Johann I Bernoulli

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Johann I Bernoulli

Johann I Bernoulli (* July 27 jul. / 6. August  1667 greg. In Basel , † 1. January 1748 ibid) was Swiss mathematician and physician, the younger brother of Jacob Bernoulli and the father of Daniel Bernoulli and Johann II Bernoulli .

Life

Johann I Bernoulli was the tenth child of Niklaus Bernoulli from the Bernoulli family , a member of the city council of Basel, and was originally supposed to be a businessman. Instead, he studied from 1683 at the University of Basel, where he made his master's degree in 1685. Then he studied medicine. His older brother Jakob introduced him to mathematics, and especially to the then new analysis , with whom he initially worked closely, but later fell out completely. In 1690 he solved the chain line problem posed by his brother Jakob . In the same year he traveled to Geneva and a year later to Paris . He spread his knowledge of the new mathematical discipline analysis everywhere, in Paris a. a. he passed it on to the Marquis de L'Hospital , who wrote the first analysis textbook in 1696. In 1694 Bernoulli received his doctorate in medicine in Basel. From 1693 began his extensive correspondence with Leibniz , with whom he a. a. 1712 led to a controversy over the values ​​of the logarithm in the case of negative values ​​of the argument. In 1695 he became a professor in Groningen (in which his brother Jakob, with whom he had fallen out from about 1697, was not entirely uninvolved). In 1705, after his brother's death, he became his successor as a mathematics professor in Basel. After Leibniz's death in 1716 he was the main exponent of analysis in continental Europe and also sided with Leibniz in the priority dispute with the English mathematicians over Newton. He led another feud with Brook Taylor .

His fields of work included series , differential equations , curves under geometric and mechanical aspects. He was significantly involved in developing the modern concept of function and played an important role in the early days of the calculus of variations. Among other things, he solved the problem of the brachistochrone (posed by Jakob Bernoulli in 1696) and published his solution in 1708. In 1717 Johann I Bernoulli gave in a letter to Pierre de Varignon the general formula of the principle of virtual work for rigid bodies. He also dealt with hydraulics, although he claimed results from his son Daniel Bernoulli for himself.

In 1743, Johann I Bernoulli himself published his works in four volumes, which were further supplemented by his son Johann II Bernoulli , who succeeded him as a mathematics professor in Basel. In mechanics he was an opponent of Newton's theory and supporter of Descartes and his vortex theory . But he also worked through Newton's Principia and corrected a number of errors.

His students included Leonhard Euler , Marquis de L'Hospital , Maupertuis , Gabriel Cramer , his son Johann II ( on the other hand, he had a dispute with his son Daniel Bernoulli because he wanted him to become a businessman), Alexis Clairaut and the Bernese Niklaus Blauner .

The edition of works by the Bernoullis and especially by Johann I Bernoulli (and his correspondence) was started by Ludwig Otto Spiess in 1955. His autographs are kept in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library , among others .

In 1699 he was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences . Since 1701 he was a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1712 he was accepted into the Royal Society . In 1725 he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences .

Posthumous honors

In Basel, in 1875, a bust was erected in honor of Johann I Bernoulli at the entrance to the Bernoullianum . In 1985 the lunar crater Bernoulli was named after him and his brother Jakob.

Fonts

  • The collected works of the mathematicians and physicists of the Bernoulli family, Birkhäuser:
    • Johann Bernoulli's correspondence, Volume 1, 1955
    • The correspondence between Johann I. Bernoulli and Pierre Varignon, 2 volumes 1988, 1992
    • Jakob and Johann Bernoulli: The pamphlets: Calculation of variations (editor Herman Goldstine), 1991
  • Opera Omnia, 4 volumes, Lausanne: Bousquet 1742, reprinted by Olms, Hildesheim 1968
  • The first integral calculus. A selection from Johann Bernoulli's mathematical lectures on the method of integrals and others, editor Gerhard Kowalewski, Ostwalds Klassiker 194, Leipzig: Engelmann 1914
  • The differential calculus from 1691/92, Leipzig, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft 1924 (publisher Paul Schafheitlin )
  • Paul Stäckel (Ed.) Treatises on calculus of variations by Joh. Bernoulli (1696), Jakob Bernoulli (1697) and Leonhard Euler (1744), Leipzig: Engelmann 1894, Wiss. Book Society 1976

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 31, ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  2. ^ Members of the previous academies. Johann (I.) Bernoulli. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on February 21, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Entry on Bernoulli, Jean (1667 - 1748) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
  4. ↑ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Bernoulli, Johann I. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed on September 18, 2019 (Russian).
  5. ^ Gustaf Adolf Wanner : Around Basels Monuments, Basel 1975, p. 40 ff.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bernoulli, Johann I
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1667
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1748
Place of death Basel