Hendrik van Heuraet

Hendrik van Heuraet (* probably September 8, 1634 in Haarlem , † around 1660 probably in Leiden ) was a Dutch mathematician.

Life

The exact date of birth is not known, but can be narrowed down from February 2 to September 8, 1634 - the deed of transfer for his inheritance, which he could take on at the age of 21 at the earliest, is dated September 8, 1655. His father Abraham van Heuraet (died 1651) was a clothes dealer who had moved to Haarlem from Hamburg and married Maria de Coninck there in 1631. The family went through tough times when the mother died in 1636 and the father temporarily ran into financial difficulties. From 1653 he studied medicine at the University of Leiden. He also studied mathematics privately with Frans van Schooten , as well as Johan Hudde and Christian Huygens . In 1655 he became financially independent through his inheritance. In 1658 he studied with Hudde at the Protestant University in Saumur before continuing his medical studies in Leiden.

Heuraet belonged to the circle of mathematicians (such as Huygens, Slusius , Hudde, Johan de Witt ) around Frans van Schooten, who further developed Descartes' analytical geometry in Leiden . Heuraet dealt in particular with the rectification of curves (arc length). Specifically, in a letter from 1658 (Epistola de transmutatione curvarum linearum in rectas) to van Schooten, he gave the arc length of a parabola as an integral, as did William Neile independently for another curve and more generally Pierre de Fermat around the same time. The return of the determination of an arc length to an area determination was seen by mathematicians at the time as a great step forward. In the same year it came to a priority dispute with Huygens. With his work, Heuraet is one of the mathematicians in the early history of analysis. Some of his results were published as an appendix to van Schooten's Latin translation of Descartes' geometry (second edition in two volumes 1659, 1661).

Little is known about his later life. He is mentioned in a letter from Huygens in 1659, but not in later letters.

literature

• Jan van Maanen: Hendrick van Heureat (1634-1660?): His Life and Mathematical Work , Centaurus, Volume 27, 1984, pp. 218-279
• Dirk Struik , Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• C. de Waard, Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek 1911
• W. Grootendorst, JA van Maanen: Van Heuraet's letter (1659) on the rectification of curves , Nieuw Arch. Wisk., Series 3, Volume 30, Issue 1, 1982, pp. 95-113.

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Hendrik van Heuraet. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .