical study at this time, but Maclaurin studied it on his own, quickly mastering the first
six of the thirteen books of the Elements. At Glasgow Maclaurin came into contact with Robert
Simson who was the Professor of Mathematics there. Simson was particularly interested in the
geometry of ancient Greece and his enthusiasm for the topic was to influence the young student
Maclaurin. Tweddle in [23] looks at the correspondence between Simson and Maclaurin on conic
sections 25 years after Maclaurin's student days at Glasgow.
At the age of 14 Maclaurin was awarded the degree of M.A. after studying Latin, Greek,
Logic, Moral Philosophy, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics. Although a master's degree in
name, this was a first degree equivalent to a B.A. but the ancient Scottish universities (including
St Andrews, my [EFR] own university) still retain the degree of M.A. as the first degree in Arts.
However, Maclaurin had to defend a thesis in a public examination for the award of this degree
(which is not the case today), and he chose On the power of gravity as his topic. The thesis,
which developed Newton's theories, was written by a 14 year old boy at a time when such
advanced ideas would only be familiar to a small number of the leading mathematicians.
 After graduating with the degree of M.A., Maclaurin remained at the University of
Glasgow for a further year to study divinity. It had been his intention to enter the Presbyterian
Church but [7]:-
... becoming disgusted at the dissensions that had at that time crept into the church ...
he decided against that career.
After leaving Glasgow in 1714, Maclaurin returned to live with his uncle in the manse at
Kilfinan. These were happy years for Maclaurin who studied hard and walked in the nearby hills
and mountains for recreation. Unfinished scraps in his notebooks reveal the sensitivity of his
nature as he would sometimes break out into poetic rhapsody on the beauties of the scene and the
perfections of its Author. He clearly attained a very high standard in mathematics for, in August
1717, he was appointed professor of mathematics at Marischal College in the University of
Aberdeen at the age of only 19. The appointment followed ten days of examinations to find the
best candidate and it is clear that, despite there being another outstanding candidate, Maclaurin
had the most knowledge of advanced topics.
Maclaurin was to make two journeys to London, and the first of these he made in 1719.
Maclaurin had already shown himself a very strong advocate of the mathematical and physical
ideas of Newton, so it was natural that they should meet during Maclaurin's visit to London. It is
surprising that some of Newton's biographers, for example A Rupert Hall in his 1992 biography,
should declare that Maclaurin and Newton never met. Maclaurin writing of this visit to London
in one of his letters (see for example letter 117 in [3]) states:-
I received the greatest civility from [members of the Royal Society] and particularly from the
great Sir Isaac Newton with whom I was very often.
Maclaurin received more than civility from the Royal Society, for he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society during this visit to London.
A rather strange event in Maclaurin’s career took place during the time he held the chair
of mathematics at Aberdeen. Lord Polwarth was a diplomatic agent of King George II. At this
time it was customary for the sons of the top people to make a grand tour of Europe as part of
finishing their education. Polwarth invited Maclaurin to accompany his son George Hume (or
Home) (1704 – 1724) on such a grand tour and, it is not too surprising that Maclaurin accepted
this chance to travel and meet with French mathematicians. What is surprising is that he does not
appear to have sought the necessary permission of the university authorities in Aberdeen,
although he does appear to have found someone to do his teaching. Turnbull writes however in
[5]:-
… one wonders what was happening to his unshepherded classes in Marischal College. Had he
forgotten all about them; did he turn a deaf ear to all calls to return; was there something in
him, akin to the impenetrable aloofness of Newton, which shut him off from his fellows and his
duties at times of mental creativity.
It was not a short tour, for Maclaurin spent two years travelling with Polwarth's son . It
was an episode which was to end tragically, for while they were visiting Montpellier, Polwarth's
son became ill and died. Maclaurin returned to Aberdeen to discover that the University was
most certainly highly displeased that he had not been undertaking his duties for two years. It was
certainly not the case that Maclaurin had been idle during his time away, for, while in France, he
had been awarded a Grand Prize by the Académie des Sciences for his work on the impact of
bodies.
Despite being reinstated to his chair by the University of Aberdeen, Maclaurin sought a
position in the University of Edinburgh. James Gregory, not the famous mathematician of that
name but rather the lesser known James Gregory (1666 – 1742) who was a brother of David
Gregory, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh but had become too ill to carry out the
work. The University of Edinburgh sought to appoint someone to a joint professorship with
James Gregory and, on 21 August 1725, Newton wrote to Maclaurin offering his support in
recommending him for appointment to the post (see [1], or [7] or letter 122 of [3]):-
I am very glad to hear that you have the prospect of being joined with Mr James Gregory in the
Professorship of Mathematics at Edinburgh, not only because you are my friend, but principally
because of your abilities, you being acquainted as well with the improvements of Mathematics as
with the former state of those sciences. I heartily wish you good success, and shall be very glad
to hear of your being elected.
In November 1725 Newton wrote to John Campbell, the lord provost of Edinburgh,
supporting Maclaurin's appointment :-
I am glad to understand that Mr Maclaurin is in good repute amongst you, for I think he
deserves it very well: And to satisfy you that I do not flatter him, and also to encourage him to
accept the place of assisting Mr Gregory, in order to succeed him, I am ready (if you will please
give me leave) to contribute twenty pounds per annum towards a provision for him till Mr
Gregory's place becomes void, if I live so long.
There is no evidence to suggest that Edinburgh took Newton up on his offer to contribute
to Maclaurin’s salary. Maclaurin began his appointment to the University of Edinburgh on 3
November 1725. He became a popular teacher with a class of over 100 students, though he did
not receive a full salary until 1742, four years before his death. The Church of Scotland leader
Alexander Carlyle (1722 – 1805) wrote in his autobiography:-
Maclaurin was at this time a favourite professor, and no wonder, as he was the clearest and
most agreeable lecturer on that abstract science that ever I heard. He made mathematics a
fashionable study …
Maclaurin was to spend the rest of his career in Edinburgh. On 8th July 1733 he married
Anne Stewart, who was the daughter of the Solicitor General for Scotland. They were to have
seven children but, as was common at that time, not all reached adulthood. Of the seven children,
two boys and three girls survived him. Not long after his marriage, Maclaurin worked to expand
the Medical Society of Edinburgh into a wider society to include other branches of learning.
Maclaurin himself acted as one of the two secretaries of this expanded Society and at the
monthly meetings he often read a paper of his own or a letter from a foreign scientist on the
latest developments in some topic of current interest. This Society would, after Maclaurin's
death, become the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Maclaurin did notable work in geometry, particularly studying higher plane curves. In
fact his first important work was Geometrica Organica; Sive Descriptio Linearum Curvarum
Universalis published in 1720 while he was at the University of Aberdeen. In 1740 he was
awarded a second prize from the Académie des Sciences in Paris, this time for a study of the
tides De Causa Physica Fluxus et Reflexus Maris . He used Newton's theory of gravity to show
that a smooth sphere covered by a sufficiently deep ocean under the tidal force of a single
deforming body is a prolate spheroid with major axis directed toward the deforming body. This
prize was jointly awarded to Maclaurin, Euler and Daniel Bernoulli, bracketing Maclaurin with
the top two mathematicians of his day.
In 1742 Maclaurin published his 2 volume Treatise of fluxions, the first systematic
exposition of Newton's methods written as a reply to Berkeley's attack on the calculus for its lack
of rigorous foundations. Maclaurin wrote in the introduction (see for example [1]):-
[Berkeley] represented the method of fluxions as founded on false reasoning, and full of
mysteries. His objections seemed to have been occasioned by the concise manner in which the
elements of this method have been usually described, and their having been so much
misunderstood by a person of his abilities appeared to me to be sufficient proof that a fuller
account of the grounds of this was required.
The Treatise of fluxions is a major work of 763 pages, much praised by those who read it
but usually described as having little influence. The article [10], however, argues convincingly
that Maclaurin's influence on the Continentals has been underrated. Grabiner gives five areas of
influence of Maclaurin's treatise: his treatment of the fundamental theorem of the calculus; his
work on maxima and minima; the attraction of ellipsoids; elliptic integrals; and the Euler-
Maclaurin summation formula.
Maclaurin appealed to the geometrical methods of the ancient Greeks and to Archimedes'
method of exhaustion in attempting to put Newton's calculus on a rigorous footing. It is in the
Treatise of fluxions that Maclaurin uses the special case of Taylor series now named after him
and for which he is undoubtedly best remembered today. The Maclaurin series was not an idea
discovered independently of the more general result of Taylor for Maclaurin acknowledges
Taylor's contribution. Another important result given by Maclaurin, which has not been named
after him or any other mathematician, is the important integral test for the convergence of an
infinite series. The Treatise of fluxions is not simply a work designed to put the calculus on a
rigorous basis, for Maclaurin gave many applications of calculus in the work. For example he
investigates the mutual attraction of two ellipsoids of revolution as an application of the methods
he gives.
Other topics which Maclaurin wrote on were the annular eclipse of the sun in 1737 and
the structure of bees' honeycombs. He also contributed to actuarial studies as one of the founders
of the topic and [5]:-
He laid sound actuarial foundations for the insurance society that has ever since helped the
widows and children of Scottish ministers and professors.
Maclaurin wrote to the Reverend Robert Wallace, Moderator of the General Assembly of
the Church of Scotland on May 23, 1743:-
As you was pleased to mention my opinion concerning the scheme for providing an annuity to
ministers widows and a stock for their children, in the committee of the general Assembly, I
therefore thought it my duty to go over those computations again with care and lay the result
fully before you to prevent mistakes of any kind.
Maclaurin did become involved in controversy with other mathematicians over a number
of results. Two are well documented, one being with William Braikenridge (see our biography of
Braikenridge in this archive, and also [16]) on the argument over the result:-
… if the sides of a polygon pass through fixed points and all but one of the vertices lie on fixed
lines, then the remaining vertices describe a conic section or a straight line.
In the controversy between Maclaurin and George Campbell over complex roots is
described. Again the argument, which Maclaurin calls "a disagreeable dispute", was about
priority.
We should not only comment on Maclaurin's mathematical research, however, but also
on his qualities as a teacher. His teaching at the University of Edinburgh came in for
considerable praise :-
... such was his anxiety for the improvement of his scholars that if at any time they seemed not
fully to comprehend his meaning, or if, upon examining them, he found they could not readily
demonstrate the propositions from which he had provided, he was apt rather to suspect his own
explanation to have been obscure, than their want of genius or attention, and therefore would
resume the demonstration in some other method, to try if, by exposing it in a different light, he
would give then a better view of it.
Maclaurin played an active role in the defence of Edinburgh during the Jacobite rebellion
of 1745. As the Jacobite army marched towards Edinburgh in September 1745, Maclaurin
worked endlessly in attempting to prepare the defences of the city. He described the events (see
for example letter 100 of ):-
The care of the walls was recommended to me, in which I laboured night and day under infinite
discouragements from superior powers. When I was promised hundreds of workers I could
hardly get dozens. This was daily complained of, redress was promised but till the last two days
no redress was made, and then it was too late.
The Jacobite army reached Edinburgh on 15 September 1745 and, after negotiations had
failed, the gates of the city were opened. The castle held out. Maclaurin fled to England and
while in Newcastle he received an invitation from the Archbishop of York to be his guest in
York. There he:-
… lived for some time as happy as was possible for a man who had left his country in such a
situation and his family in it behind him.
When the Jacobite army marched south from Edinburgh, Maclaurin returned to the city in
November 1745. However, he was weakened by his exertions in preparing the defences of
Edinburgh, by the difficult journeys to and from York, by the cold winter weather, and by a fall
from his horse. On 26 December 1745 he write :-
I have not been [out] since December 3. My illness seemed dangerous, the physicians call it an
obstruction in the reins [kidneys] from the severe cold in travelling November 14, 15 and 16. I
had a swelling about my stomach.
He died the following year in Edinburgh and was buried in Greyfriars Church where his
grave can still be seen at the south-west corner. Maclaurin's Treatise on algebra was published in
1748, two years after his death. Another work Account of Sir Isaac Newton's discoveries was left
incomplete on his death but was published in 1750.
As mentioned above, Maclaurin is best known for the Maclaurin Series, which is a
special case of the Taylor series. He is also remembered for the Euler-Maclaurin Summation
Formula and for the Maclaurin-Cauchy Integral Test for Convergence which Maclaurin
discovered 50 years before Cauchy was born. Maclaurin was the first to discover Cramer's
Paradox on the intersection of curves.
One of his papers remained unpublished until 1996 when Grabiner published [11]. In this
work Maclaurin considers the geometric problem of finding the difference between the volume
of the frustum of a solid of revolution which is generated by a conic section and the volume of
the cylinder of the same height as the frustum having diameter equal to that of the frustum at the
midpoint of its height.

J. Leonhard Euler
Quick Info
Born
15 April 1707
Basel, Switzerland
Died
18 September 1783
 St Petersburg, Russia
Summary
Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician who made enormous contibutions to a wide
range of mathematics and physics including analytic geometry, trigonometry, geometry,
calculus and number theory.

Biography
Leonhard Euler's father was Paul Euler. Paul Euler had studied theology at the
University of Basel and had attended Jacob Bernoulli's lectures there. In fact Paul Euler and
Johann Bernoulli had both lived in Jacob Bernoulli's house while undergraduates at Basel. Paul
Euler became a Protestant minister and married Margaret Brucker, the daughter of another
Protestant minister. Their son Leonhard Euler was born in Basel, but the family moved to Riehen
when he was one year old and it was in Riehen, not far from Basel, that Leonard was brought up.
Paul Euler had, as we have mentioned, some mathematical training and he was able to teach his
son elementary mathematics along with other subjects.
Leonhard was sent to school in Basel and during this time he lived with his grandmother
on his mother’s side. This school was a rather poor one, by all accounts, and Euler learnt no
mathematics at all from the school. However his interest in mathematics had certainly been
sparked by his father’s teaching, and he read mathematics texts on his own and took some
private lessons. Euler’s father wanted his son to follow him into the church and sent him to the
University of Basel to prepare for the ministry. He entered the University in 1720, at the age of
14, first to obtain a general education before going on to more advanced studies. Johann
Bernoulli soon discovered Euler’s great potential for mathematics in private tuition that Euler
himself engineered. Euler’s own account given in his unpublished autobiographical writings, see
[1], is as follows:-
… I soon found an opportunity to be introduced to a famous professor Johann Bernoulli. …
True, he was very busy and so refused flatly to give me private lessons; but he gave me much
more valuable advice to start reading more difficult mathematical books on my own and to study
them as diligently as I could; if I came across some obstacle or difficulty, I was given permission
to visit him freely every Sunday afternoon and he kindly explained to me everything I could not
understand …
In 1723 Euler completed his Master's degree in philosophy having compared and
contrasted the philosophical ideas of Descartes and Newton. He began his study of theology in
the autumn of 1723, following his father's wishes, but, although he was to be a devout Christian
all his life, he could not find the enthusiasm for the study of theology, Greek and Hebrew that he
found in mathematics. Euler obtained his father's consent to change to mathematics after Johann
Bernoulli had used his persuasion. The fact that Euler's father had been a friend of Johann
Bernoulli's in their undergraduate days undoubtedly made the task of persuasion much easier.
Euler completed his studies at the University of Basel in 1726. He had studied many
mathematical works during his time in Basel, and Calinger [24] has reconstructed many of the
works that Euler read with the advice of Johann Bernoulli. They include works by Varignon,
Descartes, Newton, Galileo, van Schooten, Jacob Bernoulli, Hermann, Taylor and Wallis. By
1726 Euler had already a paper in print, a short article on isochronous curves in a resisting
medium. In 1727 he published another article on reciprocal trajectories and submitted an entry
for the 1727 Grand Prize of the Paris Academy on the best arrangement of masts on a ship.
The Prize of 1727 went to Bouguer, an expert on mathematics relating to ships, but
Euler's essay won him second place which was a fine achievement for the young graduate.
However, Euler now had to find himself an academic appointment and when Nicolaus(II)
Bernoulli died in St Petersburg in July 1726 creating a vacancy there, Euler was offered the post
which would involve him in teaching applications of mathematics and mechanics to physiology.
He accepted the post in November 1726 but stated that he did not want to travel to Russia until
the spring of the following year. He had two reasons to delay. He wanted time to study the topics
relating to his new post but also he had a chance of a post at the University of Basel since the
professor of physics there had died. Euler wrote an article on acoustics, which went on to
become a classic, in his bid for selection to the post but he was not chosen to go forward to the
stage where lots were drawn to make the final decision on who would fill the chair. Almost
certainly his youth (he was 19 at the time) was against him. However Calinger suggests:-
This decision ultimately benefited Euler, because it forced him to move from a small republic
into a setting more adequate for his brilliant research and technological work.
As soon as he knew he would not be appointed to the chair of physics, Euler left Basel on
5 April 1727. He travelled down the Rhine by boat, crossed the German states by post wagon,
then by boat from Lübeck arriving in St Petersburg on 17 May 1727. He had joined the St
Petersburg Academy of Sciences two years after it had been founded by Catherine I the wife of
Peter the Great. Through the requests of Daniel Bernoulli and Jakob Hermann, Euler was
appointed to the mathematical-physical division of the Academy rather than to the physiology
post he had originally been offered. At St Petersburg Euler had many colleagues who would
provide an exceptional environment for him :-
Nowhere else could he have been surrounded by such a group of eminent scientists, including
the analyst, geometer Jakob Hermann, a relative; Daniel Bernoulli, with whom Euler was
connected not only by personal friendship but also by common interests in the field of applied
mathematics; the versatile scholar Christian Goldbach, with whom Euler discussed numerous
problems of analysis and the theory of numbers; F Maier, working in trigonometry; and the
astronomer and geographer J-N Delisle.
Euler served as a medical lieutenant in the Russian navy from 1727 to 1730. In St
Petersburg he lived with Daniel Bernoulli who, already unhappy in Russia, had requested that
Euler bring him tea, coffee, brandy and other delicacies from Switzerland. Euler became
professor of physics at the Academy in 1730 and, since this allowed him to become a full
member of the Academy, he was able to give up his Russian navy post.
Daniel Bernoulli held the senior chair in mathematics at the Academy but when he left St
Petersburg to return to Basel in 1733 it was Euler who was appointed to this senior chair of
mathematics. The financial improvement which came from this appointment allowed Euler to
marry which he did on 7 January 1734, marrying Katharina Gsell, the daughter of a painter from
the St Petersburg Gymnasium. Katharina, like Euler, was from a Swiss family. They had 13
children altogether although only five survived their infancy. Euler claimed that he made some
of his greatest mathematical discoveries while holding a baby in his arms with other children
playing round his feet.
We will examine Euler's mathematical achievements later in this article but at this stage it
is worth summarising Euler's work in this period of his career. This is done in as follows:-
... after 1730 he carried out state projects dealing with cartography, science education,
magnetism, fire engines, machines, and ship building. ... The core of his research program was
now set in place: number theory; infinitary analysis including its emerging branches, differential
equations and the calculus of variations; and rational mechanics. He viewed these three fields
as intimately interconnected. Studies of number theory were vital to the foundations of calculus,
and special functions and differential equations were essential to rational mechanics, which
supplied concrete problems.
The publication of many articles and his book Mechanica (1736-37), which extensively
presented Newtonian dynamics in the form of mathematical analysis for the first time, started
Euler on the way to major mathematical work.
Euler’s health problems began in 1735 when he had a severe fever and almost lost his
life. However, he kept this news from his parents and members of the Bernoulli family back in
Basel until he had recovered. In his autobiographical writings Euler says that his eyesight
problems began in 1738 with overstrain due to his cartographic work and that by 1740 he had
[24]:-
… lost an eye and [the other] currently may be in the same danger.
However, Calinger in [24] argues that Euler's eyesight problems almost certainly started
earlier and that the severe fever of 1735 was a symptom of the eyestrain. He also argues that a
portrait of Euler from 1753 suggests that by that stage the sight of his left eye was still good
while that of his right eye was poor but not completely blind. Calinger suggests that Euler's left
eye became blind from a later cataract rather than eyestrain.
By 1740 Euler had a very high reputation, having won the Grand Prize of the Paris
Academy in 1738 and 1740. On both occasions he shared the first prize with others. Euler's
reputation was to bring an offer to go to Berlin, but at first he preferred to remain in St
Petersburg. However political turmoil in Russia made the position of foreigners particularly
difficult and contributed to Euler changing his mind. Accepting an improved offer Euler, at the
invitation of Frederick the Great, went to Berlin where an Academy of Science was planned to
replace the Society of Sciences. He left St Petersburg on 19 June 1741, arriving in Berlin on 25
July. In a letter to a friend Euler wrote:-
I can do just what I wish [in my research] ... The king calls me his professor, and I think I am the
happiest man in the world.
Even while in Berlin Euler continued to receive part of his salary from Russia. For this
remuneration he bought books and instruments for the St Petersburg Academy, he continued to
write scientific reports for them, and he educated young Russians.
Maupertuis was the president of the Berlin Academy when it was founded in 1744 with
Euler as director of mathematics. He eputized for Maupertuis in his absence and the two became
great friends. Euler undertook an unbelievable amount of work for the Academy [1]:-
… he supervised the observatory and the botanical gardens; selected the personnel; oversaw
various financial matters; and, in particular, managed the publication of various calendars and
geographical maps, the sale of which was a source of income for the Academy. The king also
charged Euler with practical problems, such as the project in 1749 of correcting the level of the
Finow Canal … At that time he also supervised the work on pumps and pipes of the hydraulic
system at Sans Souci, the royal summer residence.
This was not the limit of his duties by any means. He served on the committee of the
Academy dealing with the library and of scientific publications. He served as an advisor to the
government on state lotteries, insurance, annuities and pensions and artillery. On top of this his
scientific output during this period was phenomenal.
During the twenty-five years spent in Berlin, Euler wrote around 380 articles. He wrote
books on the calculus of variations; on the calculation of planetary orbits; on artillery and
ballistics (extending the book by Robins); on analysis; on shipbuilding and navigation; on the
motion of the moon; lectures on the differential calculus; and a popular scientific publication
Letters to a Princess of Germany (3 vols., 1768-72).
In 1759 Maupertuis died and Euler assumed the leadership of the Berlin Academy,
although not the title of President. The king was in overall charge and Euler was not now on
good terms with Frederick despite the early good favour. Euler, who had argued with d'Alembert
on scientific matters, was disturbed when Frederick offered d'Alembert the presidency of the
Academy in 1763. However d'Alembert refused to move to Berlin but Frederick's continued
interference with the running of the Academy made Euler decide that the time had come to leave.
 In 1766 Euler returned to St Petersburg and Frederick was greatly angered at his
departure. Soon after his return to Russia, Euler became almost entirely blind after an illness. In
1771 his home was destroyed by fire and he was able to save only himself and his mathematical
manuscripts. A cataract operation shortly after the fire, still in 1771, restored his sight for a few
days but Euler seems to have failed to take the necessary care of himself and he became totally
blind. Because of his remarkable memory he was able to continue with his work on optics,
algebra, and lunar motion. Amazingly after his return to St Petersburg (when Euler was 59) he
produced almost half his total works despite the total blindness.
Euler of course did not achieve this remarkable level of output without help. He was
helped by his sons, Johann Albrecht Euler who was appointed to the chair of physics at the
Academy in St Petersburg in 1766 (becoming its secretary in 1769) and Christoph Euler who had
a military career. Euler was also helped by two other members of the Academy, W L Krafft and
A J Lexell, and the young mathematician N Fuss who was invited to the Academy from
Switzerland in 1772. Fuss, who was Euler’s grandson-in-law, became his assistant in 1776.
Yushkevich writes in [1]:-
.. the scientists assisting Euler were not mere secretaries; he discussed the general scheme of the
works with them, and they developed his ideas, calculating tables, and sometimes compiled
examples.
For example Euler credits Albrecht, Krafft and Lexell for their help with his 775 page
work on the motion of the moon, published in 1772. Fuss helped Euler prepare over 250 articles
for publication over a period on about seven years in which he acted as Euler's assistant,
including an important work on insurance which was published in 1776.
Yushkevich describes the day of Euler's death in [1]:-
On 18 September 1783 Euler spent the first half of the day as usual. He gave a mathematics
lesson to one of his grandchildren, did some calculations with chalk on two boards on the
motion of balloons; then discussed with Lexell and Fuss the recently discovered planet Uranus.
About five o'clock in the afternoon he suffered a brain haemorrhage and uttered only "I am
dying" before he lost consciousness. He died about eleven o'clock in the evening.
After his death in 1783 the St Petersburg Academy continued to publish Euler's
unpublished work for nearly 50 more years.
 Euler's work in mathematics is so vast that an article of this nature cannot but give a very
superficial account of it. He was the most prolific writer of mathematics of all time. He made
large bounds forward in the study of modern analytic geometry and trigonometry where he was
the first to consider sin, cos etc. as functions rather than as chords as Ptolemy had done.
He made decisive and formative contributions to geometry, calculus and number theory.
He integrated Leibniz's differential calculus and Newton's method of fluxions into mathematical
analysis. He introduced beta and gamma functions, and integrating factors for differential
equations. He studied continuum mechanics, lunar theory with Clairaut, the three body problem,
elasticity, acoustics, the wave theory of light, hydraulics, and music. He laid the foundation of
analytical mechanics, especially in his Theory of the Motions of Rigid Bodies (1765).
We owe to Euler the notation f(x) for a function (1734), e for the base of natural logs
(1727), i for the square root of -1 (1777), π for pi, ∑ for summation (1755), the notation for finite
differences Δy and ∆ 2 y and many others.
Let us examine in a little more detail some of Euler's work. Firstly his work in number
theory seems to have been stimulated by Goldbach but probably originally came from the
interest that the Bernoullis had in that topic. Goldbach asked Euler, in 1729, if he knew of
Fermat's conjecture that the numbers 2n +1 were always prime if n is a power of 2. Euler verified
this for nn = 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 and, by 1732 at the latest, showed that the next case 232
+1=4294967297 is divisible by 641 and so is not prime. Euler also studied other unproved results
of Fermat and in so doing introduced the Euler phi function ϕ(n), the number of integers kk with
1 ≤ k ≤ n and k coprime to n. He proved another of Fermat's assertions, namely that if aa and bb
are coprime then a 2+ b2has no divisor of the form 4n−1, in 1749.
Perhaps the result that brought Euler the most fame in his young days was his solution of
what had become known as the Basel problem. This was to find a closed form for the sum of the
infinite series ζ(2)=∑1n2, a problem which had defeated many of the top mathematicians
including Jacob Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli and Daniel Bernoulli. The problem had also been
studied unsuccessfully by Leibniz, Stirling, de Moivre and others. Euler showed in 1735 that
ζ(2)=16π2 but he went on to prove much more, namely that
ζ(4)=190π4,ζ(6)=1945π6,ζ(8)=19450π8, ζ(10)=193555π10, and ζ(12)=638512875691π12. In 1737
he proved the connection of the zeta function with the series of prime numbers giving the famous
relation
 q 1
ζ(s) = ∑ s
=∏ −s
n 1− p
Here the sum is over all natural numbers nn while the product is over all prime numbers.

