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Mathematics and Computing

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Pierre de Fermat. Pierre de Fermat (French: [pjɛːʁ dəfɛʁma]; 17[2] August 1601 or 1607[1] – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality.

Pierre de Fermat

In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for Fermat's Last Theorem, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica. Life and work[edit] Fermat was born in the first decade of the 17th century in Beaumont-de-Lomagne (present-day Tarn-et-Garonne), France; the late 15th-century mansion where Fermat was born is now a museum. Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal (French: [blɛz paskal]; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher.

Blaise Pascal

He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism.[5] His father died in 1651.

Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. Pascal had poor health, especially after his 18th year, and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday.[6] Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Life[edit] Time in Italy[edit] "The first of a family of astronomers who settled in France and were prominent in directing the activities of the French school of astronomy until the Revolution, Cassini was the son of Jacopo Cassini, a Tuscan, and Julia Crovesi.

Giovanni Domenico Cassini

Cassini accepted a position at the observatory at Panzano, near Bologna, to work with Marquis Cornelio Malvasia, a rich amateur astronomer, in 1648 initiating the first part of Cassini's career. "[4] During Cassini's time at the Panzano Observatory, Cassini was able to complete his education under the scientists Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi. Moving to France[edit] An engraving of the Paris Observatory during Cassini's time. Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (/ˈnjuːtən/;[8] 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/7[1]) was an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution.

Isaac Newton

His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours of the visible spectrum.

He formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. Life Early life Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz[a][b] (;[11] German: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈvɪlhɛlm fɔn ˈlaɪbnɪts][12][13] or [ˈlaɪpnɪts];[14] 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

As a representative of the seventeenth-century tradition of rationalism, Leibniz developed, as his most prominent accomplishment, the ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments.[15] Mathematical works have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional expression of calculus. [citation needed] It was only in the 20th century that Leibniz's law of continuity and transcendental law of homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis).

He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. Biography[edit] Evangelista Torricelli. Evangelista Torricelli (Italian: [evandʒeˈlista torriˈtʃɛlli] listen ) (1608–1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer.

Evangelista Torricelli

Biography[edit] Opera geometrica 1644. Johann Bernoulli. For other family members named Johann, see Bernoulli family.

Johann Bernoulli

Johann Bernoulli (also known as Jean or John; 6 August [O.S. 27 July] 1667 – 1 January 1748) was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educated Leonhard Euler in his youth. Early life and education[edit] Johann was born in Basel, the son of Nicolaus Bernoulli, an apothecary, and his wife, Margaretha Schonauer and began studying medicine at Basel University. His father desired that he study business so that he might take over the family spice trade, but Johann Bernoulli did not like business and convinced his father to allow him to study medicine instead.

Adult life[edit] After graduating from Basel University Johann Bernoulli moved to teach differential equations. In 1724 he entered a competition sponsored by the French Académie Royale des Sciences, which posed the question: