Who is james bernoulli

Dunham, William. Eves, Howard. An Introduction to the History of Mathematics. Fort Worth: Saunders College Publishing, Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Simmons, George F. Contact Us If you are in need of technical support, have a question about advertising opportunities, or have a general question, please contact us by phone or submit a message through the form below. General Inquiry Technical Support Advertising. Enable Javascript for audio controls.

American Mathematical Monthly. He was an early user of polar coordinates and discovered the isochrone. View three larger pictures. Biography Jacob Bernoulli 's father, Nicolaus Bernoulli - inherited the spice business in Basel that had been set up by his own father, first in Amsterdam and then in Basel. The family, of Belgium origin, were refugees fleeing from persecution by the Spanish rulers of the Netherlands.

Philip, the King of Spain, had sent the Duke of Alba to the Netherlands in with a large army to punish those opposed to Spanish rule, to enforce adherence to Roman Catholicism, and to re-establish Philip's authority. Alba set up the Council of Troubles which was a court that condemned over people but most, like the Bernoulli family who were of the Protestant faith, fled the country.

Nicolaus Bernoulli was an important citizen of Basel, being a member of the town council and a magistrate. Jacob Bernoulli's mother also came from an important Basel family of bankers and local councillors.

He was compelled to study philosophy and theology by his parents, which he greatly resented, and he graduated from the University of Basel with a master's degree in philosophy in and a licentiate in theology in During the time that Jacob Bernoulli was taking his university degrees he was studying mathematics and astronomy against the wishes of his parents.

It is worth remarking that this was a typical pattern for many of the Bernoulli family who made a study of mathematics despite pressure to make a career in other areas.

However Jacob Bernoulli was the first to go down this road so for him it was rather different in that there was no tradition of mathematics in the family before Jacob Bernoulli. Later members of the family must have been much influenced by the tradition of studying mathematics and mathematical physics. In , after taking his theology degree, Bernoulli moved to Geneva where he worked as a tutor. He then travelled to France spending two years studying with the followers of Descartes who were led at this time by Malebranche.

In Bernoulli travelled to the Netherlands where he met many mathematicians including Hudde. Continuing his studies with the leading mathematicians and scientists of Europe he went to England where, among others, he met Boyle and Hooke. At this time he was deeply interested in astronomy and produced a work giving an incorrect theory of comets.

Jacob's contributions to statistics include a major work on infinite series, in which his statement of the Law of Large Numbers appeared. The essence of the law is that, given an inherent probability that an event will come out a certain way, an increasing number of trials will give an increasingly accurate approximation to that frequency, random variations on either side of the inherently probable value tending to cancel out in the long run.

Jacob's work on the calculus he was the first to use the term "integral" and on geometry gave him a deep insight into the equations of many of the curves that are useful in describing growth and probability.

He was so taken with another curve he investigated, the logarithmic equilangular spiral, that he ordered it to be engraved on his tomb with the caption Eadem mutata resurgo: "Though transformed, I shall arise unchanged. After Jacob's death, Johannes realized his long ambition by succeeding to his brother's chair at Basel. He explored the possibilities in a paper, but his brother solved it before he finished. Johann delivered a wounding version of events, according to a source quoted in Durham's book.

It is true that it cost me study that robbed me of rest for an entire night … but the next morning, filled with joy, I ran to my brother, who was still struggling miserably with this Gordian knot without getting anywhere, always thinking, like Galileo, that the catenary was a parabola.

I say to him, don't torture yourself any more to try and prove the identity of the catenary with the parabola, since it is entirely false. Another famous quandary for the brothers Bernoulli involved the brachistochrone problem from the Greek term meaning "shortest time". In , Johann published a riddle in Acta Eruditorum which invited others to determine the curve of quickest descent between two given points A and B, assuming that B does not lie right beneath A.

Johann believed it was a cycloid curve, but his proof was wrong. Johann solved the problem in a more ingenious way, but Jakob recognized that his approach could be generalized. The brothers disputed one another's works in the pages of leading scientific publications during their respective careers. Bernoulli, however, was more critical by nature and often entered into vituperative battles with his superiors at the University of Basel as well.

Bernoulli was fascinated by the mathematical properties of curves, especially the logarithmic spiral, a figure similar to the chambered nautilus mollusk shell in nature with its perfectly symmetrical spirals.

It is also referred to as a spira mirabilis, or "wonderful spiral. Bernoulli died on August 16, , in Basel, Switzerland. His brother succeeded him in his post as professor of mathematics at the University of Basel.

One of Bernoulli's best known works was published posthumously in Ars conjectandi The Art of Conjecture , which involves probability theory.