Augustin-Louis Cauchy Biography

1330 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: An essay on the history of mathematics

Augustin-Louis Cauchy was French mathematician born on August 21, 1789 and died on May 23, 1857. Lagrange, another famous mathematician, was no stranger to the Cauchy family. Using Lagrange’s advice, Augustin-Louis Cauchy enrolled at the Ecole Centrale du Pantheon. This school was the best secondary school of Paris at the time. The curriculum of the school was mostly classical languages. Cauchy was a very young and ambitious student and also very brilliant. As he went through school he won many prizes in Latin and Humanities. Despite his many successes, Augustin-Louis decided to proceed his life and pursue an engineering career. He then prepared himself for the entrance examination to the École Polytechnique. Polytechnique was known to be one of the most selective and prestigious French schools. It is also known for its extremely competitive entrance exam. In 1805, when Cauchy took his exam, he placed second out of 293 other people, and was admitted to the prestigious school. The school's main purpose was to give future civil and military engineers a high level of scientific and mathematical education. Cauchy had some problems adapting to the school because it was controlled under military discipline. In 1807, at the age of 18, he finished Polytechnique. He then went on to Ecole des Ponts et Chausses. This school was also a very prestigious school. This school was a university level institution of higher education and research. The school is also known to be the world's oldest civil-engineering school (founded in 1747). When Cauchy finished school in 1810, he graduated civil-engineering with the highest honors.
In 1810 Augustin-Louis Cauchy accepted a job as a junior engineer in Cherbourg. This location was where Napoleon intend...

... middle of paper ...

...e the first to introduce inequalities to calculus. Cauchy did not only contribute to the math world. He also focused on science. One of the things he worked on was Fresnel’s light theory and also the polarization and dispersion of light. He was also known for his contribution to important research on mechanics.
Ever since the beginning of mankind, mathematics has evolved constantly. It has taken thousands of people to get mathematics to where it is today, and Augustin-Louis Cauchy was just a piece to that puzzle. Just the small parts that he did in his life made a huge contribution to mathematics, some which is still used and taught today, while others has been proven wrong and no longer part of our schooling. Without this man, and the many other mathematicians, the world of math would not be where it is today, making these people a very important part of our lives.

Show More
Related

  • Marquis De Laplace's Accomplishments

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    Laplace was the child of a worker agriculturist. At a young age, he immediately demonstrated his scientific capacity at the military foundation in Beaumont. In 1766 Laplace entered the University of Caen, yet he cleared out for Paris the following year, without taking a degree. He touched base with a letter of proposal to the mathematician Jean d'Alembert, who helped him secure a residency at the École Militaire, where he educated from 1769 to 1776.

    Read More

  • Bernhard Riemann: Imorality In The Life Of Immortality

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...nd a functional equeation for the zeta function. The main pupose of the equation was to give estimates for the number prime less than a given number. Many of his gathered results were later proven by Hadamard and Vallee Poussin. Riemann’s work affects our world today because he gave the foundation to geometry and when other mathmaticians tried to prove his theory they accidentally made other profound and significant contributions to math. Bernhard Riemann’s most influential assistors were his professors among them Gauss, Weber, Listing and Dirichlet. Perhaps of the four Gauss and Dirichlet had the most influence upon him, Gauss guided him as a mentor and Dirichlet’s work gave him the principle that his work was based on. Immortal are those who are forever remembered throughout history Bernhard Riemann past away in July 20, 1866 at the age of thirty-nine.

    Read More

  • The Life And Life Of Gustave Eiffel Tower

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eiffel went to College Sainte-Barbe in Paris so that he may prepare for the entrance exams to the engineering colleges that he wanted to go to. Because his scores were not good enough, Eiffel couldn’t go to Ecole Polytechnique so instead he went to Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris. He chose to specialize in chemistry in his second year. He graduated 13th of the 80 candidates in 1855.

    Read More

  • Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: The French Revolution

    2154 Words  | 5 Pages

    Kirchberger, Joe H. The French Revolution and Napoleon. New York: Facts on File inc, 1989.

    Read More

  • Blaise Pascal's Influence On American History

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is said that when history looks upon the life of an individual when their time has passed; it is not the dates on the tombstone that define the man but the dash in between. Such was the case in the life of theologian, philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal. Pascal was born on the 19th of June 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand France and died at the age of 39 of tuberculosis on the 19th August 1662 in Paris, but the bulk of his career, his success and life achievement began in his early years. As a young boy, Pascal’s lost his mother and soon afterward his father moved the family, Blaise and his two sisters to Paris. Pascal’s father, Étienne Pascal was a mathematician himself and taught Pascal Latin and Greek, which at the time was considered

    Read More

  • François Viéte Research Paper

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    François Viète, also known as the “Father of Modern Algebraic Notation”, was born in 1540 in Fontenay-le-Comte, France. Viète attended school locally during his childhood, but decided to move to the city of Poitiers later on to further his education. Although François is considered the ninth greatest mathematician of all time, his main profession was not studying mathematics. He attended the University of Poitiers and, following in his father’s footsteps, studied law. Despite this fact, Viète is noted to have spent much of his spare time studying astronomy and mathematics because these subjects greatly interested him.