By 1739 Euler had found the rational coefficients C in ζ(2n)=Cπ2n in terms of the Bernoulli
numbers.
Other work done by Euler on infinite series included the introduction of his famous
Euler's constant γ, in 1735, which he showed to be the limit of
11+12+13+...+1n−log⁡en
as nn tends to infinity. He calculated the constant γ to 16 decimal places. Euler also studied
Fourier series and in 1744 he was the first to express an algebraic function by such a series when
he gave the result
12π−12x=sin⁡x+12(sin⁡2x)+13(sin⁡3x)+...21π−21x=sinx+21(sin2x)+31(sin3x)+...
in a letter to Goldbach. Like most of Euler's work there was a fair time delay before the results
were published; this result was not published until 1755.
Euler wrote to James Stirling on 8 June 1736 telling him about his results on summing
reciprocals of powers, the harmonic series and Euler's constant and other results on series. In
particular he wrote [60]:-
Concerning the summation of very slowly converging series, in the past year I have lectured to
our Academy on a special method of which I have given the sums of very many series sufficiently
accurately and with very little effort.
He then goes on to describe what is now called the Euler-Maclaurin summation formula. Two
years later Stirling replied telling Euler that Maclaurin:-
... will be publishing a book on fluxions. ... he has two theorems for summing series by means of
derivatives of the terms, one of which is the self-same result that you sent me.
Euler replied:-
... I have very little desire for anything to be detracted from the fame of the celebrated Mr
Maclaurin since he probably came upon the same theorem for summing series before me, and
consequently deserves to be named as its first discoverer. For I found that theorem about four
years ago, at which time I also described its proof and application in greater detail to our
Academy.
 Some of Euler's number theory results have been mentioned above. Further important
results in number theory by Euler included his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem for the case of
n=3. Perhaps more significant than the result here was the fact that he introduced a proof
involving numbers of the form a+b√ −3 for integers a and b. Although there were problems with
his approach this eventually led to Kummer's major work on Fermats Last Theorem and to the
introduction of the concept of a ring.
One could claim that mathematical analysis began with Euler. In 1748 in Introductio in
analysin infinitorum Euler made ideas of Johann Bernoulli more precise in defining a function,
and he stated that mathematical analysis was the study of functions. This work bases the calculus
on the theory of elementary functions rather than on geometric curves, as had been done
previously. Also in this work Euler gave the formula
eix=cos⁡x+isin⁡xeix=cosx+isinx.
In Introductio in analysin infinitorum Euler dealt with logarithms of a variable taking only
positive values although he had discovered the formula
ln⁡(−1)=π
in 1727. He published his full theory of logarithms of complex numbers in 1751.
Analytic functions of a complex variable were investigated by Euler in a number of
different contexts, including the study of orthogonal trajectories and cartography. He discovered
the Cauchy-Riemann equations in 1777, although d'Alembert had discovered them in 1752 while
investigating hydrodynamics.
In 1755 Euler published Institutiones calculi differentialis which begins with a study of
the calculus of finite differences. The work makes a thorough investigation of how
differentiation behaves under substitutions.
In Institutiones calculi integralis (1768-70) Euler made a thorough investigation of
integrals which can be expressed in terms of elementary functions. He also studied beta and
gamma functions, which he had introduced first in 1729. Legendre called these 'Eulerian
integrals of the first and second kind' respectively while they were given the names beta function
and gamma function by Binet and Gauss respectively. As well as investigating double integrals,
Euler considered ordinary and partial differential equations in this work.
The calculus of variations is another area in which Euler made fundamental discoveries.
His work Methodus inveniendi lineas curvas ... published in 1740 began the proper study of the
calculus of variations. In [12] it is noted that Carathéodory considered this as:-
... one of the most beautiful mathematical works ever written.
Problems in mathematical physics had led Euler to a wide study of differential equations.
He considered linear equations with constant coefficients, second order differential equations
with variable coefficients, power series solutions of differential equations, a method of variation
of constants, integrating factors, a method of approximating solutions, and many others. When
considering vibrating membranes, Euler was led to the Bessel equation which he solved by
introducing Bessel functions.
Euler made substantial contributions to differential geometry, investigating the theory of
surfaces and curvature of surfaces. Many unpublished results by Euler in this area were
rediscovered by Gauss. Other geometric investigations led him to fundamental ideas in topology
such as the Euler characteristic of a polyhedron.
In 1736 Euler published Mechanica which provided a major advance in mechanics. As
Yushkevich writes in [1]:-
The distinguishing feature of Euler’s investigations in mechanics as compared to those of his
predecessors is the systematic and successful application of analysis. Previously the methods of
mechanics had been mostly synthetic and geometrical; they demanded too individual an
approach to separate problems. Euler was the first to appreciate the importance of introducing
uniform analytic methods into mechanics, thus enabling its problems to be solved in a clear and
direct way.
In Mechanica Euler considered the motion of a point mass both in a vacuum and in a
resisting medium. He analysed the motion of a point mass under a central force and also
considered the motion of a point mass on a surface. In this latter topic he had to solve various
problems of differential geometry and geodesics.
Mechanica was followed by another important work in rational mechanics, this time
Euler's two volume work on naval science. It is described in [24] as:-
Outstanding in both theoretical and applied mechanics, it addresses Euler's intense occupation
with the problem of ship propulsion. It applies variational principles to determine the optimal
ship design and first established the principles of hydrostatics ... Euler here also begins
developing the kinematics and dynamics of rigid bodies, introducing in part the differential
equations for their motion.
Of course hydrostatics had been studied since Archimedes, but Euler gave a definitive version.
In 1765 Euler published another major work on mechanics Theoria motus corporum
solidorum in which he decomposed the motion of a solid into a rectilinear motion and a
rotational motion. He considered the Euler angles and studied rotational problems which were
motivated by the problem of the precession of the equinoxes.
Euler’s work on fluid mechanics is also quite remarkable. He published a number of
major pieces of work through the 1750s setting up the main formulae for the topic, the continuity
equation, the Laplace velocity potential equation, and the Euler equations for the motion of an
inviscid incompressible fluid. In 1752 he wrote:-
However sublime are the researches on fluids which we owe to Messrs Bernoulli, Clairaut and
d’Alembert, they flow so naturally from my two general formulae that one cannot sufficiently
admire this accord of their profound meditations with the simplicity of the principles from which
I have drawn my two equations …
Euler contributed to knowledge in many other areas, and in all of them he employed his
mathematical knowledge and skill. He did important work in astronomy including [1]:-
… determination of the orbits of comets and planets by a few observations, methods of
calculation of the parallax of the sun, the theory of refraction, consideration of the physical
nature of comets, …. His most outstanding works, for which he won many prizes from the Paris
Académie des Sciences, are concerned with celestial mechanics, which especially attracted
scientists at that time.
In fact Euler's lunar theory was used by Tobias Mayer in constructing his tables of the
moon. In 1765 Mayer's widow received £3000 from Britain for the contribution the tables made
to the problem of the determination of the longitude, while Euler received £300 from the British
government for his theoretical contribution to the work.
Euler also published on the theory of music, in particular he published Tentamen novae
theoriae musicae in 1739 in which he tried to make music:-
... part of mathematics and deduce in an orderly manner, from correct principles, everything
which can make a fitting together and mingling of tones pleasing.
However, according to [8] the work was:-
... for musicians too advanced in its mathematics and for mathematicians too musical.
Cartography was another area that Euler became involved in when he was appointed director of
the St Petersburg Academy's geography section in 1735. He had the specific task of helping
Delisle prepare a map of the whole of the Russian Empire. The Russian Atlas was the result of
this collaboration and it appeared in 1745, consisting of 20 maps. Euler, in Berlin by the time of
its publication, proudly remarked that this work put the Russians well ahead of the Germans in
the art of cartography.

K. Alexis Claude Clairaut

Quick Info
Born
7 May 1713
Paris, France
Died
17 May 1765
Paris, France
Summary
Alexis Clairaut was a French mathematician who worked to confirm the Newton-
Huygens belief that the Earth was flattened at the poles.

View two larger pictures

Biography
 Alexis Clairaut's father, Jean-Baptiste Clairaut, taught mathematics in Paris and showed
his quality by being elected to the Berlin Academy. Alexis's mother, Catherine Petit, had twenty
children although only Alexis survived to adulthood.
Jean-Baptiste Clairaut educated his son at home and set unbelievably high standards.
Alexis used Euclid's Elements while learning to read and by the age of nine he had mastered the
excellent mathematics textbook of Guisnée Application de l'algèbre à la géométrie which
provided a good introduction to the differential and integral calculus as well as analytical
geometry. In the following year, Clairaut went on to study de L'Hôpital's books, in particular his
famous text Analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes courbes.
Few people have read their first paper to an academy at the age of 13, but this was the
incredible achievement of Clairaut's in 1726 when he read his paper Quatre problèmes sur de
nouvelles courbes to the Paris Academy. Although we have already noted that Clairaut was the
only one of twenty children of his parents to reach adulthood, he did have a younger brother
who, at the age of 14, read a mathematics paper to the Academy in 1730. This younger brother
died in 1732 at the age of 16.
Clairaut began to undertake research on double curvature curves which he completed in
1729. As a result of this work he was proposed for membership of the Paris Academy on 4
September 1729 but the king did not confirm his election until 1731. In July 1731 Clairaut
became the youngest person ever elected to the Paris Academy of Sciences. There he joined a
small group, led by Pierre Louis Maupertuis, who supported the natural philosophy of Newton.
Maupertuis was 15 years older than Clairaut but despite this, at the age of 33, he was also a
young member of the Academy.
Clairaut became close friends of Maupertuis, Voltaire, and du Châtelet. This was much
more than a personal friendship since he did important work with both Maupertuis and du
Châtelet. He helped the Marquise du Châtelet translate Newton's Principia into French, a project
which began before 1745 and continued until part of the book was published in 1756. Many of
Clairaut's own theories were added to the book, in addition to the translation of Newton by du
Châtelet.
Together with Maupertuis, Clairaut visited Basel in 1734 to spend a few months studying
with Johann Bernoulli. While in Basel, Clairaut became friends with Samuel König and, for
many years, the two continued a useful scientific collaboration by correspondence.
 Clairaut published some important work during the period 1733 to 1743. He wrote the
paper Sur quelques questions de maximis et minimis Ⓣ in 1733 on the calculus of variations,
written in the style of Johann Bernoulli and, in the same year, he published on the geodesics of
quadrics of rotation again studying a topic to which Johann Bernoulli had contributed. The
following year Clairaut studied the differential equations now known as 'Clairaut's differential
equations' and gave a singular solution in addition to the general integral of the equations. In
1739 and 1740 he published further work on the integral calculus, proving the existence of
integrating factors for solving first order differential equations (a topic which also interested
Johann Bernoulli, Reyneau and Euler). In 1742 Clairaut published an important work on
dynamics but, in the following year, he turned his attention to the topic for which he is best
known. He became interested in solving theoretical questions which followed on from the
practical results of an expedition some years earlier.
From 20 April 1736 to 20 August 1737 Clairaut had taken part in an expedition to
Lapland, led by Maupertuis, to measure a degree of longitude. The expedition was rganized by
the Paris Academy of Sciences, still continuing the programme started by Cassini, to verify
Newton’s theoretical proof that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. In addition to Maupertuis and
Clairaut, the group contained other young scientists such as Lemonnier, Camus and Celsius. The
highly successful team were not without their critics [1]:-
This enthusiastic group accomplished its mission quickly and precisely, in an atmosphere of
youthful gaiety for which some reproached them.
In 1743 Clairaut published Théorie de la figure de la Terre Ⓣ confirming the Newton-
Huygens belief that the Earth was flattened at the poles. The book was a theoretical study to
support the experimental data on the shape of the Earth which the expedition to Lapland had
gathered. The book was an important one in laying the foundations for the study of hydrostatics.
It built on foundations due to Newton and Huygens who had put forward the theory that the
Earth was an oblate spheroid, and also on Maclaurin's work on tides which developed some
background results in hydrostatics.
After his work on Théorie de la figure de la Terre Ⓣ Clairaut began to work on the three-
body problem in 1745, in particular on the problem of the moon’s orbit. The first conclusions
that he drew from his work was that Newton’s theory of gravity was incorrect and that the
inverse square law did not hold. In this Clairaut had the support of Euler who, after learning of
Clairaut’s conclusions, wrote to him on 30 September 1747:-
I am able to give several proof that the forces which act on the moon do not exactly follow the
rule of Newton, and the one you draw from the movement of the apogee is the most striking…
Clairaut, more confident with Euler's support, announced to the Paris Academy on 15
November 1747 that the inverse square law was false. Rather remarkably, just before Clairaut
made his announcement, d'Alembert deposited a paper with the Academy which showed that his
calculations agreed with those of Clairaut. Clairaut suggested that a term in 1r4r41 needed to be
added and Euler (perhaps rather wisely) agreed that Clairaut had found the error in the inverse
square law before he had.
Of course, not all mathematicians at this time believed Newton's theory, some still
believing in Descartes' vortex theories. The announcement that Newton's law was incorrect made
many of Descartes' supporters overjoyed and even Euler returned to Descartes' views. Some
attacked Clairaut's announcement, for example Buffon who used a metaphysical argument based
on the simplicity of the inverse square law.
However, by the spring of 1748, Clairaut realised that the difference between the
observed motion of the moon's apogee and the one predicted by the theory was due to errors
coming from the approximations that were being made rather than from the inverse square law of
gravitational attraction. Clairaut announced to the Academy on 17 May 1749 that his theory was
now in agreement with the inverse square law. He then had a period of enjoying watching
d'Alembert and Euler struggle to repeat his calculations. Clairaut wrote to his friend Gabriel
Cramer [14]:-
... d'Alembert and Euler had no inkling of the stratagem that led me to my new results. The latter
twice wrote to tell me that he had made fruitless efforts to find the same thing as I, and that he
begged me to tell him how I arrived at them. I told him, more or less, what it was all about...
Euler still felt he did not properly understand what Clairaut had done so he tried to tempt him to
write it up properly by having the St Petersburg Academy set the problem of the moon's apogee
as the prize topic for 1752. Indeed his ploy worked and Clairaut submitted an essay which let
Euler fully understand Clairaut's method. Euler, going well beyond the mark but showing how
frustrated he had been not solving the problem himself, wrote to Clairaut that his results were:-
... the most important and profound discovery that has ever been made in mathematics.
Clairaut published Théorie de la lune in 1752 and this work, together with his lunar tables
published two years later, completed his work on this particular problem.
Clairaut decided to apply his knowledge of the three-body problem to compute the orbit
of Halley's comet and so predict the exact date of its return. This required much more accurate
approximations than had the problem of the moon. He calculated to within a month the return in
1759 of Halley's comet to its perihelion (closest point to the Sun). He announced his result, that
the perihelion would occur on 15 April 1759, to the Paris Academy on 14 November 1758, while
the actual date of perihelion turned out to be 13 March. When the comet appeared, only one
month before the predicted date, Clairaut was given great public acclaim. There was a suggestion
that the comet be renamed after Clairaut, and Clairaut was called the 'new Thales'.
Clairaut improved his results when he used a different method in his prize winning paper
submitted to the St Petersburg Academy for the 1762 prize. He was able to obtain the date of 30
March in this work which, given the complexity of the problem of taking the perturbations of
Jupiter and Saturn into account, is remarkably good.
A dispute arose between Clairaut and d’Alembert regarding this work on comets.
Although the two had been reasonably friendly rivals up to about 1747, after that relations
deteriorated. When Clairaut wrote a review of d’Alembert’s book containing lunar tables then, as
Hankins writes [4]:-
He was not openly hostile, but adopted the condescending tone of a master instructing an able
student; he praised d’Alembert’s great analytical skill, but said his tables were of little use – at
least compared to Clairaut’s own tables.
In an attack on those who, like d’Alembert, concentrated on theory and neglected experiment,
Clairaut wrote:-
In order to avoid delicate experiments or long tedious calculations, in order to substitute
analytical methods which cost them less trouble, they often make hypotheses which have no
place in nature; they pursue theories that are foreign to their object, whereas a little constancy
in the execution of a perfectly simple method would have surely brought them to their goal.
When d'Alembert attacked Clairaut's solution of the three-body problem as being too much based
on observation and not, like his own work, based on theoretical results, Clairaut strongly
attacked d'Alembert in the most bitter dispute of their lives. It is hard to judge which of the two
great mathematicians was right, but Clairaut clearly won the public argument at the time, not
least because his standing was so high after the remarkable prediction of the date of the return of
Halley's comet.
We should also mention another topic to which Clairaut made important contributions,
namely to the aberration of light. He had to have a thorough understanding of this topic from the
time of the observations made by the Lapland expedition. He also had to make use of corrections
due to aberration in his work on the planets and comets. He was particularly interested in the
ideas of improving telescope design by using lenses made up of two different types of glass.
Clairaut wrote some important memoirs on the topic, studying the theory as well as conducting
optical experiments. This work was still incomplete at the time of his death.
Clairaut worked on a wide range of problems within mathematics. A geometry book
Elements de géometrie was published in 1741 and a book on algebra Elements d’algèbre Ⓣ was
published in 1749. In the preface to Elements de géometrie Clairaut gives his aims in writing the
book:-
I intended to go back to what might have given rise to geometry; and I attempted to develop its
principles by a method natural enough so that one might assume it to be the same as that of
geometry’s first inventors, attempting only to avoid any false steps that they might have had to
take…
The algebra book was an even more scholarly work and took the subject up to the
solution of equations of degree four. He tried, with great success, to show why the introduction
of algebraic notation was necessary and inevitable. The book was used for teaching in French
schools for many years.
Clairaut died at the age of 52 after a brief illness. He was at the height of his powers and
he had been honoured by being elected to the leading academies of the day. He had been elected
to the Royal Society of London, the Academy of Berlin, the Academy of St Petersburg and the
Academies of Bologna and Uppsala.

L. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

Quick Info
Born
17 November 1717
Paris, France
Died
29 October 1783
Paris, France
Summary
Jean d'Alembert was a a French mathematician who was a pioneer in the study of
differential equations and their use of in physics. He studied the equilibrium and motion
of fluids.

Biography
Jean d'Alembert's father was an artillery officer, Louis-Camus Destouches and his
mother was Mme de Tencin. She had been a nun but had received a papal dispensation in 1714
which allowed her to begin [4]:-
... a brilliant social career in which political intrigues and amorous liaisons contended for first
place; a timely participation in the famous John Law Scheme allowed her to pursue these
activities in complete financial security.
[John Law was a Scottish monetary reformer who founded a bank in Paris in 1716 with
authority to issue notes. It was highly successful at first, the time when Mme de Tencin made her
money, but collapsed in 1720.]
D'Alembert was the illegitimate son from one of Mme de Tencin 'amorous liaisons'. His
father, Louis-Camus Destouches, was out of the country at the time of d'Alembert's birth and his
mother left the newly born child on the steps of the church of St Jean Le Rond. The child was
quickly found and taken to a home for homeless children. He was baptised Jean Le Rond, named
after the church on whose steps he had been found.
 When his father returned to Paris he made contact with his young son and arranged for
him to be cared for by the wife of a glazier, Mme Rousseau. She would always be d'Alembert's
mother in his own eyes, particularly since his real mother never recognised him as her son, and
he lived in Mme Rousseau's house until he was middle-aged.
The first school that d'Alembert attended was a private school, his education being
arranged by his father. His father died in 1726 when d'Alembert was nine years old and he left
him just enough money to give him security. The Destouches family continued to look after
d'Alembert's education and they arranged for him to enter the Jansenist Collège des Quatre
Nations. He enrolled in the name of Jean-Baptiste Daremberg but soon changed his name to Jean
d'Alembert.
The Collège des Quatre Nations was an excellent place for d'Alembert to study
mathematics even though the course was elementary. The mathematics course, given by
Professor Carron, was based on Varignon's lectures and d'Alembert was able to make use of the
excellent mathematics library at the Collège. As well as the mathematical training, he learnt
about Descartes' physical ideas at the Collège but, when he formed his own ideas later in his life,
he would have little respect for the views of Descartes.
The main aim of the Jansenist Collège des Quatre Nations was to produce scholars who
could become experts in theology and argue the Jansenist case against the Jesuits. However,
d'Alembert was turned off the study of theology at the Collège. After graduating in 1735 he
decided that he would make a career in law but his real passion was for mathematics and he
continued to work in his spare time on that subject. In 1738 d'Alembert qualified as an advocate
but he seems to have decided that this was not the career for him. The following year d'Alembert
studied medicine but this was a topic that he found even worse than theology. Of all the topics he
had studied the one that he had real enthusiasm for was mathematics and his progress in this was
quite remarkable, particularly given that he had studied almost exclusively on his own and at a
time when he was supposed to be studying for other qualifications.
In July 1739 d'Alembert read his first paper to the Paris Academy of Science on some
errors he had found in Reyneau's standard text Analyse démontrée which were not of great
significance but marked the start of his mathematical career. In 1740 he submitted a second work
on the mechanics of fluids which was praised by Clairaut. In May 1741 d'Alembert was admitted
to the Paris Academy of Science, on the strength of these and papers on the integral calculus. It
took some determination on his part, submitting three unsuccessful applications in quick
succession, before his appointment.
Before discussing d’Alembert’s contributions it is useful to discuss his personality, which
was to have a major effect on the way his scientific work was to develop. In one sense
d’Alembert’s life was uneventful. He travelled little and worked at the Paris Academy of Science
and the French Academy all his life. On another level his life was one of great drama as he
argued with almost everyone around him. As stated in [5]:-
D’Alembert was always surrounded by controversy. … he was a lightning rod which drew
sparks from all the foes of the philosophes. … Unfortunately he carried this… pugnacity into his
scientific research and once he had entered a controversy, he argued his cause with vigour and
stubbornness. He closed his mind to the possibility that he might be wrong…
Despite this tendency to quarrel with all around him, his contributions were truly
outstanding. D'Alembert helped to resolve the controversy in mathematical physics over the
conservation of kinetic energy by improving Newton's definition of force in his Traité de
dynamique which he published in 1743. This also contains d'Alembert's principle of mechanics.
This is an important work and the preface contains a clear statement by d'Alembert of an attempt
to lay a firm foundation for mechanics. In [5] d'Alembert's ideas, as presented in this preface, are
described:-
... d'Alembert was a mathematician, not a physicist, and he believed mechanics was just as much
a part of mathematics as geometry or algebra. Rational mechanics was a science based on
simple necessary principles from which all particular phenomenon could be deduced by
rigorous mathematical methods. ... d'Alembert thought mechanics should be made into a
completely rationalistic mathematical system.
D'Alembert had begun to read parts of his Traité de dynamique to the Academy in late
1742 but soon afterwards Clairaut began to read his own work on dynamics to the Academy.
Clearly a rivalry quickly sprung up and d'Alembert stopped reading the work to the Academy
and rushed into print with the treatise. The two mathematicians had come up with similar ideas
and indeed the rivalry was to become considerably worse in the next few years.
D'Alembert stated his position clearly that he believed mechanics to be based on
metaphysical principles and not on experimental evidence. He seems not to have realised in his
reading of Newton's Principia how strongly Newton based his laws of motion on experimental
evidence. For d'Alembert these laws of motion were logical necessities.
In 1744 d'Alembert applied his results to the equilibrium and motion of fluids and
published Traité de l'équilibre et du mouvement des fluides Ⓣ. This work gave an alternative
treatment of fluids to the one published by Daniel Bernoulli. D'Alembert thought it a better
approach, of course, as one might expect, Daniel Bernoulli did not share this view.
D'Alembert became unhappy at the Paris Academy, almost certainly because of his
rivalry with Clairaut and disagreements with others. His position became even less happy in
1745 when Maupertuis left Paris to take up the post of head of the Berlin Academy where, at that
time, Euler was working.
In around 1746 d'Alembert's life took a rather sudden change. This is described in as
follows. Around the same time d'Alembert began to become involved in a major project, namely
editing the Encyclopédie with Diderot. He was contracted as an editor to cover mathematics and
physical astronomy but his work covered a wider field. When the first volume appeared in 1751
it contained a Preface written by d'Alembert which was widely acclaimed as a work of great
genius. Buffon said that:-
It is the quintessence of human knowledge...
D'Alembert worked on the Encyclopédie for many years. In fact he wrote most of the
mathematical articles in this 28 volume work. However, he continued his mathematical work
while working on the Encyclopédie. He was a pioneer in the study of partial differential
equations and he pioneered their use in physics. His work on this topic first appeared in an article
which he submitted for the 1747 prize of the Prussian Academy Réflexions sur la cause générale
des vents which indeed he won the prize. Euler, however, saw the power of the methods
introduced by d'Alembert and soon developed these far further than had d'Alembert. In fact this
work by d'Alembert on the winds suffers from a defect which was typical of all of his work,
namely it was mathematically very sound but was based on rather poor physical evidence. In this
case, for example, d'Alembert assumed that the winds were generated by tidal effects on the
atmosphere and heating of the atmosphere played only a very minor role. Clairaut attacked
d'Alembert's method.
In order to avoid delicate experiments or long tedious calculations, in order to substitute
analytical methods which cost them less trouble, they often make hypotheses which have no
place in nature; they pursue theories that are foreign to their object, whereas a little constancy in
the execution of a perfectly simple method would have surely brought them to their goal.
A heated argument between d'Alembert and Clairaut resulted in the two fine mathematicians
trading insults in the scientific journals of the day.
The year 1747 was an important one for d'Alembert in that a second important work of
his appeared in that year, namely his article on vibrating strings. The article contains the first
appearance of the wave equation in print but again suffers from the defect that he used
mathematically pleasing simplifications of certain boundary conditions which led to results
which were at odds with observation.
Euler had learnt of d'Alembert's work in around 1743 through letters from Daniel
Bernoulli. However, Daniel Bernoulli became highly critical of d'Alembert after reading his
Traité de l'équilibre et du mouvement des fluides for reasons we noted above. When d'Alembert
won the prize of the Prussian Academy of Sciences with his essay on winds he produced a work
which Euler considered superior to that of Daniel Bernoulli. Certainly at this time Euler and
d'Alembert were on very good terms with Euler having high respect for d'Alembert's work and
the two corresponded on many topics of mutual interest.
However relations between Euler and d'Alembert soon took a turn for the worse after the
dispute in the Berlin Academy involving Samuel König which began in 1751. The situation
became more relevant to d'Alembert in 1752 when he was invited to became President of the
Berlin Academy. Another reason for d'Alembert to feel angry with Euler was that he felt that
Euler was stealing his ideas and not giving him due credit. In one sense d'Alembert was justified
but on the other hand his work was usually so muddled that Euler could not follow it and
resorted to starting from scratch to clarify the problem being solved.
The Paris Academy had not been a place for d'Alembert to publish after he fell out with
colleagues there and he was sending his mathematical papers to the Berlin Academy during the
1750s. However Euler was unhappy to publish these works and d'Alembert stopped publishing
his mathematical articles, collecting them together and publishing them as Opuscules
mathématiques which appeared in eight volumes between 1761 and 1780.
Again Frederick II, the King of Prussia, tried to persuade d’Alembert to accept the
presidency of the Berlin Academy. Euler was strongly opposed to this and wrote to Lagrange
(see [5]):-
… d’Alembert has tried to undermine [my solution to the vibrating strings problem] by various
cavils, and that for the sole reason that he did not get it himself. … He thinks he can deceive the
semi-learned by his eloquence. … He wished to publish in our journal not a proof, but a bare
statement that my solution is defective. … From this you can judge what an uproar he would let
loose if he were to become our president.
Euler need not have feared however, for d'Alembert visited Frederick II for three months
in 1764, turned down the offer of the presidency again, and tried to persuade Frederick II to
made Euler president. This was not the only offer d'Alembert turned down. He also turned down
an invitation from Catherine II to go to Russia as a tutor for her son.
D'Alembert made other important contributions to mathematics which we have not yet
mentioned. In an article entitled Différentiel in volume 4 of Encyclopédie written in 1754, he
suggested that the theory of limits be put on a firm foundation. He was one of the first to
understand the importance of functions and, in this article, he defined the derivative of a function
as the limit of a quotient of increments. His ideas on limits led him to the test for convergence,
known today as d'Alembert's ratio test, which appears in Volume 5 of Opuscules mathématiques
In the latter part of his life d'Alembert turned more towards literature and philosophy.
D'Alembert's philosophical works appear mainly in the five volume work Mélanges de
littérature et de philosophie Ⓣ which appeared between 1753 and 1767. In this work he sets out
his skepticism concerning metaphysical problems. He accepts the argument in favour of the
existence of God, based on the belief that intelligence cannot be a product of matter alone.
However, although he took this public view in his books, evidence from his friends showed that
he was persuaded by Diderot towards materialism before 1770. D'Alembert was elected to the
French Academy on 28 November 1754. In 1772 he was elected perpetual secretary of the
French Academy and spent much time writing obituaries for the academy [1]:-
He became the academy's most influential member, but, in spite of his efforts, that body failed to
produce anything noteworthy in the way of literature during his pre-eminence.
D'Alembert complained from 1765, after a bout of illness, that his mind was no longer
able to concentrate on mathematics. In 1777, in a letter to Lagrange, he showed how much he
regretted this:-
What annoys me the most is the fact that geometry, which is the only occupation that truly
interests me, is the one thing that I cannot do. All that I do in literature, although very well
received in our public sessions of the French Academy, is for me only a way to fill the time for
lack of anything better to do.
He suffered bad health for many years and his death was as the result of a bladder illness. As a
known unbeliever, d'Alembert was buried in a common unmarked grave.

M. Johann Heinrich Lambert

Quick Info
Born
26 August 1728
Mülhausen, Alsace (now Mulhouse, France)
Died
25 September 1777
Berlin, Prussia (now Germany)
Summary
Johann Lambert was the first to provide a rigorous proof that π is irrational.

Biography
Johann Heinrich Lambert's family were originally from Lorraine which was a French
territory up to the Thirty Years' War. Three Christian denominations, Roman Catholicism,
Lutheranism, and Calvinism, each tried to impose themselves and various countries joined in the
conflicts which raged across Europe for many years. In 1635 the Lambert family, who were
Calvinists, fled from Lorraine as religious refugees and settled in Mulhouse. At that time
Mulhouse was a free imperial city which had formed defensive alliances with the Swiss.
 Lambert's father, Lukas Lambert, was a tailor as his own father had been. Lukas married
Elizabeth Schmerber in 1724 and Johann Heinrich Lambert was one of their five sons. It was a
large family, with two girls in addition to the five boys, and Lukas Lambert did not have
sufficient income to enable him to support and educate the family in comfort. Heinrich attended
school in Mulhouse, receiving a reasonably good education up to the age of twelve, studying
French and Latin in addition to elementary subjects. However, when he was twelve years old he
had to leave school to help his father with tailoring. Most young boys would have ended their
education at that point, but not young Heinrich who continued to study in his own spare time.
Usually his day was fully occupied in helping his father but in the evenings he would study
scientific subjects on his own.
This pattern of study became increasingly difficult when, at the age of fifteen, he had to
work as a clerk to earn more money for the family. In fact it was a natural occupation for
Heinrich since he had acquired great skill in calligraphy and he was given a job at the ironworks
at Seppois, which was south of Mulhouse and almost due west of Basel. Soon his increasing skill
in academic subjects helped him to gain work as a private tutor. When he was seventeen years
old Lambert left his position at the ironworks to take up a post as secretary to Johann Rudolf
Iselin who was the editor of the Basler Zeitung, a conservative daily paper. This position was
ideal for Lambert who could now concentrate even more deeply on his own study of
mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. He wrote in a letter :
I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy. The first object of my
endeavours was the means to become perfect and happy. I understood that the will could not be
improved before the mind had been enlightened. I studied Christian Wolff "On the power of the
human mind", Nicolas Malebranche "On the investigation of truth" and John Locke "Essay
concerning human understanding".
The mathematical sciences, in particular algebra and mechanics, provided me with clear
and profound examples to confirm the rules I had learned. Thereby I was able to penetrate into
other sciences more easily and more profoundly, and to explain them to others, too. It is true that
I was aware of the lack of oral instruction, but I tried to replace this by even more assiduity ...
In 1748, when he was twenty years old, Lambert took up a new position, this time as a tutor in
the home of Count Peter von Salis in Chur. This town was in Graubünden which at that time was
part of the Swiss Confederation. He became tutor to the Count's grandson and his cousin, who
were both eleven years old, and another family member who was seven. Lambert could now use
the excellent library in the Count's home and was in an even stronger position to continue his
studies of mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. While in Chur, he made his own
astronomical instruments and delved deeply into mathematical and physical topics.
It was in Chur that Lambert first came to be noticed by the scientific community. He was
elected to the Literary Society of Chur and to the Swiss Scientific Society based in Basel. He
undertook work for the Scientific Society such as making regular meteorological observations
and he began to publish scientific articles, his first being on caloric heat which appeared in Acta
Helvetica in 1755. This paper by Lambert on the theory of heat appeared in Volume 2 of the
journal published by the Societas Helvetica which had been founded in 1751 (see [23] for
details). In 1756 Lambert left Chur with the two older boys whom he had tutored during the
previous eight years; they were now 19 years old. He took the two young men on a "grand tour"
of Europe, first visiting Göttingen. There Lambert met Kästner and Tobias Mayer, and was
elected to the Learned Society of Göttingen.
Now 1756 was not the best time to begin a tour of Europe. In that year the French-
Austrian alliance prepared to attack Prussia but the latter did not wait to be attacked and began
hostilities by invading Saxony on 29 August. The French and Austrians began to get the upper
hand in 1757 and occupied Göttingen while Lambert was studying there. He left with his two
pupils and went to Utrecht which they used as a base for the next two years while they visited
most of the main Dutch cities.
Lambert's first book, which was on the passage of light through various media, was
published in The Hague in 1758. Before returning to Chur, Lambert took his pupils to Paris,
where he met d'Alembert, and to Marseilles, Nice, Turin, and Milan. The thirty year old Lambert
now decided that it was time to find a scientific position and left Peter von Salis's family soon
after they had completed their "grand tour". However this did not prove to be an easy task and
his first wish, namely to get a position in Göttingen, soon proved impossible to achieve. After a
few months spent in Zürich making astronomical observations, he returned to his home in
Mulhouse where he spent several further months. In 1759 he went to Augsburg where he found a
publisher for two more of his books, Photometria and Cosmologische Briefe . Of Photometria,
published in 1760, Scriba writes:-
Lambert carried out his experiments with few and primitive instruments, but his conclusions
resulted in laws that bear his name. The exponential decrease of the light in a beam passing
through an absorbing medium of uniform transparency is often called 'Lambert's law of
absorption', although Bouguer discovered it earlier. 'Lambert's cosine law' states that the
brightness of a diffusely radiating plane surface is proportional to the cosine of the angle formed
by the line of sight and the normal to the surface.
In 1760 Euler recommended Lambert for the position of Professor of Astronomy at the St
Petersburg Academy of Sciences to fill a vacancy which, due to a reorganization of the Academy
and political changes, remained unfilled for several years. Lambert was asked to organise a
Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich along the lines of the Berlin Academy, but he fell out
with other members of the project and left the new Academy in 1762. By this time, however, his
important work on cosmology Cosmologische Briefe Ⓣ (1761) had appeared. It is the first
scientific presentation of the notion that the Universe is composed of galaxies of stars. Coffa,
reviewing [22] writes:-
Lambert's finite Universe is composed of galaxies, supergalaxies and even higher systems of
stars all of which rotate around their respective centres; each of these centres is occupied by a
"regent", an immensely large, exceedingly dense and opaque body. The whole is dominated by
the centralmost body or supreme regent, the body "which steers around itself the whole
creation". Lambert's book is also remarkable for the modernity of its methodological stand: his
systematic survey of the differences among facts, theories, predictions and possible verifications
was not emulated in cosmological literature until the 20th century.
After returning from Munich, Lambert took part in a survey of the border between Milan
and Chur, and also visited Leipzig where he was able to find a publisher for a work on
philosophy Neues Organon (published in 1764).
He wanted to gain a position at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and so
become a colleague of Euler and Lagrange. Lambert was therefore delighted to go to Berlin in
1764 at the invitation of Euler. However, although Lambert joined the Huguenot Church, of
which Euler was a staunch member, differences between the two men soon arose, mainly
concerning the income of the Academy, which depended on its privilege to sell calendars. It may
well be that these differences contributed to Euler's decision to leave Berlin for St Petersburg in
1766. However these were not the only problems that Lambert faced after arriving in Berlin for
at first Frederick II refused to appoint Lambert to the Academy on account of his unusual
appearance, strange dress and eccentric behaviour. These were in part due to his humble
background together with the fact that he deliberately chose not to conform to the conventions of
the upper classes. Also it was in part due to his devout religious attitude. However, once
Frederick II got to know Lambert, he discovered that he was a man of extraordinary insight.
Scriba writes [1]:-
As a member of the physical class for twelve years, until his death at the age of forty-nine,
Lambert produced more than 150 works for publication. He was the only member of the
Academy to exercise regularly the right to read papers not only in his own class, but in any
other class as well.
In 1766 Lambert wrote Theorie der Parallellinien which was a study of the parallel
postulate. By assuming that the parallel postulate was false, he managed to deduce a large
number of non-euclidean results. He noticed that in this new geometry the sum of the angles of a
triangle increases as its area decreases. Of his work on geometry, Folta writes in :
Lambert tried to build up geometry from two new principles: measurement and extent, which
occurred in his version as definite building blocks of a more general metatheory. Above all,
Lambert carefully considered the logical consequences of these axiomatically secure principles.
His axioms concerning number can hardly be compared with Euclid's arithmetical axioms; in
geometry he goes beyond the previously assumed concept of space, by establishing the
properties of incidence. Lambert's physical erudition indicates yet another clear way in which it
would be possible to eliminate the traditional myth of three-dimensional geometry through the
parallels with the physical dependence of functions. A number of questions that were formulated
by Lambert in his metatheory in the second half of the 18th century have not ceased to remain of
interest today.
Lambert is best known, however, for his work on π. Euler had already established in 1737 that ee
and e2e2 are both irrational. However Lambert was the first to give a rigorous proof that π is
irrational. In a paper presented to the Berlin Academy in 1768 Lambert showed that, if xx is a
nonzero rational number, then neither exex nor tan⁡xtanx can be rational. Since tan (π/4) = 1 then
π/4 must be irrational. In [34] there is discussion of the claim that Lambert's proof is incomplete
and requires a result by Legendre to complete it. Wallisser shows that Lambert's proof is not only
complete but is an outstanding mathematical achievement for its time. In fact it was Pringsheim
in 1898 who first noted that Lambert's proof was absolutely correct and exceptional for its time,
since the expansion of the tangent function was not only written down formally, but also proved
to be a convergent continued fraction. Also, remarkably, Lambert conjectured in this paper that
ee and π are transcendental. This was not proved for another century when Hermite proved that
ee is transcendental and Lindemann proved that π is transcendental.
Lambert also made the first systematic development of hyperbolic functions. A few years
earlier they had been studied by Vincenzo Riccati. Lambert is also important for his study of the
trigonometry of triangles on surfaces, his work on perspective and cartography, as well as his
contributions to the theory of probability. In this latter topic, he gave a mathematical formulation
of the law of mortality in 1772. His contributions to probability are evaluated by Garibaldi and
Penco in [15]. They write:-
The lines drawn by Jacob Bernoulli in the "Ars conjectandi" were taken up and developed in a
decisive way by Lambert, whose fundamental contributions to the theory of errors in
measurement have been re-evaluated in recent years. Lambert's vast, multifaceted activity
covered optics, cosmology and geodesy and put him in contact with the major scientists and
philosophers of his day (Kant).
In his own fundamental philosophical opus, the "Neues Organon", Lambert developed a
noteworthy theory of logical probability that, to our knowledge, has thus far escaped the
attention of eminent scholars in the field such as Keynes. Logical probability is a 'third general
type of probability' that follows in order of exposition the 'a priori probability' typical of games
of change and the 'a posteriori probability' of statistics.
He also made a major contribution to philosophy and in Anlage zur Architectonic (1771) he
attempted to transform philosophy into a deductive science, modelled on Euclid's approach to
geometry. In [3] Basso highlights Lambert's understanding of the main concepts of the
deductive-geometric methodology, namely axioms, postulates, theorems, problems,
constructions, and logic.

N. Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Quick Info
Born
 25 January 1736
Turin, Sardinia-Piedmont (now Italy)
Died
10 April 1813
Paris, France
Summary
Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an Italian-born French mathematician who excelled in all
fields of analysis and number theory and analytical and celestial mechanics.

