Gilles Personne de Roberval

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Gilles Personne de Roberval

Gilles Personne de Roberval (born August 10, 1602 in Roberval , Senlis , † October 27, 1675 in Paris ) was a French mathematician .

Independently of Evangelista Torricelli, Roberval developed a method for determining tangents on curves and independently of Bonaventura Cavalieri an individual method ( Cavalieri's principle ) for determining volumes and areas. He later accused both of plagiarism .

Life

Roberval was born with the name Gilles Personne in Roberval (north of Paris, today Senlis), it was only later that he called himself Gilles Personne de Roberval, which also gave him the appearance of being a noble. He came from a simple farming family, but was able to attend school. Through this education, and probably to a large extent by his autodidactic studies he could as a teacher in France travel around. During this period he deepened his knowledge through further self-taught studies.

He then traveled to Paris and met Marin Mersenne's mathematics group there . In 1632 he became a professor of philosophy at the Collège Gervais. In 1634 he received the Ramus' chair at the Collège de France , to which he had to apply regularly, but which he was able to hold until the end of his life.

Since it was founded in 1666, he was a member of the Académie des Sciences . There he demonstrated his Roberval balance , a special beam balance , in 1669 . Using a parallelogram linkage, this ensured that there was always a balance, regardless of the position of the weights on both weighing pans. The construction principle is still used today.

Roberval used a special tactic for appointments to the professorships. He did not publish his findings, but first presented them to the appointment committees; this tactic earned him numerous arguments as other mathematicians published their methods. Roberval, who did not publish his methods, accused the scientists (like the aforementioned Cavalieri and Torricelli) of stealing his ideas. In the Cavalieri and Torricelli cases, however, it can be said that they developed their methods independently of Roberval.

Overall, Roberval was seen as very hot-headed, quick-tempered and envious. So he never missed an opportunity to measure himself against others; He led disputes with Descartes in particular (by letter via Mersenne), some of which contained personal insults.

Roberval also published a work on the Copernican view of the world, which he published under the name of an ancient Greek astronomer ( Aristarchus ).

literature

  • Nikiforowski, Wiktor A .; Freiman, Leon S .: Pioneer of the new mathematics (from the Russian). 1st edition Moscow, Berlin: Verlag MIR Moscow, VEB Fachbuchverlag, 1978.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Roberval, Gilles Personne de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1602
PLACE OF BIRTH Roberval , Senlis
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1675
Place of death Paris