Louis Poinsot
Louis Poinsot (born January 3, 1777 in Paris , † December 5, 1859 there ) was a French mathematician . From 1813 he was a member of the Académie des Sciences .
Life
Poinsot attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in preparation for his studies from 1794 at the École polytechnique . In 1797 he moved to the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (School for Bridge and Road Construction), where he graduated as an engineer. Then he discovered mathematics as his true passion, published his statics book in 1803, where he founded the theory of the couple of forces , and therefore initially became a teacher - from 1804 to 1809 - of mathematics at the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris . In 1809 he got an assistant professorship at the École Polytechnique. However, from 1812 he passed on his teaching duties to others ( Antoine André Louis Reynaud and then Augustin Louis Cauchy ) and in 1816 he gave up his professorship, but was an examiner for the entrance exams for ten years.
With Gaspard Monge, Poinsot revived the study of geometry in France, applied it to mechanics (for example in his geometric theory of the force-free top, Poinsot's construction ) and discovered four new regular polyhedra (two of which were already known to Johannes Kepler , what he did not know → Kepler-Poinsot body ).
In 1813 he was elected to succeed Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the Académie des Sciences . From 1835 until his death he worked at the Bureau des Longitudes . He was also active on various higher education bodies in France. In 1846 he was accepted as an officer in the Legion of Honor . In 1858 he finally became a member of the London Royal Society .
He helped build the Eiffel Tower and is number 45 on the list of 72 names in recognition of his scientific contributions to Alexandre Gustave Eiffel . In 1858 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .
Works
His main works are:
- Eléments De Statique . Calixte-Volland, Paris 1803
- Theory Nouvelle de la rotation des corps . Bachelier, Paris 1834
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Louis Poinsot. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : Poinsot, Louis . In: History of structural engineering. In search of balance . 2nd, greatly expanded edition. Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-433-03134-6 , pp. 1020 f .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Poinsot, Louis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French mathematician, member of the Academy of Sciences |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 3, 1777 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 5, 1859 |
| Place of death | Paris |