Biography
Joseph-Louis Lagrange is usually considered to be a French mathematician, but the
Italian Encyclopaedia [40] refers to him as an Italian mathematician. They certainly have some
justification in this claim since Lagrange was born in Turin and baptised in the name of Giuseppe
Lodovico Lagrangia. Lagrange's father was Giuseppe Francesco Lodovico Lagrangia who was
Treasurer of the Office of Public Works and Fortifications in Turin, while his mother Teresa
Grosso was the only daughter of a medical doctor from Cambiano near Turin. Lagrange was the
eldest of their 11 children but one of only two to live to adulthood.
Turin had been the capital of the duchy of Savoy, but became the capital of the kingdom
of Sardinia in 1720, sixteen years before Lagrange's birth. Lagrange's family had French
connections on his father's side, his great-grandfather being a French cavalry captain who left
France to work for the Duke of Savoy. Lagrange always leant towards his French ancestry, for as
a youth he would sign himself Lodovico LaGrange or Luigi Lagrange, using the French form of
his family name.
 Despite the fact that Lagrange's father held a position of some importance in the service
of the king of Sardinia, the family were not wealthy since Lagrange's father had lost large sums
of money in unsuccessful financial speculation. A career as a lawyer was planned out for
Lagrange by his father, and certainly Lagrange seems to have accepted this willingly. He studied
at the College of Turin and his favourite subject was classical Latin. At first he had no great
enthusiasm for mathematics, finding Greek geometry rather dull.
Lagrange's interest in mathematics began when he read a copy of Halley's 1693 work on
the use of algebra in optics. He was also attracted to physics by the excellent teaching of
Beccaria at the College of Turin and he decided to make a career for himself in mathematics.
Perhaps the world of mathematics has to thank Lagrange's father for his unsound financial
speculation, for Lagrange later claimed:-
If I had been rich, I probably would not have devoted myself to mathematics.
He certainly did devote himself to mathematics, but largely he was self taught and did not
have the benefit of studying with leading mathematicians. On 23 July 1754 he published his first
mathematical work which took the form of a letter written in Italian to Giulio Fagnano. Perhaps
most surprising was the name under which Lagrange wrote this paper, namely Luigi De la
Grange Tournier. This work was no masterpiece and showed to some extent the fact that
Lagrange was working alone without the advice of a mathematical supervisor. The paper draws
an analogy between the binomial theorem and the successive derivatives of the product of
functions.
Before writing the paper in Italian for publication, Lagrange had sent the results to Euler,
who at this time was working in Berlin, in a letter written in Latin. The month after the paper
was published, however, Lagrange found that the results appeared in correspondence between
Johann Bernoulli and Leibniz. Lagrange was greatly upset by this discovery since he feared
being branded a cheat who copied the results of others. However this less than outstanding
beginning did nothing more than make Lagrange redouble his efforts to produce results of real
merit in mathematics. He began working on the tautochrone, the curve on which a weighted
particle will always arrive at a fixed point in the same time independent of its initial position. By
the end of 1754 he had made some important discoveries on the tautochrone which would
contribute substantially to the new subject of the calculus of variations (which mathematicians
were beginning to study but which did not receive the name 'calculus of variations' before Euler
called it that in 1766).
Lagrange sent Euler his results on the tautochrone containing his method of maxima and
minima. His letter was written on 12 August 1755 and Euler replied on 6 September saying how
impressed he was with Lagrange's new ideas. Although he was still only 19 years old, Lagrange
was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Artillery School in Turin on 28 September
1755. It was well deserved for the young man had already shown the world of mathematics the
originality of his thinking and the depth of his great talents.
In 1756 Lagrange sent Euler results that he had obtained on applying the calculus of
variations to mechanics. These results generalised results which Euler had himself obtained and
Euler consulted Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, about this remarkable young
mathematician. Not only was Lagrange an outstanding mathematician but he was also a strong
advocate for the principle of least action so Maupertuis had no hesitation but to try to entice
Lagrange to a position in Prussia. He arranged with Euler that he would let Lagrange know that
the new position would be considerably more prestigious than the one he held in Turin.
However, Lagrange did not seek greatness, he only wanted to be able to devote his time to
mathematics, and so he shyly but politely refused the position.
Euler also proposed Lagrange for election to the Berlin Academy and he was duly elected
on 2 September 1756. The following year Lagrange was a founding member of a scientific
society in Turin, which was to become the Royal Academy of Sciences of Turin. One of the
major roles of this new Society was to publish a scientific journal the Mélanges de Turin which
published articles in French or Latin. Lagrange was a major contributor to the first volumes of
the Mélanges de Turin volume 1 of which appeared in 1759, volume 2 in 1762 and volume 3 in
1766.
The papers by Lagrange which appear in these transactions cover a variety of topics. He
published his beautiful results on the calculus of variations, and a short work on the calculus of
probabilities. In a work on the foundations of dynamics, Lagrange based his development on the
principle of least action and on kinetic energy.
In the Mélanges de Turin Lagrange also made a major study on the propagation of sound,
making important contributions to the theory of vibrating strings. He had read extensively on this
topic and he clearly had thought deeply on the works of Newton, Daniel Bernoulli, Taylor, Euler
and d'Alembert. Lagrange used a discrete mass model for his vibrating string, which he took to
consist of nn masses joined by weightless strings. He solved the resulting system of n+1
differential equations, then let nn tend to infinity to obtain the same functional solution as Euler
had done. His different route to the solution, however, shows that he was looking for different
methods than those of Euler, for whom Lagrange had the greatest respect.
In papers which were published in the third volume, Lagrange studied the integration of
differential equations and made various applications to topics such as fluid mechanics (where he
introduced the Lagrangian function). Also contained are methods to solve systems of linear
differential equations which used the characteristic value of a linear substitution for the first
time. Another problem to which he applied his methods was the study the orbits of Jupiter and
Saturn.
The Académie des Sciences in Paris announced its prize competition for 1764 in 1762.
The topic was on the libration of the Moon, that is the motion of the Moon which causes the face
that it presents to the Earth to oscillate causing small changes in the position of the lunar
features. Lagrange entered the competition, sending his entry to Paris in 1763 which arrived
there not long before Lagrange himself. In November of that year he left Turin to make his first
long journey, accompanying the Marquis Caraccioli, an ambassador from Naples who was
moving from a post in Turin to one in London. Lagrange arrived in Paris shortly after his entry
had been received but took ill while there and did not proceed to London with the ambassador.
D'Alembert was upset that a mathematician as fine as Lagrange did not receive more honour. He
wrote on his behalf [1]:-
Monsieur de la Grange, a young geometer from Turin, has been here for six weeks. He has
become quite seriously ill and he needs, not financial aid, for the Marquis de Caraccioli directed
upon leaving for England that he should not lack for anything, but rather some signs of interest
on the part of his native country ... In him Turin possesses a treasure whose worth it perhaps
does not know.
Returning to Turin in early 1765, Lagrange entered, later that year, for the Académie des
Sciences prize of 1766 on the orbits of the moons of Jupiter. D'Alembert, who had visited the
Berlin Academy and was friendly with Frederick II of Prussia, arranged for Lagrange to be
offered a position in the Berlin Academy. Despite no improvement in Lagrange's position in
Turin, he again turned the offer down writing:-
It seems to me that Berlin would not be at all suitable for me while M Euler is there.
By March 1766 d'Alembert knew that Euler was returning to St Petersburg and wrote again to
Lagrange to encourage him to accept a post in Berlin. Full details of the generous offer were sent
to him by Frederick II in April, and Lagrange finally accepted. Leaving Turin in August, he
visited d'Alembert in Paris, then Caraccioli in London before arriving in Berlin in October.
Lagrange succeeded Euler as Director of Mathematics at the Berlin Academy on 6 November
1766.
Lagrange was greeted warmly by most members of the Academy and he soon became
close friends with Lambert and Johann(III) Bernoulli. However, not everyone was pleased to see
this young man in such a prestigious position, particularly Castillon who was 32 years older than
Lagrange and considered that he should have been appointed as Director of Mathematics. Just
under a year from the time he arrived in Berlin, Lagrange married his cousin Vittoria Conti. He
wrote to d'Alembert:-
My wife, who is one of my cousins and who even lived for a long time with my family, is a very
good housewife and has no pretensions at all.
They had no children, in fact Lagrange had told d'Alembert in this letter that he did not wish to
have children.

Turin always regretted losing Lagrange and from time to time his return there was suggested, for
example in 1774. However, for 20 years Lagrange worked at Berlin, producing a steady stream
of top quality papers and regularly winning the prize from the Académie des Sciences of Paris.
He shared the 1772 prize on the three body problem with Euler, won the prize for 1774, another
one on the motion of the moon, and he won the 1780 prize on perturbations of the orbits of
comets by the planets.
His work in Berlin covered many topics: astronomy, the stability of the solar system,
mechanics, dynamics, fluid mechanics, probability, and the foundations of the calculus. He also
worked on number theory proving in 1770 that every positive integer is the sum of four squares.
In 1771 he proved Wilson's theorem (first stated without proof by Waring) that nn is prime if and
only if (n−1)!+1 is divisible by nn. In 1770 he also presented his important work Réflexions sur
la résolution algébrique des équationswhich made a fundamental investigation of why equations
of degrees up to 4 could be solved by radicals. The paper is the first to consider the roots of an
equation as abstract quantities rather than having numerical values. He studied permutations of
the roots and, although he does not compose permutations in the paper, it can be considered as a
first step in the development of group theory continued by Ruffini, Galois and Cauchy.
Although Lagrange had made numerous major contributions to mechanics, he had not
produced a comprehensive work. He decided to write a definitive work incorporating his
contributions and wrote to Laplace on 15 September 1782:-
I have almost completed a 'Traité de mécanique analytique' Ⓣ, based uniquely on the
principle of virtual velocities; but, as I do not yet know when or where I shall be able to have it
printed, I am not rushing to put the finishing touches to it.
Caraccioli, who was by now in Sicily, would have liked to see Lagrange return to Italy
and he arranged for an offer to be made to him by the court of Naples in 1781. Offered the post
of Director of Philosophy of the Naples Academy, Lagrange turned it down for he only wanted
peace to do mathematics and the position in Berlin offered him the ideal conditions. During his
years in Berlin his health was rather poor on many occasions, and that of his wife was even
worse. She died in 1783 after years of illness and Lagrange was very depressed. Three years later
Frederick II died and Lagrange's position in Berlin became a less happy one. Many Italian States
saw their chance and attempts were made to entice him back to Italy.
The offer which was most attractive to Lagrange, however, came not from Italy but from
Paris and included a clause which meant that Lagrange had no teaching. On 18 May 1787 he left
Berlin to become a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, where he remained for the
rest of his career. Lagrange survived the French Revolution while others did not and this may to
some extent be due to his attitude which he had expressed many years before when he wrote:-
I believe that, in general, one of the first principles of every wise man is to conform strictly to the
laws of the country in which he is living, even when they are unreasonable.
The Mécanique analytique which Lagrange had written in Berlin, was published in 1788.
It had been approved for publication by a committee of the Académie des Sciences comprising
of Laplace, Cousin, Legendre and Condorcet. Legendre acted as an editor for the work doing
proof reading and other tasks. The Mécanique analytique ummarized all the work done in the
field of mechanics since the time of Newton and is notable for its use of the theory of differential
equations. With this work Lagrange transformed mechanics into a branch of mathematical
analysis. He wrote in the Preface:-
One will not find figures in this work. The methods that I expound require neither constructions,
nor geometrical or mechanical arguments, but only algebraic operations, subject to a regular
and uniform course.
Lagrange was made a member of the committee of the Académie des Sciences to
standardise weights and measures in May 1790. They worked on the metric system and
advocated a decimal base. Lagrange married for a second time in 1792, his wife being Renée-
Françoise-Adélaide Le Monnier the daughter of one of his astronomer colleagues at the
Académie des Sciences. He was certainly not unaffected by the political events. In 1793 the
Reign of Terror commenced and the Académie des Sciences, along with the other learned
societies, was suppressed on 8 August. The weights and measures commission was the only one
allowed to continue and Lagrange became its chairman when others such as the chemist
Lavoisier, Borda, Laplace, Coulomb, Brisson and Delambre were thrown off the commission.
In September 1793 a law was passed ordering the arrest of all foreigners born in enemy
countries and all their property to be confiscated. Lavoisier intervened on behalf of Lagrange,
who certainly fell under the terms of the law, and he was granted an exception. On 8 May 1794,
after a trial that lasted less than a day, a revolutionary tribunal condemned Lavoisier, who had
saved Lagrange from arrest, and 27 others to death. Lagrange said on the death of Lavoisier, who
was guillotined on the afternoon of the day of his trial:-
It took only a moment to cause this head to fall and a hundred years will not suffice to produce
its like.
The École Polytechnique was founded on 11 March 1794 and opened in December 1794
(although it was called the École Centrale des Travaux Publics for the first year of its existence ).
Lagrange was its first professor of analysis, appointed for the opening in 1794. In 1795 the École
Normale was founded with the aim of training school teachers. Lagrange taught courses on
elementary mathematics there. We mentioned above that Lagrange had a 'no teaching' clause
written into his contract but the Revolution changed things and Lagrange was required to teach.
However, he was not a good lecturer as Fourier, who attended his lectures at the École Normale
in 1795 wrote:-
His voice is very feeble, at least in that he does not become heated; he has a very
pronounced Italian accent and pronounces the s like z … The students, of whom the majority are
incapable of appreciating him, give him little welcome, but the professors make amends for it.
Similarly Bugge who attended his lectures at the École Polytechnique in 1799 wrote:-
… whatever this great man says, deserves the highest degree of consideration, but he is too
abstract for youth.
Lagrange published two volumes of his calculus lectures. In 1797 he published the first
theory of functions of a real variable with Théorie des fonctions analytiques Ⓣ although he
failed to give enough attention to matters of convergence. He states that the aim of the work is to
give:-
... the principles of the differential calculus, freed from all consideration of the infinitely small or
vanishing quantities, of limits or fluxions, and reduced to the algebraic analysis of finite
quantities.
Also he states:-
The ordinary operations of algebra suffice to resolve problems in the theory of curves.
Not everyone found Lagrange's approach to the calculus the best however, for example de Prony
wrote in 1835:-
Lagrange's foundations of the calculus is assuredly a very interesting part of what one
might call purely philosophical study: but when it is a case of making transcendental analysis an
instrument of exploration for questions presented by astronomy, marine engineering, geodesy,
and the different branches of science of the engineer, the consideration of the infinitely small
leads to the aim in a manner which is more felicitous, more prompt, and more immediately
adapted to the nature of the questions, and that is why the Leibnizian method has, in general,
prevailed in French schools.
The second work of Lagrange on this topic Leçons sur le calcul des fonctions Ⓣ
appeared in 1800. Napoleon named Lagrange to the Legion of Honour and Count of the Empire
in 1808. On 3 April 1813 he was awarded the Grand Croix of the Ordre Impérial de la Réunion.
He died a week later.

O. Gaspard Monge
Quick Info
Born
 9 May 1746
Beaune, Bourgogne, France
Died
28 July 1818
Paris, France
Summary
Gaspard Monge is considered the father of differential geometry because of his work
Application de l'analyse à la géométrie where he introduced the concept of lines of
curvature of a surface in 3-space.

Biography
Gaspard Monge became the Comte de Péluse later in his life and he is sometimes
known by this name. His father was Jacques Monge, a merchant who came originally from
Haute-Savoie in southeastern France. Gaspard's mother, whose maiden name was Jeanne
Rousseaux, was a native of Burgundy and it was in the town of Beaune in Burgundy that
Gaspard was brought up. Around the time that Gaspard was born Beaune, after a period of
decline, was becoming prosperous again due to the success of the wine trade.
Monge attended the Oratorian College in Beaune. This school was intended for young
nobles and was run by priests. The school offered a more liberal education than other religious
schools, providing instruction not only in the humanities but also in history, mathematics, and
the natural sciences. It was at this school that Monge first showed his brilliance. In 1762, at the
age of 16, Monge went to Lyon where he continued his education at the Collège de la Trinité.
Despite being only 17 years of age at the time, Monge was put in charge of teaching a course in
physics. Completing his education there in 1764, Monge returned to Beaune where he drew up a
plan of the city.
The plan of Beaune that Monge constructed was to have a major influence in the
direction that his career took, for the plan was seen by a member of staff at the École Royale du
Génie at Mézières. He was very impressed by Monge's work and, in 1765, Monge was appointed
to the École Royale du Génie as a draftsman. Of course, in this post Monge was undertaking
tasks that were not entirely to his liking, for he aspired to a position in life which made far more
use of his mathematical talents. However the École Royale du Génie brought Monge into contact
with Charles Bossut who was the professor of mathematics there. At first Monge's post did not
require him to use his mathematical talents, but Monge worked in his own time developing his
own ideas ofgeometry.
About a year after becoming a draftsman, Monge was given a task which allowed him to
use his mathematical skill to attack the task he was given. Asked to draw up a fortification plan
which prevented an enemy from either seeing or firing at a military position no matter what the
position of the enemy, Monge devised his own graphical method to construct such a fortification
rather than use the complicated methods then available. This method made full use of the
geometrical techniques which Monge was developing in his own time. His mathematical abilities
were now recognised at the École Royale du Génie and it was realised that Monge was someone
with exceptional abilities in both theoretical and practical subjects.
Bossut was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1768 and he left the École in
Mézières to become professor of hydrodynamics at the Louvre. On 22 January 1769 Monge
wrote to Bossut explaining that he was writing a work on the evolutes of curves of double
curvature. He asked Bossut to give an opinion on the originality and usefulness of the work.
Bossut must have replied in a very positive fashion for in June a publication in the Journal
Encyclopédique by Monge (his first publication) appeared giving a summary of the results which
he had obtained. This paper, in which Monge generalised the results obtained by Huygens on
space curves (as part of Huygens's investigation of the pendulum) and added many important
new discoveries, is described in detail in [19]. The completed work was submitted to the
Académie des Sciences in Paris in October 1770 and read before the Académie in August 1771
(although it was not published by the Académie until 1785).
When Bossut left the École Royale du Génie at Mézières, Monge was appointed to
succeed him in January 1769. In 1770 he received an additional post at the École Royale du
Génie when he was appointed as instructor in experimental physics. Although this was a large
step forward for Monge's career, he was more interested in making his name as a mathematician
in the highest circles. Realising that he had to obtain advice from the leading mathematicians,
Monge approached d'Alembert and Condorcet early in 1771. Condorcet must have been
impressed with the depth of the mathematics that Monge showed him, for he recommended that
he present memoirs to the Académie des Sciences in each of the four areas of mathematics in
which he was undertaking research.
The four memoirs that Monge submitted to the Académie were on a generalisation of the
calculus of variations, infinitesimal geometry, the theory of partial differential equations, and
combinatorics. Over the next few years he submitted a series of important papers to the
Académie on partial differential equations which he studied from a geometrical point of view.
His interest in subjects other than mathematics began to grow and he became interested in
problems in both physics and chemistry.
In 1777 Monge married Cathérine Huart and, since his wife had a forge, he became
interested in metallurgy in addition to his wide range of mathematical and scientific interests.
Still deeply involved in teaching at the École Royale du Génie at Mézières he organised the
setting up of a chemistry laboratory there. From 1780, however, he devoted less time to his work
at the École at Mézières since in that year he was elected as adjoint géomètre at the Académie
des Sciences in Paris. From that time he spent long periods in Paris, teaching a course in
hydrodynamics as a substitute for Bossut as well as participating in projects undertaken by the
Académie in mathematics, physics and chemistry. It was not possible to do all this and to teach
all his courses at Mézières but he kept his posts there and received his full salary out of which he
paid others to teach some courses in his place.
After three years of dividing his time between Paris and Mézières, Monge was offered
yet another post, namely to replace Bézout as examiner of naval cadets. Monge would have liked
to keep all these positions, but after attempting to organise an impossible schedule for about a
year, he decided that he would have to resign his posts in Mézières, which he did in December
1784. Over the next five years, despite heavy duties as an examiner, Monge undertook research
in a wide range of scientific subjects presenting papers to the Académie on [1]:-
...the composition of nitrous acid, the generation of curved surfaces, finite difference equations,
partial differential equations (1785); double refraction and the structure of Iceland spar, the
composition of iron, steel, and cast iron, and the action of electricity sparks on carbon dioxide
gas (1786); capillary phenomena (1787); and the causes of certain meteorological phenomena
(1788); and a study in physiological optics (1789).
Of course 1789 was an eventful year in French history with the storming of the Bastille
on 14 July 1789 marking the start of the French Revolution. This was to completely change the
course of Monge's life. At the onset of the Revolution he was one of the leading scientists in
Paris with an outstanding research record in a wide variety of sciences, experience as an
examiner and experience in school reforms which he had undertaken in 1786 as part of his duties
as an examiner. Politically Monge was a strong supporter of the Revolution, and his first actions
were to show his support by joining various societies supporting the Revolution, but he
continued his normal duties as an examiner of naval cadets, and as a major figure in the work of
the Académie. By this time he was on the major Académie Commission on Weights and
Measures.
Louis XVI attempted to flee the country on 20 June 1791, but was stopped at Varennes
and brought back to Paris, and this put an end to attempts to share government between the king
and an assembly. Relations with Europe deteriorated when the National Assembly declared that a
people had the right of self-determination. France declared war on Austria and Prussia on 20
April 1792. French defeats led to unrest in France and, on 10 August 1792, there was further
revolutions by the people with nobles and clergy murdered during September. On 21 September
the monarchy was abolished in France and a republic was declared. Monge was offered the post
of Minister of the Navy in the government by the National Convention.
Without disrespect to Monge, it was impossible to satisfy the quite extreme views of
many people, and Monge's period as Minister of the Navy cannot be viewed as a success.
Although he tried hard in difficult circumstances, he survived only eight months in the post
before he gave up the incessant battle with those around him, and he submitted his resignation on
10 April 1793. For a few months Monge returned to his work with the Académie des Sciences
but this did not last long for, on 8 August 1793, the Académie des Sciences was abolished by the
National Convention.
Still a strong republican and supporter of the Revolution, Monge worked on various
military projects relating to arms and explosives. He wrote papers on the topics and also gave
courses on these military topics. He continued to serve on the Commission on Weights and
Measures which survived despite ending the Académie des Sciences. He also proposed
educational reforms to the National Convention but, despite being accepted on 15 September
1793, it was rejected on the following day. Such was the volatile nature of decisions at this
unstable time.
Monge was appointed by the National Convention on 11 March 1794 to the body that
was put in place to establish the École Centrale des Travaux Publics (soon to become the École
Polytechnique). Not only was he a major influence in setting up the École using his experience at
Mézières to good effect, but he was appointed as an instructor in descriptive geometry on 9
November 1794. His first task as instructor was to train future teachers of the school which
began to operate from June 1795. Monge's lectures on infinitesimal geometry were to form the
basis of his book Application de l'analyse à la géométrie.
Another educational establishment, the École Normale, was set up to train secondary
school teachers and Monge gave a course on descriptive geometry. He was also a strong believer
in the Académie des Sciences and worked hard to see it reinstated as the Institut National. The
National Convention approved the new body on 26 October 1795. However from May 1796 to
October 1797, Monge was in Italy on a commission to select the best art treasures for the
conquerors and bring them to France. Of particular significance was the fact that he became
friendly with Napoleon Bonaparte during his time in Italy. Napoleon had defeated Austria and
signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 17 October 1797 which was an exceptionally good treaty
for France, preserving most of the French conquests. Monge returned to Paris bringing the text of
the Treaty of Campo Formio with him.
Back in Paris Monge slotted back into his previous roles and was appointed to the
prestigious new one of Director of the École Polytechnique. By February 1798 Monge was back
in Rome, involved with the setting up of the Republic of Rome. In [17] the author describes
these events using letters which Monge sent to his wife from Rome at that time. In particular
Monge proposed a project for advanced schools in the Republic of Rome. Napoleon Bonaparte
now asked Monge to join him on his Egyptian expedition and, somewhat reluctantly, Monge
agreed.
Monge left Italy on 26 May 1798 and joined Napoleon's expeditionary force. The
expedition, which included the mathematicians Fourier and Malus as well as Monge, was at first
a great success. Malta was occupied on 10 June 1798, Alexandria taken by storm on 1 July, and
the delta of the Nile quickly taken. However, on 1 August 1798 the French fleet was completely
destroyed by Nelson's fleet in the Battle of the Nile, so that Napoleon found himself confined to
the land that he was occupying. Monge was appointed president of the Institut d'Egypte in Cairo
on 21 August. The Institut had twelve members of the mathematics division, including Fourier,
Monge, Malus and Napoleon Bonaparte. During difficult times with Napoleon in Egypt and
Syria, Monge continued to work on perfecting his treatise Application de l'analyse à la
géométrie.
Napoleon abandoned his army and returned to Paris in 1799, he soon held absolute power
in France. Monge was back in Paris on 16 October 1799 and took up his role as director of the
École Polytechnique. He discovered that his memoir Géométrie descriptive Ⓣ had been
published earlier in 1799. This had been done at his wife's request and had been put together by
Hachette from Monge's lectures at the École Normale. On 9 November 1799 Napoleon and two
others seized power in a coup and a new government, the Consulate, was set up. Napoleon
named Monge a senator on the Consulate for life. Monge accepted with pleasure, although his
republican views should have meant that he was opposed to the military dictatorship imposed by
Napoleon on France. The truth must be that Monge was [1]:-
... dazzled by Napoleon ... and accepted all the honours and gifts the emperor bestowed upon
him: grand officer of the Legion of Honour in 1804, president of the Senate in 1806, Count of
Péluse in 1808, among others.
Over the next few years Monge continued a whole range of activities, undertaking his
role as a senator while maintaining an interest in research in mathematics but mostly his
mathematical work involved teaching and writing texts for the students at the École
Polytechnique. Slowly he became less involved in mathematical research, then from 1809 he
gave up his teaching at the École Polytechnique as his health began to fail.
In June 1812 Napoleon assembled his Grande Armée of about 453,000 men, including
men from Prussia and from Austria who were forced to serve, and marched on Russia. The
campaign was a disaster but by September Napoleon's army had entered a deserted Moscow.
Napoleon withdrew, the Prussians and Austrians deserted the Grande Armée and in there were
attempts at a coup against Napoleon in Paris. Monge was dismayed at the situation and his health
suddenly collapsed. Slowly his health returned after Napoleon left the remains of his army and
returned to Paris to assert his authority. After Napoleon had some military success in 1813, the
allied armies against him strengthened. Monge was sent to Liège to organise the defence of the
town against an attack.
The allied armies began to move against France and Monge fled. When Napoleon
abdicated on 6 April 1814, Monge was not in Paris, but soon after he did return and tried to pick
up his life again. Napoleon escaped from Elba, where he had been banished, and by 20 March
1815 he was back in Paris. Monge immediately rallied to Napoleon and gave him his full
support. After Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, Monge continued to see him until he was put
on board a ship on 15 July. By October Monge feared for his life and fled from France.
Monge returned to Paris in March 1816. Two days after his return he was expelled from
the Institut de France and from then on his life was desperately difficult as he was harassed
politically and his life was continually threatened. On his death the students of the École
Polytechnique paid tribute to him despite the insistence of the French Government that no
tributes should be paid.
In [9] Monge’s political career is treated kindly but G Jorland, in a review of that paper,
takes a harder view:-
[Monge’s] tenure at the Ministry of the Navy was a complete failure and he presided over the
cultural pillage of Italy and Egypt. If Napoleon actually said that Monge loved him like a
mistress, it proves that the utmost mathematical clarity can go hand in hand with political
blindness.
We have commented quite frequently regarding Monge's scientific work above. He is
considered the father of differential geometry because of his work Application de l'analyse à la
géométrie where he introduced the concept of lines of curvature of a surface in 3-dimensional
space. He developed a general method of applying geometry to problems of construction. He
also introduced two planes of projection at right angles to each other for graphical description of
solid objects. These techniques were generalised into a system called géométrie descriptive,
which is now known as orthographic projection, the graphical method used in modern
mechanical drawing.
The basic philosophy behind Monge's approach to mathematics is discussed in [13]
where the author states that Monge's aims were the:-
….geometrisation of mathematics based on:
(a) the analogy or correspondence of operations in analysis with geometric transformations;
(b) the genetic classification and parametrisation of surfaces through analysis of the movement
of generating lines.
Monge regarded analysis as being [13]:-
... not a self-contained language but merely the 'script' of the 'moving geometrical spectacle' that
constitutes reality. ... [His] new approach addressed itself to the most profound, intimate and
universal relations in space and their transformations, putting him in a position to interconnect
geometry and analysis in a fertile, previously unheard-of fashion. Practical concerns induced
Monge to perceive the object and function of mathematics in a new way, in violation of the
formalistic (linguistic) standards set by the approved patrons of mathematics ...

