Joseph-Louis Lagrange (nonfiction)
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (/ləˈɡrɑːndʒ/ or /ləˈɡreɪndʒ/; French: [laˈgrɑ̃ʒ]), born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia or Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier (also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia) (25 January 1736 – 10 April 1813), was an Italian Enlightenment Era mathematician and astronomer.
He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.
In 1766, on the recommendation of Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Prussia, where he stayed for over twenty years, producing volumes of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences.
On September 21, 1781 Lagrange wrote to d'Alembert: "It appears to me also that the mine [of mathematics] is already very deep and that unless one discovers new veins it will be necessary sooner or later to abandon it." This view was prevalent at the end of the eighteenth century.
Lagrange's treatise on analytical mechanics (Mécanique analytique, 4. ed., 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1788–89), written in Berlin and first published in 1788, offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century.
In 1787, at age 51, he moved from Berlin to Paris and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He remained in France until the end of his life. He was significantly involved in the decimalisation in Revolutionary France, became the first professor of analysis at the École Polytechnique upon its opening in 1794, was a founding member of the Bureau des Longitudes, and became Senator in 1799.
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External links:
- Joseph-Louis Lagrange @ Wikipedia