On August 6, 1667, a famous Swiss mathematician was born in Basel, Switzerland. He was the tenth child of Nikolaus Bernoulli and Margaretha Schonauer (McElroy 31). They named him Johann Bernoulli, but he was also called Jean and John (Young 52). Bernoulli's family of wealthy merchants from Holland wanted him to follow a career in business. However, he failed as a business person, and followed his brother's pathway in mathematics and sciences (McElroy 31).
In 1683, Bernoulli enrolled at the University of Basel (Young 52). His older brother, Jakob, was a professor of mathematics, and he was teaching about experimental physics at the time. Bernoulli studied medicine and physics, and he achieved his doctorate in 1694, by writing a mathematical dissertation in the field of medicine (McElroy 31). Although his father didn't want him to, Bernoulli also studied mathematics alone with his brother in hopes that this would help him in his career as a physicist (Olanoff 612).
The Bernoulli brothers learned infinitesimal calculus by a small group of European Mathematicians who fully understood it (Young 52). In addition, they also conquered Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz's differential calculus. While in Geneva, Johann, found a solution to the catenary problem posed by his brother in 1691. This was his first notable achievement that made him a leading mathematician of Europe (McElroy 31-32).
Furthermore, Bernoulli went to Paris in 1691 where he met the best scientists and philosophers in France (Young 52). They were very impressed with what he had accomplished, and they recognized him for his “golden theorem,” which is a formula for the radius of a curvature of an arbitrary curve (McElroy 32). They also made him a represe...
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...noulli made important contributions to the development of differential and integral calculus, and he solved mechanical problems by using calculus. He discovered exponential calculus, and co-discovered, with his brother, calculus of variations (Olanoff 612). He also used math in topics such as astronomy, optics, ships' sails, and the tides of oceans. In all, Bernoulli was a very interesting person who contributed to the math used today (Jones 211).
Works Cited
Bradley, Micheal J. Pioneers in Mathematics: The Age of Genius (1300 – 1800). New York: Chelsea House, 2006.
Jones, Phillip S. “Bernoulli.” World Book. 1973.
McElroy, Tucker. Notable Scientists: A to Z of Mathematicians. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2005.
Olanoff, Samuel. “Bernoulli.” Encyclopedia Americana. 1997.
Young, Robyn V. Notable Mathematicians. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
The invention of calculus started in the second half of the 17th Century. The few preceding centuries, known as the Renaissance period, marked a time of prosperity in different areas throughout Europe. Different philosophies emerged which resulted in a new form of mindset. Science and art were still very much interconnected and intermingled at this time, as exemplified by the work of artists and scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci. It is no surprise that revolutionary work in science and
Ball, Rouse. “Sir Isaac Newton.” A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. 4th ed. Print.
This was the beginning of many awards in his experiments to come. He was elected to the Royal Society on May 29, 1756. This is probably one of the most influential factors in his work and this is one way that his work was seen by people all over Europe and other parts of the world. Members of the Royal Society had their scientific works published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (DOSB,129)
Boyle’s education began at the age of four with the study of French and Latin. At the age of 8, he was sent to Eton College, England then he was whisked on a European tour with his tutor and older brother Francis when he was 12. His stop in Italy proved to be a major turning point in his life. It was during this visit that he was first exposed to the works of Galileo Galilei and his studies on mathematics and motion.
...st important scientists in history. It is said that they both shaped the sciences and mathematics that we use and study today. Euclid’s postulates and Archimedes’ calculus are both important fundamentals and tools in mathematics, while discoveries, such Archimedes’ method of using water to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object, helped shaped all of today’s physics and scientific principles. It is for these reasons that they are remembered for their contributions to the world of mathematics and sciences today, and will continue to be remembered for years to come.
Wigner, Eugene P. 1960. The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13: 1-14.
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...
The argument in this paper that even though the onus of the discovery of calculus lies with Isaac Newton, the credit goes to Leibniz for the simple fact that he was the one who published his works first. Appending to this is the fact that the calculus wars that ensue was merely and egotistic battle between humans succumbing to their bare primal instincts. To commence, a brief historical explanation must be given about both individuals prior to stating their cases.
Tubbs, Robert. What is a Number? Mathematical Concepts and Their Origins. Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins
Carl Friedrich Gauss was born April 30, 1777 in Brunswick, Germany to a stern father and a loving mother. At a young age, his mother sensed how intelligent her son was and insisted on sending him to school to develop even though his dad displayed much resistance to the idea. The first test of Gauss’ brilliance was at age ten in his arithmetic class when the teacher asked the students to find the sum of all whole numbers 1 to 100. In his mind, Gauss was able to connect that 1+100=101, 2+99=101, and so on, deducing that all 50 pairs of numbers would equal 101. By this logic all Gauss had to do was multiply 50 by 101 and get his answer of 5,050. Gauss was bound to the mathematics field when at the age of 14, Gauss met the Duke of Brunswick. The duke was so astounded by Gauss’ photographic memory that he financially supported him through his studies at Caroline College and other universities afterwards. A major feat that Gauss had while he was enrolled college helped him decide that he wanted to focus on studying mathematics as opposed to languages. Besides his life of math, Gauss also had six children, three with Johanna Osthoff and three with his first deceased wife’s best fri...
...ocity. On the other hand, Leibniz had taken a geometrical approach, basing his discoveries on the work of previous thinkers like Fermat and Pascal. Though Newton had been the first to derive calculus as a mathematical approach, Leibniz was the first one to widely disseminate the concept throughout Europe. This was perhaps the most conclusive evidence that Newton and Leibniz were both independent developers of calculus. Newton’s timeline displays more evidence of inventing calculus because of his refusal to use theories or concepts to prove his answers, while Leibniz furthered other mathematician’s ideas to collaborate and bring together theorems for the application of calculus. The history of calculus developed as a result of sequential events, including many inventions and innovations, which led to forward thinking in the development of the mathematical system.
Burton, D. (2011). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. (Seventh Ed.) New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ever wonder how scientists figure out how long it takes for the radiation from a nuclear weapon to decay? This dilemma can be solved by calculus, which helps determine the rate of decay of the radioactive material. Calculus can aid people in many everyday situations, such as deciding how much fencing is needed to encompass a designated area. Finding how gravity affects certain objects is how calculus aids people who study Physics. Mechanics find calculus useful to determine rates of flow of fluids in a car. Numerous developments in mathematics by Ancient Greeks to Europeans led to the discovery of integral calculus, which is still expanding. The first mathematicians came from Egypt, where they discovered the rule for the volume of a pyramid and approximation of the area of a circle. Later, Greeks made tremendous discoveries. Archimedes extended the method of inscribed and circumscribed figures by means of heuristic, which are rules that are specific to a given problem and can therefore help guide the search. These arguments involved parallel slices of figures and the laws of the lever, the idea of a surface as made up of lines. Finding areas and volumes of figures by using conic section (a circle, point, hyperbola, etc.) and weighing infinitely thin slices of figures, an idea used in integral calculus today was also a discovery of Archimedes. One of Archimedes's major crucial discoveries for integral calculus was a limit that allows the "slices" of a figure to be infinitely thin. Another Greek, Euclid, developed ideas supporting the theory of calculus, but the logic basis was not sustained since infinity and continuity weren't established yet (Boyer 47). His one mistake in finding a definite integral was that it is not found by the sums of an infinite number of points, lines, or surfaces but by the limit of an infinite sequence (Boyer 47). These early discoveries aided Newton and Leibniz in the development of calculus. In the 17th century, people from all over Europe made numerous mathematics discoveries in the integral calculus field. Johannes Kepler "anticipat(ed) results found… in the integral calculus" (Boyer 109) with his summations. For instance, in his Astronomia nova, he formed a summation similar to integral calculus dealing with sine and cosine. F. B. Cavalieri expanded on Johannes Kepler's work on measuring volumes. Also, he "investigate[d] areas under the curve" ("Calculus (mathematics)") with what he called "indivisible magnitudes.
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...