P. Pierre-Simon Laplace

Quick Info
Born
23 March 1749
Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France
Died
5 March 1827
Paris, France

Summary
Pierre-Simon Laplace proved the stability of the solar system. In analysis Laplace
introduced the potential function and Laplace coefficients. He also put the theory of
mathematical probability on a sound footing.
Biography
Pierre-Simon Laplace's father, Pierre Laplace, was comfortably well off in the cider
trade. Laplace's mother, Marie-Anne Sochon, came from a fairly prosperous farming family who
owned land at Tourgéville. Many accounts of Laplace say his family were 'poor farming people'
or 'peasant farmers' but these seem to be rather inaccurate although there is little evidence of
academic achievement except for an uncle who is thought to have been a secondary school
teacher of mathematics. This is stated in [1] in these terms:-
There is little record of intellectual distinction in the family beyond what was to be expected of
the cultivated provincial bourgeoisie and the minor gentry.
Laplace attended a Benedictine priory school in Beaumont-en-Auge, as a day pupil,
between the ages of 7 and 16. His father expected him to make a career in the Church and indeed
either the Church or the army were the usual destinations of pupils at the priory school. At the
age of 16 Laplace entered Caen University. As he was still intending to enter the Church, he
enrolled to study theology. However, during his two years at the University of Caen, Laplace
discovered his mathematical talents and his love of the subject. Credit for this must go largely to
two teachers of mathematics at Caen, C Gadbled and P Le Canu of whom little is known except
that they realised Laplace's great mathematical potential.
Once he knew that mathematics was to be his subject, Laplace left Caen without taking
his degree, and went to Paris. He took with him a letter of introduction to d'Alembert from Le
Canu, his teacher at Caen. Although Laplace was only 19 years old when he arrived in Paris he
quickly impressed d'Alembert. Not only did d'Alembert begin to direct Laplace's mathematical
studies, he also tried to find him a position to earn enough money to support himself in Paris.
Finding a position for such a talented young man did not prove hard, and Laplace was soon
appointed as professor of mathematics at the École Militaire. Gillespie writes in [1]:-
Imparting geometry, trigonometry, elementary analysis, and statics to adolescent cadets of good
family, average attainment, and no commitment to the subjects afforded little stimulus, but the
post did permit Laplace to stay in Paris.
He began producing a steady stream of remarkable mathematical papers, the first
presented to the Académie des Sciences in Paris on 28 March 1770. This first paper, read to the
Society but not published, was on maxima and minima of curves where he improved on methods
given by Lagrange. His next paper for the Academy followed soon afterwards, and on 18 July
1770 he read a paper on difference equations.
Laplace's first paper which was to appear in print was one on the integral calculus which
he translated into Latin and published at Leipzig in the Nova acta eruditorum in 1771. Six years
later Laplace republished an improved version, apologising for the 1771 paper and blaming
errors contained in it on the printer. Laplace also translated the paper on maxima and minima
into Latin and published it in the Nova acta eruditorum in 1774. Also in 1771 Laplace sent
another paper Recherches sur le calcul intégral aux différences infiniment petites, et aux
différences finies Ⓣ to the Mélanges de Turin. This paper contained equations which Laplace
stated were important in mechanics and physical astronomy.
The year 1771 marks Laplace's first attempt to gain election to the Académie des
Sciences but Vandermonde was preferred. Laplace tried to gain admission again in 1772 but this
time Cousin was elected. Despite being only 23 (and Cousin 33) Laplace felt very angry at being
passed over in favour of a mathematician who was so clearly markedly inferior to him.
D'Alembert also must have been disappointed for, on 1 January 1773, he wrote to Lagrange, the
Director of Mathematics at the Berlin Academy of Science, asking him whether it might be
possible to have Laplace elected to the Berlin Academy and for a position to be found for
Laplace in Berlin.
Before Lagrange could act on d'Alembert's request, another chance for Laplace to gain
admission to the Paris Académie arose. On 31 March 1773 he was elected an adjoint in the
Académie des Sciences. By the time of his election he had read 13 papers to the Académie in
less than three years. Condorcet, who was permanent secretary to the Académie, remarked on
this great number of quality papers on a wide range of topics.
 We have already mentioned some of Laplace's early work. Not only had he made major
contributions to difference equations and differential equations but he had examined applications
to mathematical astronomy and to the theory of probability, two major topics which he would
work on throughout his life. His work on mathematical astronomy before his election to the
Academy included work on the inclination of planetary orbits, a study of how planets were
perturbed by their moons, and in a paper read to the Académie on 27 November 1771 he made a
study of the motions of the planets which would be the first step towards his later masterpiece on
the stability of the solar system.
Laplace’s reputation steadily increased during the 1770s. It was the period in which he
[1]:-
… established his style, reputation, philosophical position, certain mathematical techniques, and
a programme of research in two areas, probability and celestial mechanics, in which he worked
mathematically for the rest of his life.
The 1780s were the period in which Laplace produced the depth of results which have made him
one of the most important and influential scientists that the world has seen. It was not achieved,
however, with good relationships with his colleagues. Although d'Alembert had been proud to
have considered Laplace as his protégé, he certainly began to feel that Laplace was rapidly
making much of his own life's work obsolete and this did nothing to improve relations. Laplace
tried to ease the pain for d'Alembert by stressing the importance of d'Alembert's work since he
undoubtedly felt well disposed towards d'Alembert for the help and support he had given.
It does appear that Laplace was not modest about his abilities and achievements, and he
probably failed to ecognize the effect of his attitude on his colleagues. Lexell visited the
Académie des Sciences in Paris in 1780-81 and reported that Laplace let it be known widely that
he considered himself the best mathematician in France. The effect on his colleagues would have
been only mildly eased by the fact that Laplace was right! Laplace had a wide knowledge of all
sciences and dominated all discussions in the Académie. As Lexell wrote:-
… in the Academy he wanted to pronounce on everything.
It was while Lexell was in Paris that Laplace made an excursion into a new area of
science [2]:-
Applying quantitative methods to a comparison of living and nonliving systems, Laplace and the
chemist Antoine Lavoisier in 1780, with the aid of an ice calorimeter that they had invented,
showed respiration to be a form of combustion.
Although Laplace soon returned to his study of mathematical astronomy, this work with
Lavoisier marked the beginning of a third important area of research for Laplace, namely his
work in physics particularly on the theory of heat which he worked on towards the end of his
career.
In 1784 Laplace was appointed as examiner at the Royal Artillery Corps, and in this role
in 1785, he examined and passed the 16 year old Napoleon Bonaparte. In fact this position gave
Laplace much work in writing reports on the cadets that he examined but the rewards were that
he became well known to the ministers of the government and others in positions of power in
France.
Laplace served on many of the committees of the Académie des Sciences, for example
Lagrange wrote to him in 1782 saying that work on his Traité de mécanique analytique was
almost complete and a committee of the Académie des Sciences comprising of Laplace, Cousin,
Legendre and Condorcet was set up to decide on publication. Laplace served on a committee set
up to investigate the largest hospital in Paris and he used his expertise in probability to compare
mortality rates at the hospital with those of other hospitals in France and elsewhere.
Laplace was promoted to a senior position in the Académie des Sciences in 1785. Two
years later Lagrange left Berlin to join Laplace as a member of the Académie des Sciences in
Paris. Thus the two great mathematical geniuses came together in Paris and, despite a rivalry
between them, each was to benefit greatly from the ideas flowing from the other. Laplace
married on 15 May 1788. His wife, Marie-Charlotte de Courty de Romanges, was 20 years
younger than the 39 year old Laplace. They had two children, their son Charles-Émile who was
born in 1789 went on to a military career.
Laplace was made a member of the committee of the Académie des Sciences to
standardise weights and measures in May 1790. This committee worked on the metric system
and advocated a decimal base. In 1793 the Reign of Terror commenced and the Académie des
Sciences, along with the other learned societies, was suppressed on 8 August. The weights and
measures commission was the only one allowed to continue but soon Laplace, together with
Lavoisier, Borda, Coulomb, Brisson and Delambre were thrown off the commission since all
those on the committee had to be worthy:-
... by their Republican virtues and hatred of kings.
Before the 1793 Reign of Terror Laplace together with his wife and two children left
Paris and lived 50 km southeast of Paris. He did not return to Paris until after July 1794.
Although Laplace managed to avoid the fate of some of his colleagues during the Revolution,
such as Lavoisier who was guillotined in May 1794 while Laplace was out of Paris, he did have
some difficult times. He was consulted, together with Lagrange and Laland, over the new
calendar for the Revolution. Laplace knew well that the proposed scheme did not really work
because the length of the proposed year did not fit with the astronomical data. However he was
wise enough not to try to overrule political dogma with scientific facts. He also conformed,
perhaps more happily, to the decisions regarding the metric division of angles into 100
subdivisions.
In 1795 the École Normale was founded with the aim of training school teachers and
Laplace taught courses there including one on probability which he gave in 1795. The École
Normale survived for only four months for the 1200 pupils, who were training to become school
teachers, found the level of teaching well beyond them. This is entirely understandable. Later
Laplace wrote up the lectures of his course at the École Normale as Essai philosophique sur les
probabilités published in 1814. A review of the Essai states:-
… after a general introduction concerning the principles of probability theory, one finds a
discussion of a host of applications, including those to games of chance, natural philosophy, the
moral sciences, testimony, judicial decisions and mortality.
In 1795 the Académie des Sciences was reopened as the Institut National des Sciences et
des Arts. Also in 1795 the Bureau des Longitudes was founded with Lagrange and Laplace as the
mathematicians among its founding members and Laplace went on to lead the Bureau and the
Paris Observatory. However although some considered he did a fine job in these posts others
criticised him for being too theoretical. Delambre wrote some years later:-
... never should one put a geometer at the head of an observatory; he will neglect all the
observations except those needed for his formulas.
Delambre also wrote concerning Laplace's leadership of the Bureau des Longitudes:-
One can reproach [Laplace] with the fact that in more than 20 years of existence the Bureau des
Longitudes has not determined the position of a single star, or undertaken the preparation of the
smallest catalogue.
Laplace presented his famous nebular hypothesis in 1796 in Exposition du systeme du
monde Ⓣ, which viewed the solar system as originating from the contracting and cooling of a
large, flattened, and slowly rotating cloud of incandescent gas. The Exposition consisted of five
books: the first was on the apparent motions of the celestial bodies, the motion of the sea, and
also atmospheric refraction; the second was on the actual motion of the celestial bodies; the third
was on force and momentum; the fourth was on the theory of universal gravitation and included
an account of the motion of the sea and the shape of the Earth; the final book gave an historical
account of astronomy and included his famous nebular hypothesis. Laplace states his philosophy
of science in the Exposition as follows:-
If man were restricted to collecting facts the sciences were only a sterile nomenclature and he
would never have known the great laws of nature. It is in comparing the phenomena with each
other, in seeking to grasp their relationships, that he is led to discover these laws...
In view of modern theories of impacts of comets on the Earth it is particularly interesting to see
Laplace's remarkably modern view of this:-
... the small probability of collision of the Earth and a comet can become very great in adding
over a long sequence of centuries. It is easy to picture the effects of this impact on the Earth. The
axis and the motion of rotation have changed, the seas abandoning their old position..., a large
part of men and animals drowned in this universal deluge, or destroyed by the violent tremor
imparted to the terrestrial globe.
Exposition du systeme du monde was written as a non-mathematical introduction to
Laplace's most important work Traité de Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ whose first volume appeared
three years later. Laplace had already discovered the invariability of planetary mean motions. In
1786 he had proved that the eccentricities and inclinations of planetary orbits to each other
always remain small, constant, and self-correcting. These and many other of his earlier results
formed the basis for his great work the Traité de Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ published in 5 volumes,
the first two in 1799.
The first volume of the Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ is divided into two books, the first on
general laws of equilibrium and motion of solids and also fluids, while the second book is on the
law of universal gravitation and the motions of the centres of gravity of the bodies in the solar
system. The main mathematical approach here is the setting up of differential equations and
solving them to describe the resulting motions. The second volume deals with mechanics applied
to a study of the planets. In it Laplace included a study of the shape of the Earth which included
a discussion of data obtained from several different expeditions, and Laplace applied his theory
of errors to the results. Another topic studied here by Laplace was the theory of the tides but
Airy, giving his own results nearly 50 years later, wrote:-
It would be useless to offer this theory in the same shape in which Laplace has given it; for that
part of the Mécanique Céleste which contains the theory of tides is perhaps on the whole more
obscure than any other part...
In the Mécanique Céleste Laplace's equation appears but although we now name this
equation after Laplace, it was in fact known before the time of Laplace. The Legendre functions
also appear here and were known for many years as the Laplace coefficients. The Mécanique
Céleste does not attribute many of the ideas to the work of others but Laplace was heavily
influenced by Lagrange and by Legendre and used methods which they had developed with few
references to the originators of the ideas.
Under Napoleon Laplace was a member, then chancellor, of the Senate, and received the
Legion of Honour in 1805. However Napoleon, in his memoirs written on St Hélène, says he
removed Laplace from the office of Minister of the Interior, which he held in 1799, after only six
weeks:-
... because he brought the spirit of the infinitely small into the government.
Laplace became Count of the Empire in 1806 and he was named a marquis in 1817 after
the restoration of the Bourbons.
The first edition of Laplace's Théorie Analytique des Probabilités Ⓣ was published in
1812. This first edition was dedicated to Napoleon-le-Grand but, for obvious reason, the
dedication was removed in later editions! The work consisted of two books and a second edition
two years later saw an increase in the material by about an extra 30 per cent.
The first book studies generating functions and also approximations to various
expressions occurring in probability theory. The second book contains Laplace's definition of
probability, Bayes rule (so named by Poincaré many years later), and remarks on moral and
mathematical expectation. The book continues with methods of finding probabilities of
compound events when the probabilities of their simple components are known, then a
discussion of the method of least squares, Buffon's needle problem, and inverse probability.
Applications to mortality, life expectancy and the length of marriages are given and finally
Laplace looks at moral expectation and probability in legal matters.
Later editions of the Théorie Analytique des Probabilités also contains supplements
which consider applications of probability to: errors in observations; the determination of the
masses of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus; triangulation methods in surveying; and problems of
geodesy in particular the determination of the meridian of France. Much of this work was done
by Laplace between 1817 and 1819 and appears in the 1820 edition of the Théorie Analytique . A
rather less impressive fourth supplement, which returns to the first topic of generating functions,
appeared with the 1825 edition. This final supplement was presented to the Institute by Laplace,
who was 76 years old by this time, and by his son.
We mentioned briefly above Laplace’s first work on physics in 1780 which was outside
the area of mechanics in which he contributed so much. Around 1804 Laplace seems to have
developed an approach to physics which would be highly influential for some years. This is best
explained by Laplace himself:-
... I have sought to establish that the phenomena of nature can be reduced in the last analysis to
actions at a distance between molecule and molecule, and that the consideration of these actions
must serve as the basis of the mathematical theory of these phenomena.
This approach to physics, attempting to explain everything from the forces acting locally
between molecules, already was used by him in the fourth volume of the Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ
which appeared in 1805. This volume contains a study of pressure and density, astronomical
refraction, barometric pressure and the transmission of gravity based on this new philosophy of
physics. It is worth remarking that it was a new approach, not because theories of molecules
were new, but rather because it was applied to a much wider range of problems than any
previous theory and, typically of Laplace, it was much more mathematical than any previous
theories.
Laplace's desire to take a leading role in physics led him to become a founder member of
the Société d'Arcueil in around 1805. Together with the chemist Berthollet, he set up the Society
which operated out of their homes in Arcueil which was south of Paris. Among the
mathematicians who were members of this active group of scientists were Biot and Poisson. The
group strongly advocated a mathematical approach to science with Laplace playing the leading
role. This marks the height of Laplace's influence, dominant also in the Institute and having a
powerful influence on the École Polytechnique and the courses that the students studied there.
After the publication of the fourth volume of the Mécanique Céleste Ⓣ, Laplace
continued to apply his ideas of physics to other problems such as capillary action (1806-07),
double refraction (1809), the velocity of sound (1816), the theory of heat, in particular the shape
and rotation of the cooling Earth (1817-1820), and elastic fluids (1821). However during this
period his dominant position in French science came to an end and others with different physical
theories began to grow in importance.
The Société d'Arcueil, after a few years of high activity, began to become less active with the
meetings becoming less regular around 1812. The meetings ended completely the following year.
Arago, who had been a staunch member of the Society, began to favour the wave theory of light
as proposed by Fresnel around 1815 which was directly opposed to the corpuscular theory which
Laplace supported and developed. Many of Laplace's other physical theories were attacked, for
instance his caloric theory of heat was at odds with the work of Petit and of Fourier. However,
Laplace did not concede that his physical theories were wrong and kept his belief in fluids of
heat and light, writing papers on these topics when over 70 years of age.
At the time that his influence was decreasing, personal tragedy struck Laplace. His only
daughter, Sophie-Suzanne, had married the Marquis de Portes and she died in childbirth in 1813.
The child, however, survived and it is through her that there are descendants of Laplace.
Laplace's son, Charles-Émile, lived to the age of 85 but had no children.
Laplace had always changed his views with the changing political events of the time,
modifying his opinions to fit in with the frequent political changes which were typical of this
period. This way of behaving added to his success in the 1790s and 1800s but certainly did
nothing for his personal relations with his colleagues who saw his changes of views as merely
attempts to win favour. In 1814 Laplace supported the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and
cast his vote in the Senate against Napoleon. The Hundred Days were an embarrassment to him
the following year and he conveniently left Paris for the critical period. After this he remained a
supporter of the Bourbon monarchy and became unpopular in political circles. When he refused
to sign the document of the French Academy of Sciences supporting freedom of the press in
1826, he lost the remaining friends he had in politics.
 On the morning of Monday 5 March 1827 Laplace died. Few events would cause the
Academy to cancel a meeting but they did on that day as a mark of respect for one of the greatest
scientists of all time. Surprisingly there was no quick decision to fill the place left vacant on his
death and the decision of the French Academy of Sciences in October 1827 not to fill the vacant
place for another 6 months did not result in an appointment at that stage, some further months
elapsing before Puissant was elected as Laplace's successor.

Q. Adrien-Marie Legendre

Quick Info
Born
18 September 1752
Paris, France
Died
10 January 1833
Paris, France
Summary
Adrien-Marie Legendre's major work on elliptic integrals provided basic analytical
tools for mathematical physics. He gave a simple proof that π is irrational as well as the
first proof that π2 is irrational.

