Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Born
Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia

(1736-01-25)25 January 1736
Died10 April 1813(1813-04-10) (aged 77)
Citizenship
Alma materUniversity of Turin
Known for
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Academic advisors
Notable students

Joseph-Louis Lagrange[a] (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia[5][b] or Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier;[6][c] 25 January 1736 – 10 April 1813), also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange[7] or Lagrangia,[8] was an Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer, later naturalized French. He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.

In 1766, on the recommendation of Leonhard Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Prussia, where he stayed for over twenty years, producing many volumes of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences. Lagrange's treatise on analytical mechanics (Mécanique analytique, 4. ed., 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1788–89), which was written in Berlin and first published in 1788, offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century.

In 1787, at age 51, he moved from Berlin to Paris and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He remained in France until the end of his life. He was instrumental in the decimalisation process in Revolutionary France, became the first professor of analysis at the École Polytechnique upon its opening in 1794, was a founding member of the Bureau des Longitudes, and became Senator in 1799.

  1. ^ "Lagrange, Joseph Louis". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 23 April 2021.
  2. ^ "Lagrange". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  3. ^ "Lagrange". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
  4. ^ "Lagrange". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
  5. ^ Joseph-Louis Lagrange, comte de l’Empire, Encyclopædia Britannica
  6. ^ Angelo Genocchi (1883). "Luigi Lagrange". Il primo secolo della R. Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (in Italian). Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. pp. 86–95. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  7. ^ Luigi Pepe. "Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  8. ^ [1] Encyclopedia of Space and Astronomy.


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