    Read More

  • Blaise Pascal's Contribution To Mathematics

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Archimedes

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    Archimedes (287BC-212BC) was truly one of the greatest mathematical minds of all time. The discoveries and inventions of Archimedes formed the basis of many of the fundamental concepts of modern physics and mathematics.

    Read More

  • Andre Marie Ampere

    1103 Words  | 3 Pages

    His father taught his Latin but after a while saw his son’s greater passion towards mathematics. However, Andre resumed his Latin lessons to enable him to study the work of famous mathematicians Leonhard Euler and Bernoulli. While in the study of his father’s library his favorite study books were George Louis Leclerc history book and Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond Encyclopedia, became Ampere’s schoolmasters (Andre). When Ampere finished in his father’s library he had his father take him to the library in Lyon. While there he studied calculus. A couple of weeks later he was able to do difficult treaties on applied mathematics (Levy, Pg. 135). Later in life he said “the new as much about mathematics when he was 18, than he knew in his entire life. His reading...

    Read More

  • Mathematical Objects And Truths: Aristotle's Greatest Contribution To Mathematics

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, his greatest contribution to mathematics is considered to be logic, for without logic there would be no reasoning and therefore no true valid rules to the science of mathematics.

    Read More

  • Blaise Pascal

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    Etienne Pascal was very concerned about his son becoming an educated man. This is why he decided to teach his son on his own. He brought a young Blaise to lectures and other gatherings. He decided Blaise would not study math until age 15. When he made this decision he took all the math books out of the family home; however, this did not stop a curious Pascal. At age twelve, he started to work on geometry by himself. Blaise’s father finally started to take him to mathematical gatherings at "Academic Parisienne." At the age of 16, Pascal began to play an active role in "Academic Parisienne," as the principal disciple of Girard Desargues, one of the heads of "Academic Par...

    Read More

  • Bernoulli Essay

    1722 Words  | 4 Pages

    There have been many great mathematicians in the world, though many are not well known. People have been studying math for ages, the oldest mathematical object dated all the way back to around 35,000 BC. There are still mathematicians today, studying math and figuring out ways to improve the mathematical world. Some of the most well-known mathematicians include Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Aristotle. These mathematicians (and many more) have influenced the mathematical world and mathematics would not be where it is today without them. There were many great individuals who contributed greatly in mathematics but there was one family with eight great mathematicians who were very influential in mathematics. This was the Bernoulli family. The Bernoulli family contributed a lot to mathematics, medicine, physics, and other areas. Even though they were great mathematicians, there was also hatred and jealousy between many of them. These men did not want their brothers or sons outdoing them in mathematics. Most Bernoulli fathers told their sons not to study mathematics even if they wanted. They were told to study medicine, business, or law, instead, though most of them found a way to study mathematics. The mathematicians in this family include Jacob, Johann, Daniel, Nicolaus I, Nicolaus II, Johann II, Johann III, and Jacob II Bernoulli.

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes Essay

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    If you have ever heard the phrase, “I think; therefore I am.” Then you might not know who said that famous quote. The author behind those famous words is none other than Rene Descartes. He was a 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and writer. As a mathematician, he is credited with being the creator of techniques for algebraic geometry. As a philosopher, he created views of the world that is still seen as fact today. Such as how the world is made of matter and some fundamental properties for matter. Descartes is also a co-creator of the law of refraction, which is used for rainbows. In his day, Descartes was an innovative mathematician who developed many theories and properties for math and science. He was a writer who had many works that explained his ideas. His most famous work was Meditations on First Philosophy. This book was mostly about his ideas about science, but he had books about mathematics too. Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics is a collection of essays talking about his views of algebra and geometry.

    Read More

  • A Brief Biography of Carl Friedrich Gauss

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    Carl Friedrich Gauss is revered as a very important man in the world of mathematicians. The discoveries he completed while he was alive contributed to many areas of mathematics like geometry, statistics, number theory, statistics, and more. Gauss was an extremely brilliant mathematician and that is precisely why he is remembered all through today. Although Gauss left many contributions in each of the aforementioned fields, two of his discoveries in the fields of mathematics and astronomy seem to have had the most tremendous effect on modern day mathematics.

    Read More

  • The History of Math

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

More about Augustin-Louis Cauchy Biography

Open Document