Biography
Adrien-Marie Legendre would perhaps have disliked the fact that this article contains
details of his life for Poisson wrote of him in [12]:-
Our colleague has often expressed the desire that, in speaking of him, it would only be the
matter of his works, which are, in fact, his entire life.
It is not surprising that, given these views of Legendre, there are few details of his early
life. We have given his place of birth as Paris, but there is some evidence to suggest that he was
born in Toulouse and the family moved to Paris when he was very young. He certainly came
from a wealthy family and he was given a top quality education in mathematics and physics at
the Collège Mazarin in Paris.
In 1770, at the age of 18, Legendre defended his thesis in mathematics and physics at the Collège
Mazarin but this was not quite as grand an achievement as it sounds to us today, for this
consisted more of a plan of research rather than a completed thesis. In the thesis he listed the
literature that he would study and the results that he would be aiming to prove. With no need for
employment to support himself, Legendre lived in Paris and concentrated on research.
From 1775 to 1780 he taught with Laplace at École Militaire where his appointment was
made on the advice of d’Alembert. He then decided to enter for the 1782 prize on projectiles
offered by the Berlin Academy. The actual task was stated as follows:-
Determine the curve described by cannonballs and bombs, taking into consideration the
resistance of the air; give rules for obtaining the ranges corresponding to different initial
velocities and to different angles of projection.
His essay Recherches sur la trajectoire des projectiles dans les milieux résistants Ⓣ won
the prize and launched Legendre on his research career. In 1782 Lagrange was Director of
Mathematics at the Academy in Berlin and this brought Legendre to his attention. He wrote to
Laplace asking for more information about the prize winning young mathematician.
Legendre next studied the attraction of ellipsoids. He gave a proof of a result due to
Maclaurin, that the attractions at an external point lying on the principal axis of two confocal
ellipsoids was proportional to their masses. He then introduced what we call today the Legendre
functions and used these to determine, using power series, the attraction of an ellipsoid at any
exterior point. Legendre submitted his results to the Académie des Sciences in Paris in January
1783 and these were highly praised by Laplace in his report delivered to the Académie in March.
Within a few days, on 30 March, Legendre was appointed an adjoint in the Académie des
Sciences filling the place which had become vacant when Laplace was promoted from adjoint to
associé earlier that year.
 Over the next few years Legendre published work in a number of areas. In particular he
published on celestial mechanics with papers such as Recherches sur la figure des planètes Ⓣ in
1784 which contains the Legendre polynomials; number theory with, for example, Recherches
d'analyse indéterminée Ⓣ in 1785; and the theory of elliptic functions with papers on
integrations by elliptic arcs in 1786.
The 1785 paper on number theory contains a number of important results such as the law
of quadratic reciprocity for residues and the results that every arithmetic series with the first term
coprime to the common difference contains an infinite number of primes. Of course today we
attribute the law of quadratic reciprocity to Gauss and the theorem concerning primes in an
arithmetic progression to Dirichlet. This is fair since Legendre's proof of quadratic reciprocity
was unsatisfactory, while he offered no proof of the theorem on primes in an arithmetic
progression. However, these two results are of great importance and credit should go to Legendre
for his work on them, although he was not the first to state the law of quadratic reciprocity since
it occurs in Euler's work of 1751 and also of 1783 (see [15]).
Legendre's career in the Académie des Sciences progressed in a satisfactory manner. He
became an associé in 1785 and then in 1787 he was a member of the team whose task it was to
work with the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in London on measurements of the Earth
involving a triangulation survey between the Paris and Greenwich observatories. This work
resulted in his election to the Royal Society of London in 1787 and also to an important
publication Mémoire sur les opérations trigonométriques dont les résultats dépendent de la
figure de la terre which contains Legendre's theorem on spherical triangles.
On 13 May 1791 Legendre became a member of the committee of the Académie des
Sciences with the task to standardise weights and measures. The committee worked on the metric
system and undertook the necessary astronomical observations and triangulations necessary to
compute the length of the metre. At this time Legendre was also working on his major text
Eléments de géométrie which he had been encouraged to write by Condorcet. However the
Académie des Sciences was closed due to the Revolution in 1793 and Legendre had special
difficulties since he lost the capital which provided him with a comfortable income. He later
wrote to Jacobi explaining his personal circumstances around this time (see [1]):-
I married following a bloody revolution that had destroyed my small fortune; we had great
problems and some very difficult moments, but my wife staunchly helped me to put my affairs in
order little by little and gave me the tranquillity necessary for my customary work and for
writing new works which have steadily increased my reputation.
Following the work of the committee on the decimal system on which Legendre had
served, de Prony in 1792 began a major task of producing logarithmic and trigonometric tables,
the Cadastre. Legendre and de Prony headed the mathematical section of this project along with
Carnot and other mathematicians. They had between 70 to 80 assistants and the work was
undertaken over a period of years, being completed in 1801.
In 1794 Legendre published Eléments de géométrie Ⓣ which was the leading elementary
text on the topic for around 100 years. The work is described in [2]:-
In his "Eléments" Legendre greatly rearranged and simplified many of the propositions from
Euclid's "Elements" to create a more effective textbook. Legendre's work replaced Euclid's
"Elements" as a textbook in most of Europe and, in succeeding translations, in the United States
and became the prototype of later geometry texts. In "Eléments" Legendre gave a simple proof
that π is irrational, as well as the first proof that π 2 is irrational, and conjectured that π is not the
root of any algebraic equation of finite degree with rational coefficients.
In 1795 the Académie des Sciences was reopened as the Institut National des Sciences et
des Arts and from then until 1806 it met in the Louvre. Each section of the Institut contained six
places, and Legendre was one of the six in the mathematics section. In 1803 Napoleon
reorganised the Institut and a geometry section was created and Legendre was put into this
section.
Legendre published a book on determining the orbits of comets in 1806. In this he wrote:-
I have thought that what there was better to do in the problem of comets was to start out from the
immediate data of observation, and to use all means to simplify as much as possible the formulas
and the equations which serve to determine the elements of the orbit.
His method involved three observations taken at equal intervals and he assumed that the
comet followed a parabolic path so that he ended up with more equations than there were
unknowns. He applied his methods to the data known for two comets. In an appendix Legendre
gave the least squares method of fitting a curve to the data available. However, Gauss published
his version of the least squares method in 1809 and, while acknowledging that it appeared in
Legendre's book, Gauss still claimed priority for himself. This greatly hurt Legendre who fought
for many years to have his priority recognised.
 In 1808 Legendre published a second edition of his Théorie des nombres which was a
considerable improvement on the first edition of 1798. For example Gauss had proved the law of
quadratic reciprocity in 1801 after making critical remarks about Legendre's proof of 1785 and
Legendre's much improved proof of 1798 in the first edition of Théorie des nombres Ⓣ. Gauss
was correct, but one could understand how hurtful Legendre must have found an attack on the
rigour of his results by such a young man. Of course Gauss did not state that he was improving
Legendre's result but rather claimed the result for himself since his was the first completely
rigorous proof. Legendre later wrote (see [20]):-
This excessive impudence is unbelievable in a man who has sufficient personal merit not to have
need of appropriating the discoveries of others.
To his credit Legendre used Gauss's proof of quadratic reciprocity in the 1808 edition of Théorie
des nombres Ⓣ giving proper credit to Gauss. The 1808 edition of Théorie des nombres Ⓣ also
contained Legendre's estimate for π(n)π(n) the number of primes ≤ nn of π(n)=n/(log⁡(n)
−1.08366)π(n)=n/(log(n)−1.08366). Again Gauss would claim that he had obtained the law for
the asymptotic distribution of primes before Legendre, but certainly it was Legendre who first
brought these ideas to the attention of mathematicians.
Legendre's major work on elliptic functions in Exercices du Calcul Intégral appeared in
three volumes in 1811, 1817, and 1819. In the first volume Legendre introduced basic properties
of elliptic integrals and also of beta and gamma functions. More results on beta and gamma
functions appeared in the second volume together with applications of his results to mechanics,
the rotation of the Earth, the attraction of ellipsoids and other problems. The third volume was
largely devoted to tables of elliptic integrals.
In November 1824 he decided to reprint a new edition but he was not happy with this
work by September 1825 publication began of his new work Traité des Fonctions Elliptiques
again in three volumes of 1825, 1826, and 1830. This new work covered similar material to the
original but the material was completely reorganised. However, despite spending 40 years
working on elliptic functions, Legendre never gained the insight of Jacobi and Abel and the
independent work of these two mathematicians was making Legendre's new three volume work
obsolete almost as soon as it was published.
Legendre's attempt to prove the parallel postulate extended over 30 years. However as
stated in his attempts:-
... all failed because he always relied, in the last analysis, on propositions that were "evident"
from the Euclidean point of view.
In 1832 (the year Bolyai published his work on non-euclidean geometry) Legendre
confirmed his absolute belief in Euclidean space when he wrote:-
It is nevertheless certain that the theorem on the sum of the three angles of the triangle should be
considered one of those fundamental truths that are impossible to contest and that are an
enduring example of mathematical certitude.
In 1824 Legendre refused to vote for the government's candidate for the Institut National.
Abel wrote in October 1826:-
Legendre is an extremely amiable man, but unfortunately as old as the stones.
As a result of Legendre's refusal to vote for the government's candidate in 1824 his pension was
stopped and he died in poverty.

R. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Quick Info
Born
30 April 1777
Brunswick, Duchy of Brunswick (now Germany)
Died
23 February 1855
Göttingen, Hanover (now Germany)
Summary
Carl Friedrich Gauss worked in a wide variety of fields in both mathematics and
physics incuding number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism,
astronomy and optics. His work has had an immense influence in many areas.
Biography
At the age of seven, Carl Friedrich Gauss started elementary school, and his potential
was noticed almost immediately. His teacher, Büttner, and his assistant, Martin Bartels, were
amazed when Gauss summed the integers from 1 to 100 instantly by spotting that the sum was
50 pairs of numbers each pair summing to 101.
In 1788 Gauss began his education at the Gymnasium with the help of Büttner and
Bartels, where he learnt High German and Latin. After receiving a stipend from the Duke of
Brunswick- Wolfenbüttel, Gauss entered Brunswick Collegium Carolinum in 1792. At the
academy Gauss independently discovered Bode's law, the binomial theorem and the arithmetic-
geometric mean, as well as the law of quadratic reciprocity and the prime number theorem.
In 1795 Gauss left Brunswick to study at Göttingen University. Gauss's teacher there was
Kästner, whom Gauss often ridiculed. His only known friend amongst the students was Farkas
Bolyai. They met in 1799 and corresponded with each other for many years.
Gauss left Göttingen in 1798 without a diploma, but by this time he had made one of his
most important discoveries - the construction of a regular 17-gon by ruler and compasses This
was the most major advance in this field since the time of Greek mathematics and was published
as Section VII of Gauss's famous work, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae .
Gauss returned to Brunswick where he received a degree in 1799. After the Duke of
Brunswick had agreed to continue Gauss's stipend, he requested that Gauss submit a doctoral
dissertation to the University of Helmstedt. He already knew Pfaff, who was chosen to be his
advisor. Gauss's dissertation was a discussion of the fundamental theorem of algebra.
With his stipend to support him, Gauss did not need to find a job so devoted himself to
research. He published the book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae Ⓣ in the summer of 1801. There
were seven sections, all but the last section, referred to above, being devoted to number theory.
In June 1801, Zach, an astronomer whom Gauss had come to know two or three years
previously, published the orbital positions of Ceres, a new "small planet" which was discovered
by G Piazzi, an Italian astronomer on 1 January, 1801. Unfortunately, Piazzi had only been able
to observe 9 degrees of its orbit before it disappeared behind the Sun. Zach published several
predictions of its position, including one by Gauss which differed greatly from the others. When
Ceres was rediscovered by Zach on 7 December 1801 it was almost exactly where Gauss had
predicted. Although he did not disclose his methods at the time, Gauss had used his least squares
approximation method.
In June 1802 Gauss visited Olbers who had discovered Pallas in March of that year and
Gauss investigated its orbit. Olbers requested that Gauss be made director of the proposed new
observatory in Göttingen, but no action was taken. Gauss began corresponding with Bessel,
whom he did not meet until 1825, and with Sophie Germain.
Gauss married Johanna Ostoff on 9 October, 1805. Despite having a happy personal life
for the first time, his benefactor, the Duke of Brunswick, was killed fighting for the Prussian
army. In 1807 Gauss left Brunswick to take up the position of director of the Göttingen
observatory.
Gauss arrived in Göttingen in late 1807. In 1808 his father died, and a year later Gauss's
wife Johanna died after giving birth to their second son, who was to die soon after her. Gauss
was shattered and wrote to Olbers asking him to give him a home for a few weeks,
to gather new strength in the arms of your friendship - strength for a life which is only valuable
because it belongs to my three small children.
Gauss was married for a second time the next year, to Minna the best friend of Johanna, and
although they had three children, this marriage seemed to be one of convenience for Gauss.
Gauss's work never seemed to suffer from his personal tragedy. He published his second
book, Theoria motus corporum coelestium in sectionibus conicis Solem ambientium , in 1809, a
major two volume treatise on the motion of celestial bodies. In the first volume he discussed
differential equations, conic sections and elliptic orbits, while in the second volume, the main
part of the work, he showed how to estimate and then to refine the estimation of a planet's orbit.
Gauss's contributions to theoretical astronomy stopped after 1817, although he went on making
observations until the age of 70.
 Much of Gauss's time was spent on a new observatory, completed in 1816, but he still
found the time to work on other subjects. His publications during this time include
Disquisitiones generales circa seriem infinitam , a rigorous treatment of series and an
introduction of the hypergeometric function, Methodus nova integralium valores per
approximationem inveniendi , a practical essay on approximate integration, Bestimmung der
Genauigkeit der Beobachtungen , a discussion of statistical estimators, and Theoria attractionis
corporum sphaeroidicorum ellipticorum homogeneorum methodus nova tractata Ⓣ. The latter
work was inspired by geodesic problems and was principally concerned with potential theory. In
fact, Gauss found himself more and more interested in geodesy in the 1820s.
Gauss had been asked in 1818 to carry out a geodesic survey of the state of Hanover to link up
with the existing Danish grid. Gauss was pleased to accept and took personal charge of the
survey, making measurements during the day and reducing them at night, using his extraordinary
mental capacity for calculations. He regularly wrote to Schumacher, Olbers and Bessel, reporting
on his progress and discussing problems.
Because of the survey, Gauss invented the heliotrope which worked by reflecting the
Sun's rays using a design of mirrors and a small telescope. However, inaccurate base lines were
used for the survey and an unsatisfactory network of triangles. Gauss often wondered if he would
have been better advised to have pursued some other occupation but he published over 70 papers
between 1820 and 1830.
In 1822 Gauss won the Copenhagen University Prize with Theoria attractionis ...
together with the idea of mapping one surface onto another so that the two are similar in their
smallest parts. This paper was published in 1825 and led to the much later publication of
Untersuchungen über Gegenstände der Höheren Geodäsie (1843 and 1846). The paper Theoria
combinationis observationum erroribus minimis obnoxiae (1823), with its supplement (1828),
was devoted to mathematical statistics, in particular to the least squares method.
From the early 1800s Gauss had an interest in the question of the possible existence of a
non-Euclidean geometry. He discussed this topic at length with Farkas Bolyai and in his
correspondence with Gerling and Schumacher. In a book review in 1816 he discussed proofs
which deduced the axiom of parallels from the other Euclidean axioms, suggesting that he
believed in the existence of non-Euclidean geometry, although he was rather vague.
... the vain effort to conceal with an untenable tissue of pseudo proofs the gap which one cannot
fill out.
Gauss confided in Schumacher, telling him that he believed his reputation would suffer if
he admitted in public that he believed in the existence of such a geometry.
In 1831 Farkas Bolyai sent to Gauss his son János Bolyai's work on the subject. Gauss
replied to praise it would mean to praise myself . Again, a decade later, when he was informed of
Lobachevsky's work on the subject, he praised its "genuinely geometric" character, while in a
letter to Schumacher in 1846, states that he
had the same convictions for 54 years
indicating that he had known of the existence of a non-Euclidean geometry since he was 15 years
of age (this seems unlikely).
Gauss had a major interest in differential geometry, and published many papers on the
subject. Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curva Ⓣ (1828) was his most renowned work
in this field. In fact, this paper rose from his geodesic interests, but it contained such geometrical
ideas as Gaussian curvature. The paper also includes Gauss's famous theorema egregium :-
If an area in R3R3 can be developed (i.e. mapped isometrically) into another area of R3R3, the
values of the Gaussian curvatures are identical in corresponding points.
The period 1817-1832 was a particularly distressing time for Gauss. He took in his sick
mother in 1817, who stayed until her death in 1839, while he was arguing with his wife and her
family about whether they should go to Berlin. He had been offered a position at Berlin
University and Minna and her family were keen to move there. Gauss, however, never liked
change and decided to stay in Göttingen. In 1831 Gauss's second wife died after a long illness.
In 1831, Wilhelm Weber arrived in Göttingen as physics professor filling Tobias Mayer's
chair. Gauss had known Weber since 1828 and supported his appointment. Gauss had worked on
physics before 1831, publishing Über ein neues allgemeines Grundgesetz der Mechanik , which
contained the principle of least constraint, and Principia generalia theoriae figurae fluidorum in
statu aequilibrii which discussed forces of attraction. These papers were based on Gauss's
potential theory, which proved of great importance in his work on physics. He later came to
believe his potential theory and his method of least squares provided vital links between science
and nature.
In 1832, Gauss and Weber began investigating the theory of terrestrial magnetism after
Alexander von Humboldt attempted to obtain Gauss's assistance in making a grid of magnetic
observation points around the Earth. Gauss was excited by this prospect and by 1840 he had
written three important papers on the subject: Intensitas vis magneticae terrestris ad mensuram
absolutam revocata (1832), Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetismus (1839) and Allgemeine
Lehrsätze in Beziehung auf die im verkehrten Verhältnisse des Quadrats der Entfernung
wirkenden Anziehungs- und Abstossungskräfte (1840). These papers all dealt with the current
theories on terrestrial magnetism, including Poisson's ideas, absolute measure for magnetic force
and an empirical definition of terrestrial magnetism. Dirichlet's principle was mentioned without
proof.
Allgemeine Theorie ... showed that there can only be two poles in the globe and went on
to prove an important theorem, which concerned the determination of the intensity of the
horizontal component of the magnetic force along with the angle of inclination. Gauss used the
Laplace equation to aid him with his calculations, and ended up specifying a location for the
magnetic South pole.
Humboldt had devised a calendar for observations of magnetic declination. However,
once Gauss's new magnetic observatory (completed in 1833 - free of all magnetic metals) had
been built, he proceeded to alter many of Humboldt's procedures, not pleasing Humboldt greatly.
However, Gauss's changes obtained more accurate results with less effort.
Gauss and Weber achieved much in their six years together. They discovered Kirchhoff's
laws, as well as building a primitive telegraph device which could send messages over a distance
of 5000 ft. However, this was just an enjoyable pastime for Gauss. He was more interested in the
task of establishing a world-wide net of magnetic observation points. This occupation produced
many concrete results. The Magnetischer Verein Ⓣ and its journal were founded, and the atlas of
geomagnetism was published, while Gauss and Weber's own journal in which their results were
published ran from 1836 to 1841.
In 1837, Weber was forced to leave Göttingen when he became involved in a political
dispute and, from this time, Gauss's activity gradually decreased. He still produced letters in
response to fellow scientists' discoveries usually remarking that he had known the methods for
years but had never felt the need to publish. Sometimes he seemed extremely pleased with
advances made by other mathematicians, particularly that of Eisenstein and of Lobachevsky.
Gauss spent the years from 1845 to 1851 updating the Göttingen University widow's
fund. This work gave him practical experience in financial matters, and he went on to make his
fortune through shrewd investments in bonds issued by private companies.
Two of Gauss's last doctoral students were Moritz Cantor and Dedekind. Dedekind wrote
a fine description of his supervisor:-
... usually he sat in a comfortable attitude, looking down, slightly stooped, with hands folded
above his lap. He spoke quite freely, very clearly, simply and plainly: but when he wanted to
emphasise a new viewpoint ... then he lifted his head, turned to one of those sitting next to him,
and gazed at him with his beautiful, penetrating blue eyes during the emphatic speech. ... If he
proceeded from an explanation of principles to the development of mathematical formulas, then
he got up, and in a stately very upright posture he wrote on a blackboard beside him in his
peculiarly beautiful handwriting: he always succeeded through economy and deliberate
arrangement in making do with a rather small space. For numerical examples, on whose careful
completion he placed special value, he brought along the requisite data on little slips of paper.
Gauss presented his golden jubilee lecture in 1849, fifty years after his diploma had been
granted by Helmstedt University. It was appropriately a variation on his dissertation of 1799.
From the mathematical community only Jacobi and Dirichlet were present, but Gauss received
many messages and honours.
From 1850 onwards Gauss's work was again nearly all of a practical nature although he
did approve Riemann's doctoral thesis and heard his probationary lecture. His last known
scientific exchange was with Gerling. He discussed a modified Foucault pendulum in 1854. He
was also able to attend the opening of the new railway link between Hanover and Göttingen, but
this proved to be his last outing. His health deteriorated slowly, and Gauss died in his sleep early
in the morning of 23 February, 1855.

S. Augustin Louis Cauchy

Quick Info
Born
21 August 1789
Paris, France
Died
 23 May 1857
Sceaux (near Paris), France

Summary
Augustin-Louis Cauchy pioneered the study of analysis, both real and complex, and the
theory of permutation groups. He also researched in convergence and divergence of
infinite series, differential equations, determinants, probability and mathematical physics.

Biography
Paris was a difficult place to live in when Augustin-Louis Cauchy was a young child
due to the political events surrounding the French Revolution. When he was four years old his
father, fearing for his life in Paris, moved his family to Arcueil. There things were hard and he
wrote in a letter [4]:-
We never have more than a half pound of bread - and sometimes not even that. This we
supplement with the little supply of hard crackers and rice that we are allotted.
They soon returned to Paris and Cauchy's father was active in the education of young
Augustin-Louis. Laplace and Lagrange were visitors at the Cauchy family home and Lagrange in
particular seems to have taken an interest in young Cauchy's mathematical education. Lagrange
advised Cauchy's father that his son should obtain a good grounding in languages before starting
a serious study of mathematics. In 1802 Augustin-Louis entered the École Centrale du Panthéon
where he spent two years studying classical languages.
From 1804 Cauchy attended classes in mathematics and he took the entrance examination
for the École Polytechnique in 1805. He was examined by Biot and placed second. At the École
Polytechnique he attended courses by Lacroix, de Prony and Hachette while his analysis tutor
was Ampère. In 1807 he graduated from the École Polytechnique and entered the engineering
school École des Ponts et Chaussées. He was an outstanding student and for his practical work
he was assigned to the Ourcq Canal project where he worked under Pierre Girard.
In 1810 Cauchy took up his first job in Cherbourg to work on port facilities for
Napoleon's English invasion fleet. He took a copy of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste and one of
Lagrange's Théorie des Fonctions Ⓣ with him. It was a busy time for Cauchy, writing home
about his daily duties he said [4]:-
I get up at four o'clock each morning and I am busy from then on. ... I do not get tired of
working, on the contrary, it invigorates me and I am in perfect health...
Cauchy was a devout Catholic and his attitude to his religion was already causing problems for
him. In a letter written to his mother in 1810 he says:-
So they are claiming that my devotion is causing me to become proud, arrogant and self-
infatuated. ... I am now left alone about religion and nobody mentions it to me anymore...
In addition to his heavy workload Cauchy undertook mathematical researches and he
proved in 1811 that the angles of a convex polyhedron are determined by its faces. He submitted
his first paper on this topic then, encouraged by Legendre and Malus, he submitted a further
paper on polygons and polyhedra in 1812. Cauchy felt that he had to return to Paris if he was to
make an impression with mathematical research. In September of 1812 he returned to Paris after
becoming ill. It appears that the illness was not a physical one and was probably of a
psychological nature resulting in severe depression.
Back in Paris Cauchy investigated symmetric functions and submitted a memoir on this
topic in November 1812. This was published in the Journal of the École Polytechnique in 1815.
However he was supposed to return to Cherbourg in February 1813 when he had recovered his
health and this did not fit with his mathematical ambitions. His request to de Prony for an
associate professorship at the École des Ponts et Chaussées was turned down but he was allowed
to continue as an engineer on the Ourcq Canal project rather than return to Cherbourg. Pierre
Girard was clearly pleased with his previous work on this project and supported the move.
An academic career was what Cauchy wanted and he applied for a post in the Bureau des
Longitudes. He failed to obtain this post, Legendre being appointed. He also failed to be
appointed to the geometry section of the Institute, the position going to Poinsot. Cauchy obtained
further sick leave, having unpaid leave for nine months, then political events prevented work on
the Ourcq Canal so Cauchy was able to devote himself entirely to research for a couple of years.
Other posts became vacant but one in 1814 went to Ampère and a mechanics vacancy at
the Institute, which had occurred when Napoleon Bonaparte resigned, went to Molard. In this
last election Cauchy did not receive a single one of the 53 votes cast. His mathematical output
remained strong and in 1814 he published the memoir on definite integrals that later became the
basis of his theory of complex functions.
In 1815 Cauchy lost out to Binet for a mechanics chair at the École Polytechnique, but
then was appointed assistant professor of analysis there. He was responsible for the second year
course. In 1816 he won the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences for a work on waves.
He achieved real fame however when he submitted a paper to the Institute solving one of
Fermat's claims on polygonal numbers made to Mersenne. Politics now helped Cauchy into the
Academy of Sciences when Carnot and Monge fell from political favour and were dismissed and
Cauchy filled one of the two places.
In 1817 when Biot left Paris for an expedition to the Shetland Islands in Scotland Cauchy
filled his post at the Collège de France. There he lectured on methods of integration which he
had discovered, but not published, earlier. Cauchy was the first to make a rigorous study of the
conditions for convergence of infinite series in addition to his rigorous definition of an integral.
His text Cours d'analyse in 1821 was designed for students at École Polytechnique and was
concerned with developing the basic theorems of the calculus as rigorously as possible. He began
a study of the calculus of residues in 1826 in Sur un nouveau genre de calcul analogue au calcul
infinitésimal while in 1829 in Leçons sur le Calcul Différentiel he defined for the first time a
complex function of a complex variable.
Cauchy did not have particularly good relations with other scientists. His staunchly
Catholic views had him involved on the side of the Jesuits against the Académie des Sciences.
He would bring religion into his scientific work as for example he did on giving a report on the
theory of light in 1824 when he attacked the author for his view that Newton had not believed
that people had souls. He was described by a journalist who said:-
... it is certain a curious thing to see an academician who seemed to fulfil the respectable
functions of a missionary preaching to the heathens.
An example of how Cauchy treated colleagues is given by Poncelet whose work on projective
geometry had, in 1820, been criticised by Cauchy:-
... I managed to approach my too rigid judge at his residence ... just as he was leaving ... During
this very short and very rapid walk, I quickly perceived that I had in no way earned his regards
or his respect as a scientist ... without allowing me to say anything else, he abruptly walked off,
referring me to the forthcoming publication of his Leçons à 'École Polytechnique where,
according to him, 'the question would be very properly explored'.
Again his treatment of Galois and Abel during this period was unfortunate. Abel, who
visited the Institute in 1826, wrote of him:-
Cauchy is mad and there is nothing that can be done about him, although, right now, he is
the only one who knows how mathematics should be done.
Belhoste in [4] says:-
When Abel's untimely death occurred on April 6, 1829, Cauchy still had not given a report on
the 1826 paper, in spite of several protests from Legendre. The report he finally did give, on
June 29, 1829, was hasty, nasty, and superficial, unworthy of both his own brilliance and the
real importance of the study he had judged.
By 1830 the political events in Paris and the years of hard work had taken their toll and
Cauchy decided to take a break. He left Paris in September 1830, after the revolution of July, and
spent a short time in Switzerland. There he was an enthusiastic helper in setting up the Académie
Helvétique but this project collapsed as it became caught up in political events.
Political events in France meant that Cauchy was now required to swear an oath of
allegiance to the new regime and when he failed to return to Paris to do so he lost all his
positions there. In 1831 Cauchy went to Turin and after some time there he accepted an offer
from the King of Piedmont of a chair of theoretical physics. He taught in Turin from 1832.
Menabrea attended these courses in Turin and wrote that the courses [4]:-
were very confused, skipping suddenly from one idea to another, from one formula to the next,
with no attempt to give a connection between them. His presentations were obscure clouds,
illuminated from time to time by flashes of pure genius. ... of the thirty who enrolled with me, I
was the only one to see it through.
In 1833 Cauchy went from Turin to Prague in order to follow Charles X and to tutor his
grandson. However he was not very successful in teaching the prince as this description shows:-
... exams .. were given each Saturday. ... When questioned by Cauchy on a problem in
descriptive geometry, the prince was confused and hesitant. ... There was also material on
physics and chemistry. As with mathematics, the prince showed very little interest in these
subjects. Cauchy became annoyed and screamed and yelled. The queen sometimes said to him,
soothingly, smilingly, 'too loud, not so loud'.
While in Prague Cauchy had one meeting with Bolzano, at Bolzano's request, in 1834. In
there are discussions on how much Cauchy's definition of continuity is due to Bolzano,
Freudenthal's view in that Cauchy's definition was formed before Bolzano's seems the more
convincing.
Cauchy returned to Paris in 1838 and regained his position at the Academy but not his
teaching positions because he had refused to take an oath of allegiance. De Prony died in 1839
and his position at the Bureau des Longitudes became vacant. Cauchy was strongly supported by
Biot and Arago but Poisson strongly opposed him. Cauchy was elected but, after refusing to
swear the oath, was not appointed and could not attend meetings or receive a salary.
In 1843 Lacroix died and Cauchy became a candidate for his mathematics chair at the
Collège de France. Liouville and Libri were also candidates. Cauchy should have easily been
appointed on his mathematical abilities but his political and religious activities, such as support
for the Jesuits, became crucial factors. Libri was chosen, clearly by far the weakest of the three
mathematically, and Liouville wrote the following day that he was:-
deeply humiliated as a man and as a mathematician by what took place yesterday at the Collège
de France.
During this period Cauchy's mathematical output was less than in the period before his
self-imposed exile. He did important work on differential equations and applications to
mathematical physics. He also wrote on mathematical astronomy, mainly because of his
candidacy for positions at the Bureau des Longitudes. The 4-volume text Exercices d'analyse et
de physique mathématique published between 1840 and 1847 proved extremely important.
When Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848 Cauchy regained his university positions.
However he did not change his views and continued to give his colleagues problems. Libri, who
had been appointed in the political way described above, resigned his chair and fled from France.
Partly this must have been because he was about to be prosecuted for stealing valuable books.
Liouville and Cauchy were candidates for the chair again in 1850 as they had been in 1843. After
a close run election Liouville was appointed. Subsequent attempts to reverse this decision led to
very bad relations between Liouville and Cauchy.
 Another, rather silly, dispute this time with Duhamel clouded the last few years of
Cauchy's life. This dispute was over a priority claim regarding a result on inelastic shocks.
Duhamel argued with Cauchy's claim to have been the first to give the results in 1832. Poncelet
referred to his own work of 1826 on the subject and Cauchy was shown to be wrong. However
Cauchy was never one to admit he was wrong. Valson writes in [7]:-
...the dispute gave the final days of his life a basic sadness and bitterness that only his friends
were aware of...
Also in a letter by Cauchy's daughter describing his death is given:-
Having remained fully alert, in complete control of his mental powers, until 3.30 a.m.. my father
suddenly uttered the blessed names of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. For the first time, he seemed to
be aware of the gravity of his condition. At about four o'clock, his soul went to God. He met his
death with such calm that made us ashamed of our unhappiness.
Numerous terms in mathematics bear Cauchy's name:- the Cauchy integral theorem, in
the theory of complex functions, the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya existence theorem for the solution of
partial differential equations, the Cauchy-Riemann equations and Cauchy sequences. He
produced 789 mathematics papers, an incredible achievement. This achievement is summed up
in [4] as follows:-
... such an enormous scientific creativity is nothing less than staggering, for it presents research
on all the then-known areas of mathematics ... in spite of its vastness and rich multifaceted
character, Cauchy's scientific works possess a definite unifying theme, a secret wholeness. ...
Cauchy's creative genius found broad expression not only in his work on the foundations of real
and complex analysis, areas to which his name is inextricably linked, but also in many other
fields. Specifically, in this connection, we should mention his major contributions to the
development of mathematical physics and to theoretical mechanics... we mention ... his two
theories of elasticity and his investigations on the theory of light, research which required that
he develop whole new mathematical techniques such as Fourier transforms, diagonalisation of
matrices, and the calculus of residues.
T. Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weiestrass

