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Leonhard Euler: Analyses and Treatises
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16500 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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5 / 1989 |
3,183 Words |
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Ronald Calinger
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Mathematics with its models, symbols, idealization, and logical rigor is the language of the sciences. It provides an excellent method for making discoveries in the sciences and, over the last three centuries, has generated major new fields, such as calculus, statistics, computer science, and applied mathematics, to solve new problems.
In turn, mathematical discoveries in science have found important commercial applications. The mathematical electromagnetic theory led to the use of electricity, radio, and television, and theoretical advances in nuclear physics to nuclear power. Today computers, based conceptually on the algebra of logic, are applied in part to banking, routine record keeping, engineering design, and quality control in manufacturing.
Chiefly as a result of his contributions to number theory, calculus, and mechanics, the Swiss-born genius Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) is recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians in history. The genial Euler was the foremost scientist during the Enlightenment, as well as the most prolific mathematician of all time. His career was spent at two national science academies--one in St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) and the other in Berlin. His Enlightenment contemporaries included Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edward Gibbon, Wolfgang Mozart, Immanuel Kant, and Benjamin Franklin.
Family And Education
Leonhard Euler was born in Basel, Switzerland, in April 1707. He was the oldest child of Reformed Pietistic pastor Paul Euler III and his wife, Margaret nee Brucker. Reformed or Zwinglian Protestants, who believed in the primacy of Scripture and esteemed humane learning, were being influenced by Lutheran Pietism with its deep spirituality. These basic tenets would influence Euler throughout his life. In 1708, the Euler family moved to the village of Riehen on the Rhine River.
Leonhard's parents were impressive teachers. His mother introduced him to classical literature. His father, who had shown ability in mathematics at college, first taught him a Reformed catechism and mathematics, and planted the seeds for mathematics in his son's fertile mind. Sometime between 1713 and 1719, Leonhard was sent to the Basel Latin School.
In 1720, young Euler enrolled in the University of Basel. With his keen intellect, eidetic memory, and industry, he easily mastered his university subjects. (Euler once displayed his photographic memory by reciting Virgil's Aeneid.) He earned a bachelor's degree in 1722 and a master's degree two years later. His master's thesis compared the two major natural philosophies of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution--those of Frenchman Rene Descartes and Englishman Isaac Newton.
Euler's father had him specialize in theology in the fall of 1723 to prepare for the ministry. However, in 1725 the irascible mathematician Johann Bernoulli recognized the boy's genius during a mathematics tutorial and persuaded the father that Leonhard should become a mathematician and theoretical physicist instead of a rural pastor.
In 1726, Euler applied to be professor of physics at Basel but was rejected, primarily because he was only 19. He had more success with
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