The Life of Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Paul Euler was born on April 15th, 1707 in Basel, Switzerland and died on November18th, 1783 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Even from a young age, Euler was discovered by many, including his father (Paulus) and instructor (Johann I Bernoulli), to be extraordinarily proficient in mathematics. When he was just 15 years of age, Euler concluded his studies at the University of Basel. Euler wrote a prize winning paper explaining the best organization of masts on a sailing ship at 19 years old. The book was entitled Meditationes super problemate nautico… and the award he received was from the Academy of Sciences in Paris. In 1727, he submitted a dissertation regarding sound (Dissertatio physica de sono) in Basel. Euler was denied a physics professorship. The sons of his instructor Bernoulli, Nicholas and Daniel, urged him to progress to the St. Petersburg Academy in Russia, which could meet his level of positive tenacity in the field of mathematics and physics.
Once in St. Petersburg, Euler met with Jacob Hermann, Daniel Bernoulli, and an amateur mathematician and diplomat, Christian Goldbach. He wrote in excess of 100 scientific papers and advanced his fundamental work on mechanics over the span from 1727 to 1741. Euler was invited by Fredrick the Great to go to the Akademie in Berlin. He spent 25 years in Berlin, which did not impede on his academic work. Among other pieces, he created the calculus of variations, rewrote and translated Benjamin Robins’ treatise on artillery, and wrote the Introductio in analysin infinitorum. Euler was invited to return to St. Petersburg by Katherine II as a result from disputes with the Court in 1766. He returned with the locals looking up to him with hon...
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All of Scheiner’s formal education had come by the teachings of Jesuit establishments, where he learned and believed (like most) of the Aristotelian structure of the cosmos. In his later years, he attended the Society’s University, where, in 1600, he studied mathematics and physics under Johannes Lanz (Reeves, 37). Lanz thought highly of Scheiner, especially in his abilities in the arenas of mathematics and mechanics. Over the next few years, Scheiner began teaching mathematics when he had heard of an artist’s mechanical drawing aid, the pantograph, w...
Born in the summer of September 17, 1826 in Breselenz, Kingdom of Hanover what’s now modern-day Germany the son of Friederich Riemann a Lutheran minister married to Charlotte Ebell was the second of six children of whom two were male and four female. Charlotte Ebell passed away before seeing any of her six children reach adult hood. As a child Riemann was a shy child who suffered of many nervous breakdowns impeding him from articulating in public speaking but he demonstrated exceptional skills in mathematics at an early age. At the age of four-teen Bernhard moved to Hanover to live with his grandmother and enter the third class at Lynceum two years later his grandmother also passed away he went on to move to the Johanneum Gymnasium in Lunberg and entered High School. During these years Riemann studied the Bible, Hebrew, and Theology but was often amused and side tracked by Mathematics. Showing such interests in mathematics the director of the gymnasium often time allowed Riemann to lend some mathemat...
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born to a highly educated family on July 1, 1646 in Leipzig. Leibniz’s father, Friedrich Leibniz, was a professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig and Catharina Schmuck, his mother, was the daughter of a professor of law. With the event of his father’s death, Leibniz was guided by his mother and uncle in his studies. He was also given access to the contents of his father’s library. In 1661 Leibniz began his formal university education at the University of Leipzig. While attending the university he soon met Jacob Thomasius. Thomasius instilled in Leibniz a great respect for ancient and medieval philosophy. After accepting his baccalaureate from Leipzig, Leibniz began studying at the University of Altdorf. While in attendance at Altdorf, Leibniz published Dissertation on the Art of Combinations (Dissertatio de arte combinatoria) in 1666 (Brandon C. Look, 2007). It sketched a plan for a “universal cha...
Burton, David. M. (2010). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction, Seventh Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Leonhard Euler was a brilliant Swiss mathematician and physicist, living between 1707 and 1783. Euler had a phenomenal memory, so much so that he continued to contribute to the field of mathematics even after he went blind in 1766. He was the most productive mathematical writer of all time, publishing over 800 papers. Euler’s dedication towards the subject intrigued me and motivated me to choose a topic related to Euler himself. Amidst his many contributions, I came across e. After further research, I soon learned the multiple applications of the number, and its significance to math. I chose to study the topic of e because I wanted to learn the many ways e can be represented and how it impacts our lives, as well as to share my findings with my peers.
Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), presently a logician and mathematician of international repute, worked from 1805-1819 as a theological professor at the Prague University. This post he received immediately after he ended his mathematics and theology studies. In this period he had already published his first scientific study Betrachtungen über einige Gegenstände der Elementargeometrie (A reflection on some elementary geometry questions), which was his final dissertation study. In the study Lebensbeschreibung des Dr. B. Bolzano (Biography of Dr. B. Bolzano), he remembers, that it was not easy to dec...
No other scholar has affected more fields of learning than Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623 in Clermont, France, he was born into a family of respected mathematicians. Being the childhood prodigy that he was, he came up with a theory at the age of three that was Euclid’s book on the sum of the interior of triangles. At the age of sixteen, he was brought by his father Etienne to discuss about math with the greatest minds at the time. He spent his life working with math but also came up with a plethora of new discoveries in the physical sciences, religion, computers, and in math. He died at the ripe age of thirty nine in 1662(). Blaise Pascal has contributed to the fields of mathematics, physical science and computers in countless ways.
Born in the Netherlands, Daniel Bernoulli was one of the most well-known Bernoulli mathematicians. He contributed plenty to mathematics and advanced it, ahead of its time. His father, Johann, made him study medicine at first, as there was little money in mathematics, but eventually, Johann gave in and tutored Daniel in mathematics. Johann treated his son’s desire to lea...
» Part 1 Logarithms initially originated in an early form along with logarithm tables published by the Augustinian Monk Michael Stifel when he published ’Arithmetica integra’ in 1544. In the same publication, Stifel also became the first person to use the word ‘exponent’ and the first to indicate multiplication without the use of a symbol. In addition to mathematical findings, he also later anonymously published his prediction that at 8:00am on the 19th of October 1533, the world would end and it would be judgement day. However the Scottish astronomer, physicist, mathematician and astrologer John Napier is more famously known as the person who discovered them due to his work in 1614 called ‘Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio’.
The concept of impossible constructions in mathematics draws in a unique interest by Mathematicians wanting to find answers that none have found before them. For the Greeks, some impossible constructions weren’t actually proven at the time to be impossible, but merely so far unachieved. For them, there was excitement in the idea that they might be the first one to do so, excitement that lay in discovery. There are a few impossible constructions in Greek mathematics that will be examined in this chapter. They all share the same criteria for constructability: that they are to be made using solely a compass and straightedge, and were referred to as the three “classical problems of antiquity”. The requirements of using only a compass and straightedge were believed to have originated from Plato himself. 1
Burton, D. (2011). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. (Seventh Ed.) New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Melville, Duncan J, Tokens: the origin of mathematics, St Lawrence University IT Retrieved January 19th 2014, from St Lawrence University: http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/tokens.html
Numbers are swirling. Papers are flying. The man ponders with great focus on his work. He is pursuing the greatest achievements known to man; the revolutionization of the world of mathematics. This man’s name would go down as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His name is Leonhard Euler. Leonhard Euler lived during the 18th century in Sweden and Russia. Euler came from humble origins, initially living in a small two-room house. When Euler was 14, his father hired a math tutor for him. His father, Paul Euler, deemed that the school’s teaching was insufficient. Incidentally, Euler fell in love with the subject immediately and began pursuing an education in the realm of mathematics. It was thanks to his father that Euler developed a passion for learning. Euler not only contributed to multiple mathematical fields, but also made gigantic leaps in areas such as physics, engineering, and music theory. Some of his most famous works being: complex analysis, the gamma function, infinitude of primes, the
The 17th Century saw Napier, Briggs and others greatly extend the power of mathematics as a calculator science with his discovery of logarithms. Cavalieri made progress towards the calculus with his infinitesimal methods and Descartes added the power of algebraic methods to geometry. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC in Alexandria, first stated his five postulates in his book The Elements that forms the base for all of his later Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born abo...