Quick Info
Born
31 October 1815
Ostenfelde, Westphalia (now Germany)
Died
19 February 1897
Berlin, Germany
Summary
Karl Weierstrass is best known for his construction of the theory of complex functions
by means of power series.

Biography
Karl Weierstrass's father, Wilhelm Weierstrass, was secretary to the mayor of Ostenfelde at the
time of Karl's birth. Wilhelm Weierstrass was a well educated man who had a broad knowledge
of the arts and of the sciences. He certainly was well capable of attaining higher positions than he
did, and this attitude may have been one of the reasons that Karl Weierstrass's early career was in
posts well below his outstanding ability. Weierstrass's mother was Theodora Vonderforst and
Karl was the eldest of Theodora and Wilhelm's four children, none of whom married.
Wilhelm Weierstrass became a tax inspector when Karl was eight years old. This job
involved him in only spending short periods in any one place so Karl frequently moved from
school to school as the family moved around Prussia. In 1827 Karl's mother Theodora died and
one year later his father Wilhelm remarried. By 1829 Wilhelm Weierstrass had become an
assistant at the main tax office in Paderborn, and Karl entered the Catholic Gymnasium there.
Weierstrass excelled at the Gymnasium despite having to take on a part-time job as a bookkeeper
to help out the family finances.
While at the Gymnasium Weierstrass certainly reached a level of mathematical
competence far beyond what would have been expected. He regularly read Crelle's Journal and
gave mathematical tuition to one of his brothers. However Weierstrass's father wished him to
study finance and so, after graduating from the Gymnasium in 1834, he entered the University of
Bonn with a course planned out for him which included the study of law, finance and economics.
With the career in the Prussian administration that was planned for him by his father, this was
indeed a well designed course. However, Weierstrass suffered from the conflict of either obeying
his father's wishes or studying the subject he loved, namely mathematics.
The result of the conflict which went on inside Weierstrass was that he did not attend
either the mathematics lectures or the lectures of his planned course. He reacted to the conflict
inside him by pretending that he did not care about his studies, and he spent four years of
intensive fencing and drinking. As Biermann writes in [1]:-
... the conflict between duty and inclination led to physical and mental strain. He tried, in vain,
to overcome his problems by participating in carefree student life ...
He did study mathematics on his own, however, reading Laplace's Mécanique céleste and
then a work by Jacobi on elliptic functions. He came to understand the necessary methods in
elliptic function theory by studying transcripts of lectures by Gudermann. In a letter to Lie,
written nearly 50 years later, he explained how he came to make the definite decision to study
mathematics despite his father's wishes around this time :
... when I became aware of [a letter from Abel to Legendre] in Crelle's Journal during my
student years, [it] was of the utmost importance. The immediate derivation of the form of the
representation of the function given by Abel ..., from the differential equation defining this
function, was the first mathematical task I set myself; and its fortunate solution made me
determined to devote myself wholly to mathematics; I made this decision in my seventh
semester ...
Weierstrass had made a decision to become a mathematician but he was still supposed to
be on a course studying public finance and administration. After his decision, he spent one
further semester at the University of Bonn, his eighth semester ending in 1838, and having failed
to study the subjects he was enrolled for he simply left the University without taking the
examinations. Weierstrass's father was desperately upset by his son giving up his studies. He was
persuaded by a family friend, the president of the law courts at Paderborn, to allow Karl to study
at the Theological and Philosophical Academy of Münster so that he could take the necessary
examinations to become a secondary school teacher.
On 22 May 1839 Weierstrass enrolled at the Academy in Münster. Gudermann lectured
in Münster and this was the reason that Weierstrass was so keen to study there. Weierstrass
attended Gudermann's lectures on elliptic functions, some of the first lectures on this topic to be
given, and Gudermann strongly encouraged Weierstrass in his mathematical studies. Leaving
Münster in the autumn of 1839, Weierstrass studied for the teacher's examination which he
registered for in March 1840. By this time, however, Weierstrass's father had moved jobs yet
again, becoming director of a salt works in January 1840, and the family was now living in
Westernkotten near Lippstadt on the Lippe River, west of Paderborn.
At Weierstrass's request he was given a question on the paper he received in May 1840
on the representation of elliptic functions and he presented his own important research as an
answer. Gudermann assessed the paper and rated Weierstrass's contribution:-
... of equal rank with the discoverers who were crowned with glory.
When, in later life, Weierstrass learnt of Gudermann's comments he said that he would have
published his results had he known. Weierstrass also commented on how generous Gudermann
had been in his praise, particularly since he had been highly critical of Gudermann's methods.
By April 1841 Weierstrass had taken the necessary oral examinations and he began one
year probation as a teacher at the Gymnasium in Münster. Although he did not publish any
mathematics at this time, he wrote three short papers in 1841 and 1842 which are described in
[3]:-
The concepts on which Weierstrass based his theory of functions of a complex variable in later
years after 1857 are found explicitly in his unpublished works written in Münster from 1841
through 1842, while still under the influence of Gudermann. The transformation of his
conception of an analytic function from a differentiable function to a function expansible into a
convergent power series was made during this early period of Weierstrass's mathematical
activity.
 Weierstrass began his career as a qualified teacher of mathematics at the Pro-Gymnasium
in Deutsch Krone in West Prussia (now Poland) in 1842 where he remained until he moved to
the Collegium Hoseanum in Braunsberg in 1848. As a teacher of mathematics he was required to
teach other topics too, and Weierstrass taught physics, botany, geography, history, German,
calligraphy and even gymnastics. In later life Weierstrass described the "unending dreariness and
boredom" of these miserable years in which [1]:-
... he had neither a colleague for mathematical discussions nor access to a mathematical library,
and that the exchange of scientific letters was a luxury that he could not afford.
From around 1850 Weierstrass began to suffer from attacks of dizziness which were very
severe and which ended after about an hour in violent sickness. Frequent attacks over a period of
about 12 years made it difficult for him to work and it is thought that these problems may well
have been caused by the mental conflicts he had suffered as a student, together with the stress of
applying himself to mathematics in every free minute of his time while undertaking the
demanding teaching job.
It is not surprising that when Weierstrass published papers on abelian functions in the
Braunsberg school prospectus they went unnoticed by mathematicians. However, in 1854 he
published Zur Theorie der Abelschen Functionen Ⓣ in Crelle's Journal and this was certainly
noticed. This paper did not give the full theory of inversion of hyperelliptic integrals that
Weierstrass had developed but rather gave a preliminary description of his methods involving
representing abelian functions as constantly converging power series.
With this paper Weierstrass burst from obscurity. The University of Königsberg
conferred an honorary doctor's degree on him on 31 March 1854. In 1855 Weierstrass applied for
the chair at the University of Breslau left vacant when Kummer moved to Berlin. Kummer,
however, tried to influence things so that Weierstrass would go to Berlin, not Breslau, so
Weierstrass was not appointed. A letter from Dirichlet to the Prussian Minister of Culture written
in 1855 strongly supported Weierstrass being given a university appointment. Details are given
in [10].
After being promoted to senior lecturer at Braunsberg, Weierstrass obtained a year's leave
of absence to devote himself to advanced mathematical study. He had already decided, however,
that he would never return to school teaching.
Weierstrass published a full version of his theory of inversion of hyperelliptic integrals in
his next paper Theorie der Abelschen Functionen in Crelle's Journal in 1856. There was a move
from a number of universities to offer him a chair. While universities in Austria were discussing
the prospect, an offer of a chair came from the Industry Institute in Berlin (later the Technische
Hochschule). Although he would have prefered to go to the University of Berlin, Weierstrass
certainly did not want to return to the Collegium Hoseanum in Braunsberg so he accepted the
offer from the Institute on 14 June 1856.
Offers continued to be made to Weierstrass so that when he attended a conference in
Vienna in September 1856 he was offered a chair at any Austrian university of his choice. Before
he had decided what to do about this offer, the University of Berlin offered him a professorship
in October. This was the job he had long wanted and he accepted quickly, although having
accepted the offer from the Industry Institute earlier in the year he was not able to formally
occupy the University of Berlin chair for some years.
Weierstrass's successful lectures in mathematics attracted students from all over the world.
The topics of his lectures included:- the application of Fourier series and integrals to
mathematical physics (1856/57), an introduction to the theory of analytic functions (where he set
out results he had obtained in 1841 but never published), the theory of elliptic functions (his
main research topic), and applications to problems in geometry and mechanics.
In his lectures of 1859/60 Weierstrass gave Introduction to analysis where he tackled the
foundations of the subject for the first time. In 1860/61 he lectured on the Integral calculus.
We described above the health problems that Weierstrass suffered from 1850 onwards.
Although he had achieved the positions that he had dreamed of, his health gave out in December
1861 when he collapsed completely. It took him about a year to recover sufficiently to lecture
again and he was never to regain his health completely. From this time on he lectured sitting
down while a student wrote on the blackboard for him. The attacks that he had suffered from
1850 stopped and were replaced by chest problems.
In his 1863/64 course on The general theory of analytic functions Weierstrass began to
formulate his theory of the real numbers. In his 1863 lectures he proved that the complex
numbers are the only commutative algebraic extension of the real numbers. Gauss had promised
a proof of this in 1831 but had failed to give one.
In 1872 his emphasis on rigour led him to discover a function that, although continuous, had
no derivative at any point. Analysts who depended heavily upon intuition for their discoveries
were rather dismayed at this counter-intuitive function. Riemann had suggested in 1861 that such
a function could be found, but his example failed to be non-differentiable at all points.
Weierstrass's lectures developed into a four-semester course which he continued to give until
1890. The four courses were
1. Introduction to the theory of analytic functions,
2. Elliptic functions,
3. Abelian functions,
4. Calculus of variations or applications of elliptic functions.
Through the years the courses developed and a number of versions have been published
such as the notes by Killing made in 1868 and those by Hurwitz from 1878. Weierstrass's
approach still dominates teaching analysis today and this is clearly seen from the contents and
style of these lectures, particularly the Introduction course. Its contents were: numbers, the
function concept with Weierstrass's power series approach, continuity and differentiability,
analytic continuation, points of singularity, analytic functions of several variables, in particular
Weierstrass's "preparation theorem", and contour integrals.
At Berlin, Weierstrass had two colleagues Kummer and Kronecker and together the three
gave Berlin a reputation as the leading university at which to study mathematics. Kronecker was
a close friend of Weierstrass's for many years but in 1877 Kronecker's opposition to Cantor's
work cause a rift between the two men. This became so bad that at one stage, in 1885,
Weierstrass decided to leave Berlin and go to Switzerland. However, he changed his mind and
remained in Berlin.
A large number of students benefited from Weierstrass's teaching. We name a few who
are mentioned elsewhere in our archive: Bachmann, Bolza, Cantor, Engel, Frobenius,
Gegenbauer, Hensel, Hölder, Hurwitz, Killing, Klein, Kneser, Königsberger, Lerch, Lie, Lüroth,
Mertens, Minkowski, Mittag-Leffler, Netto, Schottky, Schwarz and Stolz. One student in
particular, however, deserves special mention.
In 1870 Sofia Kovalevskaya came to Berlin and Weierstrass taught her privately since
she was not allowed admission to the university. Clearly she was a very special student as far as
Weierstrass was concerned for he wrote to her that he:-
... dreamed and been enraptured of so many riddles that remain for us to solve, on finite and
infinite spaces, on the stability of the world system, and on all the other major problems of the
mathematics and the physics of the future. ... you have been close ...throughout my entire life ...
and never have I found anyone who could bring me such understanding of the highest aims of
science and such joyful accord with my intentions and basic principles as you.
It was through Weierstrass's efforts that Kovalevskaya received an honorary doctorate
from Göttingen, and he also used his influence to help her obtain the post in Stockholm in 1883.
Weierstrass and Kovalevskaya corresponded for 20 years between 1871 to 1890. More than 160
letters were exchanged but Weierstrass burnt Kovalevskaya's letters after her death.
The standards of rigour that Weierstrass set, defining, for example, irrational numbers as
limits of convergent series, strongly affected the future of mathematics. He also studied entire
functions, the notion of uniform convergence and functions defined by infinite products. His
effort are summed up in [2] as follows:-
Known as the father of modern analysis, Weierstrass devised tests for the convergence of series
and contributed to the theory of periodic functions, functions of real variables, elliptic functions,
Abelian functions, converging infinite products, and the calculus of variations. He also
advanced the theory of bilinear and quadratic forms.
Weierstrass published little [1]:-
... because his critical sense invariably compelled him to base any analysis on a firm foundation,
starting from a fresh approach and continually revising and expanding.
However, he did edit the complete works of Steiner and those of Jacobi. He decided to
supervise the publication of his own complete works, in his case this would involve a great deal
of unpublished material from his lecture courses and Weierstrass realised that without his help
this would be a difficult task. The first two volumes appeared in 1894 and 1895, being the only
ones to appear before his death in 1897. His last years were difficult [1]:-
During his last three years he was confined to a wheelchair, immobile and dependent. He died of
pneumonia.
The remaining volumes of his Complete Works appeared slowly; volume 3 in 1903,
volume 4 in 1902, volumes 5 and 6 in 1915, and volume 7 in 1927. The seven volumes were
reprinted in 1967. More work continues to be published today, particularly versions of his lecture
courses taken from the notes made by those who attended the lectures.

T. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann

Quick Info
Born
17 September 1826
Breselenz, Hanover (now Germany)
Died
20 July 1866
Selasca, Italy
Summary
Bernhard Riemann's ideas concerning geometry of space had a profound effect on the
development of modern theoretical physics. He clarified the notion of integral by
defining what we now call the Riemann integral.

Biography
Bernhard Riemann's father, Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, was a Lutheran minister.
Friedrich Riemann married Charlotte Ebell when he was in his middle age. Bernhard was the
second of their six children, two boys and four girls. Friedrich Riemann acted as teacher to his
children and he taught Bernhard until he was ten years old. At this time a teacher from a local
school named Schulz assisted in Bernhard's education.
In 1840 Bernhard entered directly into the third class at the Lyceum in Hannover. While
at the Lyceum he lived with his grandmother but, in 1842, his grandmother died and Bernhard
moved to the Johanneum Gymnasium in Lüneburg. Bernhard seems to have been a good, but not
outstanding, pupil who worked hard at the classical subjects such as Hebrew and theology. He
showed a particular interest in mathematics and the director of the Gymnasium allowed Bernhard
to study mathematics texts from his own library. On one occasion he lent Bernhard Legendre's
book on the theory of numbers and Bernhard read the 900 page book in six days.
In the spring of 1846 Riemann enrolled at the University of Göttingen. His father had
encouraged him to study theology and so he entered the theology faculty. However he attended
some mathematics lectures and asked his father if he could transfer to the faculty of philosophy
so that he could study mathematics. Riemann was always very close to his family and he would
never have changed courses without his father's permission. This was granted, however, and
Riemann then took courses in mathematics from Moritz Stern and Gauss.
It may be thought that Riemann was in just the right place to study mathematics at
Göttingen, but at this time the University of Göttingen was a rather poor place for mathematics.
Gauss did lecture to Riemann but he was only giving elementary courses and there is no
evidence that at this time he recognised Riemann's genius. Stern, however, certainly did realise
that he had a remarkable student and later described Riemann at this time saying that he:-
... already sang like a canary.
Riemann moved from Göttingen to Berlin University in the spring of 1847 to study under
Steiner, Jacobi, Dirichlet and Eisenstein. This was an important time for Riemann. He learnt
much from Eisenstein and discussed using complex variables in elliptic function theory. The
main person to influence Riemann at this time, however, was Dirichlet. Klein writes in [4]:-
Riemann was bound to Dirichlet by the strong inner sympathy of a like mode of thought.
Dirichlet loved to make things clear to himself in an intuitive substrate; along with this he would
give acute, logical analyses of foundational questions and would avoid long computations as
much as possible. His manner suited Riemann, who adopted it and worked according to
Dirichlet's methods.
Riemann's work always was based on intuitive reasoning which fell a little below the
rigour required to make the conclusions watertight. However, the brilliant ideas which his works
contain are so much clearer because his work is not overly filled with lengthy computations. It
was during his time at the University of Berlin that Riemann worked out his general theory of
complex variables that formed the basis of some of his most important work.
In 1849 he returned to Göttingen and his Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Gauss, was
submitted in 1851. However it was not only Gauss who strongly influenced Riemann at this
time. Weber had returned to a chair of physics at Göttingen from Leipzig during the time that
Riemann was in Berlin, and Riemann was his assistant for 18 months. Also Listing had been
appointed as a professor of physics in Göttingen in 1849. Through Weber and Listing, Riemann
gained a strong background in theoretical physics and, from Listing, important ideas in topology
which were to influence his ground breaking research.
Riemann's thesis studied the theory of complex variables and, in particular, what we now
call Riemann surfaces. It therefore introduced topological methods into complex function theory.
The work builds on Cauchy's foundations of the theory of complex variables built up over many
years and also on Puiseux's ideas of branch points. However, Riemann's thesis is a strikingly
original piece of work which examined geometric properties of analytic functions, conformal
mappings and the connectivity of surfaces.
In proving some of the results in his thesis Riemann used a variational principle which he
was later to call the Dirichlet Principle since he had learnt it from Dirichlet's lectures in Berlin.
The Dirichlet Principle did not originate with Dirichlet, however, as Gauss, Green and Thomson
had all made use if it. Riemann's thesis, one of the most remarkable pieces of original work to
appear in a doctoral thesis, was examined on 16 December 1851. In his report on the thesis
Gauss described Riemann as having:-
... a gloriously fertile originality.
On Gauss's recommendation Riemann was appointed to a post in Göttingen and he
worked for his Habilitation, the degree which would allow him to become a lecturer. He spent
thirty months working on his Habilitation dissertation which was on the representability of
functions by trigonometric series. He gave the conditions of a function to have an integral, what
we now call the condition of Riemann integrability. In the second part of the dissertation he
examined the problem which he described in these words:-
While preceding papers have shown that if a function possesses such and such a property, then it
can be represented by a Fourier series, we pose the reverse question: if a function can be
represented by a trigonometric series, what can one say about its behaviour.
To complete his Habilitation Riemann had to give a lecture. He prepared three lectures, two on
electricity and one on geometry. Gauss had to choose one of the three for Riemann to deliver
and, against Riemann's expectations, Gauss chose the lecture on geometry. Riemann's lecture
Über die Hypothesen welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen Ⓣ, delivered on 10 June 1854,
became a classic of mathematics.
 There were two parts to Riemann's lecture. In the first part he posed the problem of how
to define an nn-dimensional space and ended up giving a definition of what today we call a
Riemannian space. Freudenthal writes in [1]:-
It possesses shortest lines, now called geodesics, which resemble ordinary straight lines. In fact,
at first approximation in a geodesic coordinate system such a metric is flat Euclidean, in the
same way that a curved surface up to higher-order terms looks like its tangent plane. Beings
living on the surface may discover the curvature of their world and compute it at any point as a
consequence of observed deviations from Pythagoras's theorem.
In fact the main point of this part of Riemann's lecture was the definition of the curvature
tensor. The second part of Riemann's lecture posed deep questions about the relationship of
geometry to the world we live in. He asked what the dimension of real space was and what
geometry described real space. The lecture was too far ahead of its time to be appreciated by
most scientists of that time. Monastyrsky writes in [6]:-
Among Riemann's audience, only Gauss was able to appreciate the depth of Riemann's thoughts.
... The lecture exceeded all his expectations and greatly surprised him. Returning to the faculty
meeting, he spoke with the greatest praise and rare enthusiasm to Wilhelm Weber about the
depth of the thoughts that Riemann had presented.
It was not fully understood until sixty years later. Freudenthal writes in [1]:-
The general theory of relativity splendidly justified his work. In the mathematical apparatus
developed from Riemann's address, Einstein found the frame to fit his physical ideas, his
cosmology, and cosmogony: and the spirit of Riemann's address was just what physics needed:
the metric structure determined by data.
So this brilliant work entitled Riemann to begin to lecture. However [6]:-
Not long before, in September, he read a report "On the Laws of the Distribution of Static
Electricity" at a session of the Göttingen Society of Scientific researchers and Physicians. In a
letter to his father, Riemann recalled, among other things, "the fact that I spoke at a scientific
meeting was useful for my lectures".
In October he set to work on his lectures on partial differential equations. Riemann's
letters to his dearly-loved father were full of recollections about the difficulties he encountered.
Although only eight students attended the lectures, Riemann was completely happy. Gradually
he overcame his natural shyness and established a rapport with his audience.
 Gauss's chair at Göttingen was filled by Dirichlet in 1855. At this time there was an
attempt to get Riemann a personal chair but this failed. Two years later, however, he was
appointed as professor and in the same year, 1857, another of his masterpieces was published.
The paper Theory of abelian functions was the result of work carried out over several years and
contained in a lecture course he gave to three people in 1855-56. One of the three was Dedekind
who was able to make the beauty of Riemann's lectures available by publishing the material after
Riemann's early death.
The abelian functions paper continued where his doctoral dissertation had left off and
developed further the idea of Riemann surfaces and their topological properties. He examined
multi-valued functions as single valued over a special Riemann surface and solved general
inversion problems which had been solved for elliptic integrals by Abel and Jacobi. However
Riemann was not the only mathematician working on such ideas. Klein writes in [4]:-
... when Weierstrass submitted a first treatment of general abelian functions to the Berlin
Academy in 1857, Riemann's paper on the same theme appeared in Crelle's Journal, Volume 54.
It contained so many unexpected, new concepts that Weierstrass withdrew his paper and in fact
published no more.
The Dirichlet Principle which Riemann had used in his doctoral thesis was used by him
again for the results of this 1857 paper. Weierstrass, however, showed that there was a problem
with the Dirichlet Principle. Klein writes [4]:-
The majority of mathematicians turned away from Riemann ... Riemann had quite a different
opinion. He fully recognised the justice and correctness of Weierstrass's critique, but he said, as
Weierstrass once told me, that he appealed to Dirichlet's Principle only as a convenient tool that
was right at hand, and that his existence theorems are still correct.
We return at the end of this article to indicate how the problem of the use of Dirichlet's Principle
in Riemann's work was sorted out.
In 1858 Betti, Casorati and Brioschi visited Göttingen and Riemann discussed with them
his ideas in topology. This gave Riemann particular pleasure and perhaps Betti in particular
profited from his contacts with Riemann. These contacts were renewed when Riemann visited
Betti in Italy in 1863. In [16] two letter from Betti, showing the topological ideas that he learnt
from Riemann, are reproduced.
In 1859 Dirichlet died and Riemann was appointed to the chair of mathematics at
Göttingen on 30 July. A few days later he was elected to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He
had been proposed by three of the Berlin mathematicians, Kummer, Borchardt and Weierstrass.
Their proposal read [6]:-
Prior to the appearance of his most recent work [Theory of abelian functions], Riemann was
almost unknown to mathematicians. This circumstance excuses somewhat the necessity of a
more detailed examination of his works as a basis of our presentation. We considered it our duty
to turn the attention of the Academy to our colleague whom we recommend not as a young talent
which gives great hope, but rather as a fully mature and independent investigator in our area of
science, whose progress he in significant measure has promoted.
A newly elected member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences had to report on their most
recent research and Riemann sent a report on On the number of primes less than a given
magnitude another of his great masterpieces which were to change the direction of mathematical
research in a most significant way. In it Riemann examined the zeta function
ζ(s)=∑1ns=∏11−p−sζ(s)=∑ns1=∏1−p−s1
which had already been considered by Euler. Here the sum is over all natural numbers nn
while the product is over all prime numbers. Riemann considered a very different question to the
one Euler had considered, for he looked at the zeta function as a complex function rather than a
real one. Except for a few trivial exceptions, the roots of ζ(s)ζ(s) all lie between 0 and 1. In the
paper he stated that the zeta function had infinitely many nontrivial roots and that it seemed
probable that they all have real part 1221. This is the famous Riemann hypothesis which remains
today one of the most important of the unsolved problems of mathematics.
Riemann studied the convergence of the series representation of the zeta function and
found a functional equation for the zeta function. The main purpose of the paper was to give
estimates for the number of primes less than a given number. Many of the results which Riemann
obtained were later proved by Hadamard and de la Vallée Poussin.
In June 1862 Riemann married Elise Koch who was a friend of his sister. They had one
daughter. In the autumn of the year of his marriage Riemann caught a heavy cold which turned to
tuberculosis. He had never had good health all his life and in fact his serious heath problems
probably go back much further than this cold he caught. In fact his mother had died when
Riemann was 20 while his brother and three sisters all died young. Riemann tried to fight the
illness by going to the warmer climate of Italy.
 The winter of 1862-63 was spent in Sicily and he then travelled through Italy, spending
time with Betti and other Italian mathematicians who had visited Göttingen. He returned to
Göttingen in June 1863 but his health soon deteriorated and once again he returned to Italy.
Having spent from August 1864 to October 1865 in northern Italy, Riemann returned to
Göttingen for the winter of 1865-66, then returned to Selasca on the shores of Lake Maggiore on
16 June 1866. Dedekind writes in [3]:-
His strength declined rapidly, and he himself felt that his end was near. But still, the day before
his death, resting under a fig tree, his soul filled with joy at the glorious landscape, he worked
on his final work which unfortunately, was left unfinished.
Finally let us return to Weierstrass's criticism of Riemann's use of the Dirichlet's
Principle. Weierstrass had shown that a minimising function was not guaranteed by the Dirichlet
Principle. This had the effect of making people doubt Riemann's methods. Freudenthal writes in
[1]:-
All used Riemann's material but his method was entirely neglected. ... During the rest of the
century Riemann's results exerted a tremendous influence: his way of thinking but little.
Weierstrass firmly believed Riemann's results, despite his own discovery of the problem with the
Dirichlet Principle. He asked his student Hermann Schwarz to try to find other proofs of
Riemann's existence theorems which did not use the Dirichlet Principle. He managed to do this
during 1869-70. Klein, however, was fascinated by Riemann's geometric approach and he wrote
a book in 1892 giving his version of Riemann's work yet written very much in the spirit of
Riemann. Freudenthal writes in [1]:-
It is a beautiful book, and it would be interesting to know how it was received. Probably many
took offence at its lack of rigour: Klein was too much in Riemann's image to be convincing to
people who would not believe the latter.
In 1901 Hilbert mended Riemann's approach by giving the correct form of Dirichlet's
Principle needed to make Riemann's proofs rigorous. The search for a rigorous proof had not
been a waste of time, however, since many important algebraic ideas were discovered by
Clebsch, `Gordan, Brill and Max Noether while they tried to prove Riemann's results.
Monastyrsky writes in [6]:-
It is difficult to recall another example in the history of nineteenth-century mathematics when a
struggle for a rigorous proof led to such productive results.
U. Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor

Quick Info
Born
3 March 1845
St Petersburg, Russia
Died
6 January 1918
Halle, Germany
Summary
Georg Cantor was a Russian-born mathematician who can be considered as the founder
of set theory and introduced the concept of infinite numbers with his discovery of
cardinal numbers. He also advanced the study of trigonometric series.

Biography
Georg Cantor's father, Georg Waldemar Cantor, was a successful merchant, working as
a wholesaling agent in St Petersburg, then later as a broker in the St Petersburg Stock Exchange.
Georg Waldemar Cantor was born in Denmark and he was a man with a deep love of culture and
the arts. Georg's mother, Maria Anna Böhm, was Russian and very musical. Certainly Georg
inherited considerable musical and artistic talents from his parents being an outstanding violinist.
Georg was brought up a Protestant, this being the religion of his father, while Georg's mother
was a Roman Catholic.
After early education at home from a private tutor, Cantor attended primary school in St
Petersburg, then in 1856 when he was eleven years old the family moved to Germany. However,
Cantor [21]:-
... remembered his early years in Russia with great nostalgia and never felt at ease in Germany,
although he lived there for the rest of his life and seemingly never wrote in the Russian
language, which he must have known.
Cantor's father had poor health and the move to Germany was to find a warmer climate
than the harsh winters of St Petersburg. At first they lived in Wiesbaden, where Cantor attended
the Gymnasium, then they moved to Frankfurt. Cantor studied at the Realschule in Darmstadt
where he lived as a boarder. He graduated in 1860 with an outstanding report, which mentioned
in particular his exceptional skills in mathematics, in particular trigonometry. After attending the
Höhere Gewerbeschule in Darmstadt from 1860 he entered the Polytechnic of Zürich in 1862.
The reason Cantor's father chose to send him to the Höheren Gewerbeschule was that he wanted
Cantor to become:-
... a shining star in the engineering firmament.
However, in 1862 Cantor had sought his father's permission to study mathematics at
university and he was overjoyed when eventually his father consented. His studies at Zürich,
however, were cut short by the death of his father in June 1863. Cantor moved to the University
of Berlin where he became friends with Hermann Schwarz who was a fellow student. Cantor
attended lectures by Weierstrass, Kummer and Kronecker. He spent the summer term of 1866 at
the University of Göttingen, returning to Berlin to complete his dissertation on number theory
De aequationibus secundi gradus indeterminatis Ⓣ in 1867.
While at Berlin Cantor became much involved with a student Mathematical Society,
being president of the Society during 1864-65. He was also part of a small group of young
mathematicians who met weekly in a wine house. After receiving his doctorate in 1867, Cantor
taught at a girl's school in Berlin. Then, in 1868, he joined the Schellbach Seminar for
mathematics teachers. During this time he worked on his habilitation and, immediately after
being appointed to Halle in 1869, he presented his thesis, again on number theory, and received
his habilitation.
At Halle the direction of Cantor's research turned away from number theory and towards
analysis. This was due to Heine, one of his senior colleagues at Halle, who challenged Cantor to
prove the open problem on the uniqueness of representation of a function as a trigonometric
series. This was a difficult problem which had been unsuccessfully attacked by many
mathematicians, including Heine himself as well as Dirichlet, Lipschitz and Riemann. Cantor
solved the problem proving uniqueness of the representation by April 1870. He published further
papers between 1870 and 1872 dealing with trigonometric series and these all show the influence
of Weierstrass's teaching.
Cantor was promoted to Extraordinary Professor at Halle in 1872 and in that year he
began a friendship with Dedekind whom he had met while on holiday in Switzerland. Cantor
published a paper on trigonometric series in 1872 in which he defined irrational numbers in
terms of convergent sequences of rational numbers. Dedekind published his definition of the real
numbers by "Dedekind cuts" also in 1872 and in this paper Dedekind refers to Cantor's 1872
paper which Cantor had sent him.
In 1873 Cantor proved the rational numbers countable, i.e. they may be placed in one-one
correspondence with the natural numbers. He also showed that the algebraic numbers, i.e. the
numbers which are roots of polynomial equations with integer coefficients, were countable.
However his attempts to decide whether the real numbers were countable proved harder. He had
proved that the real numbers were not countable by December 1873 and published this in a paper
in 1874. It is in this paper that the idea of a one-one correspondence appears for the first time,
but it is only implicit in this work.
A transcendental number is an irrational number that is not a root of any polynomial
equation with integer coefficients. Liouville established in 1851 that transcendental numbers
exist. Twenty years later, in this 1874 work, Cantor showed that in a certain sense 'almost all'
numbers are transcendental by proving that the real numbers were not countable while he had
proved that the algebraic numbers were countable.
Cantor pressed forward, exchanging letters throughout with Dedekind. The next question
he asked himself, in January 1874, was whether the unit square could be mapped into a line of
unit length with a 1-1 correspondence of points on each. In a letter to Dedekind dated 5 January
1874 he wrote [1]:-
Can a surface (say a square that includes the boundary) be uniquely referred to a line (say a
straight line segment that includes the end points) so that for every point on the surface there is
a corresponding point of the line and, conversely, for every point of the line there is a
corresponding point of the surface? I think that answering this question would be no easy job,
despite the fact that the answer seems so clearly to be "no" that proof appears almost
unnecessary.
The year 1874 was an important one in Cantor's personal life. He became engaged to
Vally Guttmann, a friend of his sister, in the spring of that year. They married on 9 August 1874
and spent their honeymoon in Interlaken in Switzerland where Cantor spent much time in
mathematical discussions with Dedekind.
Cantor continued to correspond with Dedekind, sharing his ideas and seeking Dedekind's
opinions, and he wrote to Dedekind in 1877 proving that there was a 1-1 correspondence of
points on the interval [0, 1] and points in pp-dimensional space. Cantor was surprised at his own
discovery and wrote:-
I see it, but I don't believe it!
Of course this had implications for geometry and the notion of dimension of a space. A
major paper on dimension which Cantor submitted to Crelle's Journal in 1877 was treated with
suspicion by Kronecker, and only published after Dedekind intervened on Cantor's behalf.
Cantor greatly resented Kronecker's opposition to his work and never submitted any further
papers to Crelle's Journal.
The paper on dimension which appeared in Crelle's Journal in 1878 makes the concepts
of 1-1 correspondence precise. The paper discusses denumerable sets, i.e. those which are in 1-1
correspondence with the natural numbers. It studies sets of equal power, i.e. those sets which are
in 1-1 correspondence with each other. Cantor also discussed the concept of dimension and
stressed the fact that his correspondence between the interval [0, 1] and the unit square was not a
continuous map.
Between 1879 and 1884 Cantor published a series of six papers in Mathematische
Annalen designed to provide a basic introduction to set theory. Klein may have had a major
influence in having Mathematische Annalen published them. However there were a number of
problems which occurred during these years which proved difficult for Cantor. Although he had
been promoted to a full professor in 1879 on Heine's recommendation, Cantor had been hoping
for a chair at a more prestigious university. His long standing correspondence with Schwarz
ended in 1880 as opposition to Cantor's ideas continued to grow and Schwarz no longer
supported the direction that Cantor's work was going. Then in October 1881 Heine died and a
replacement was needed to fill the chair at Halle.
 Cantor drew up a list of three mathematicians to fill Heine's chair and the list was
approved. It placed Dedekind in first place, followed by Heinrich Weber and finally Mertens. It
was certainly a severe blow to Cantor when Dedekind declined the offer in the early 1882, and
the blow was only made worse by Heinrich Weber and then Mertens declining too. After a new
list had been drawn up, Wangerin was appointed but he never formed a close relationship with
Cantor. The rich mathematical correspondence between Cantor and Dedekind ended later in
1882.
Almost the same time as the Cantor-Dedekind correspondence ended, Cantor began
another important correspondence with Mittag-Leffler. Soon Cantor was publishing in Mittag-
Leffler's journal Acta Mathematica but his important series of six papers in Mathematische
Annalen also continued to appear. The fifth paper in this series Grundlagen einer allgemeinen
Mannigfaltigkeitslehre was also published as a separate monograph and was especially
important for a number of reasons. Firstly Cantor realised that his theory of sets was not finding
the acceptance that he had hoped and the Grundlagen was designed to reply to the criticisms.
Secondly [3]:-
The major achievement of the Grundlagen was its presentation of the transfinite numbers as an
autonomous and systematic extension of the natural numbers.
Cantor himself states quite clearly in the paper that he realises the strength of the
opposition to his ideas:-
... I realise that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held
concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of
numbers.
At the end of May 1884 Cantor had the first recorded attack of depression. He recovered
after a few weeks but now seemed less confident. He wrote to Mittag-Leffler at the end of June
[3]:-
... I don't know when I shall return to the continuation of my scientific work. At the moment I can
do absolutely nothing with it, and limit myself to the most necessary duty of my lectures; how
much happier I would be to be scientifically active, if only I had the necessary mental freshness.
At one time it was thought that his depression was caused by mathematical worries and as a
result of difficulties of his relationship with Kronecker in particular. Recently, however, a better
understanding of mental illness has meant that we can now be certain that Cantor's mathematical
worries and his difficult relationships were greatly magnified by his depression but were not its
cause (see for example [3] and [21]). After this mental illness of 1884 [3]:-
... he took a holiday in his favourite Harz mountains and for some reason decided to try to
reconcile himself with Kronecker. Kronecker accepted the gesture, but it must have been difficult
for both of them to forget their enmities and the philosophical disagreements between them
remained unaffected.
Mathematical worries began to trouble Cantor at this time, in particular he began to
worry that he could not prove the continuum hypothesis, namely that the order of infinity of the
real numbers was the next after that of the natural numbers. In fact he thought he had proved it
false, then the next day found his mistake. Again he thought he had proved it true only again to
quickly find his error.
All was not going well in other ways too, for in 1885 Mittag-Leffler persuaded Cantor to
withdraw one of his papers from Acta Mathematica when it had reached the proof stage because
he thought it "... about one hundred years too soon". Cantor joked about it but was clearly hurt:-
Had Mittag-Leffler had his way, I should have to wait until the year 1984, which to me seemed
too great a demand! ... But of course I never want to know anything again about Acta
Mathematica.
Mittag-Leffler meant this as a kindness but it does show a lack of appreciation of the
importance of Cantor's work. The correspondence between Mittag-Leffler and Cantor all but
stopped shortly after this event and the flood of new ideas which had led to Cantor's rapid
development of set theory over about 12 years seems to have almost stopped.
In 1886 Cantor bought a fine new house on Händelstrasse, a street named after the
German composer Handel. Before the end of the year a son was born, completing his family of
six children. He turned from the mathematical development of set theory towards two new
directions, firstly discussing the philosophical aspects of his theory with many philosophers (he
published these letters in 1888) and secondly taking over after Clebsch's death his idea of
founding the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung which he achieved in 1890. Cantor chaired
the first meeting of the Association in Halle in September 1891, and despite the bitter
antagonism between himself and Kronecker, Cantor invited Kronecker to address the first
meeting.
Kronecker never addressed the meeting, however, since his wife was seriously injured in
a climbing accident in the late summer and died shortly afterwards. Cantor was elected president
of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung at the first meeting and held this post until 1893. He
helped to organise the meeting of the Association held in Munich in September 1893, but he took
ill again before the meeting and could not attend.
Cantor published a rather strange paper in 1894 which listed the way that all even
numbers up to 1000 could be written as the sum of two primes. Since a verification of
Goldbach's conjecture up to 10000 had been done 40 years before, it is likely that this strange
paper says more about Cantor's state of mind than it does about Goldbach's conjecture.
His last major papers on set theory appeared in 1895 and 1897, again in Mathematische
Annalen under Klein's editorship, and are fine surveys of transfinite arithmetic. The rather long
gap between the two papers is due to the fact that although Cantor finished writing the second
part six months after the first part was published, he hoped to include a proof of the continuum
hypothesis in the second part. However, it was not to be, but the second paper describes his
theory of well-ordered sets and ordinal numbers.
In 1897 Cantor attended the first International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich. In
their lectures at the Congress [4]:-
... Hurwitz openly expressed his great admiration of Cantor and proclaimed him as one by whom
the theory of functions has been enriched. Jacques Hadamard expressed his opinion that the
notions of the theory of sets were known and indispensable instruments.
At the Congress Cantor met Dedekind and they renewed their friendship. By the time of
the Congress, however, Cantor had discovered the first of the paradoxes in the theory of sets. He
discovered the paradoxes while working on his survey papers of 1895 and 1897 and he wrote to
Hilbert in 1896 explaining the paradox to him. Burali-Forti discovered the paradox
independently and published it in 1897. Cantor began a correspondence with Dedekind to try to
understand how to solve the problems but recurring bouts of his mental illness forced him to stop
writing to Dedekind in 1899.
Whenever Cantor suffered from periods of depression he tended to turn away from
mathematics and turn towards philosophy and his big literary interest which was a belief that
Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. For example in his illness of 1884 he had requested
that he be allowed to lecture on philosophy instead of mathematics and he had begun his intense
study of Elizabethan literature in attempting to prove his Bacon-Shakespeare theory. He began to
publish pamphlets on the literary question in 1896 and 1897. Extra stress was put on Cantor with
the death of his mother in October 1896 and the death of his younger brother in January 1899.
In October 1899 Cantor applied for, and was granted, leave from teaching for the winter
semester of 1899-1900. Then on 16 December 1899 Cantor's youngest son died. From this time
on until the end of his life he fought against the mental illness of depression. He did continue to
teach but also had to take leave from his teaching for a number of winter semesters, those of
1902-03, 1904-05 and 1907-08. Cantor also spent some time in sanatoria, at the times of the
worst attacks of his mental illness, from 1899 onwards. He did continue to work and publish on
his Bacon-Shakespeare theory and certainly did not give up mathematics completely. He lectured
on the paradoxes of set theory to a meeting of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung in
September 1903 and he attended the International Congress of Mathematicians at Heidelberg in
August 1904.
In 1905 Cantor wrote a religious work after returning home from a spell in hospital. He
also corresponded with Jourdain on the history of set theory and his religious tract. After taking
leave for much of 1909 on the grounds of his ill health he carried out his university duties for
1910 and 1911. It was in that year that he was delighted to receive an invitation from the
University of St Andrews in Scotland to attend the 500th anniversary of the founding of the
University as a distinguished foreign scholar. The celebrations were 12-15 September 1911 but :-
During the visit he apparently began to behave eccentrically, talking at great length on the
Bacon-Shakespeare question; then he travelled down to London for a few days.
Cantor had hoped to meet with Russell who had just published the Principia
Mathematica. However ill health and the news that his son had taken ill made Cantor return to
Germany without seeing Russell. The following year Cantor was awarded the honorary degree of
Doctor of Laws by the University of St Andrews but he was too ill to receive the degree in
person.
Cantor retired in 1913 and spent his final years ill with little food because of the war
conditions in Germany. A major event planned in Halle to mark Cantor's 70th birthday in 1915
had to be cancelled because of the war, but a smaller event was held in his home. In June 1917
he entered a sanatorium for the last time and continually wrote to his wife asking to be allowed
to go home. He died of a heart attack.
Hilbert described Cantor's work as:-
...the finest product of mathematical genius and one of the supreme achievements of purely
intellectual human activity.

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