Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Euler

Author: Robert E. Bradley

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2007-03-20

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 0080471293

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The year 2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of the Enlightenment's most important mathematicians and scientists, Leonhard Euler. This volume is a collection of 24 essays by some of the world's best Eulerian scholars from seven different countries about Euler, his life and his work. Some of the essays are historical, including much previously unknown information about Euler's life, his activities in the St. Petersburg Academy, the influence of the Russian Princess Dashkova, and Euler's philosophy. Others describe his influence on the subsequent growth of European mathematics and physics in the 19th century. Still others give technical details of Euler's innovations in probability, number theory, geometry, analysis, astronomy, mechanics and other fields of mathematics and science.- Over 20 essays by some of the best historians of mathematics and science, including Ronald Calinger, Peter Hoffmann, Curtis Wilson, Kim Plofker, Victor Katz, Ruediger Thiele, David Richeson, Robin Wilson, Ivor Grattan-Guinness and Karin Reich- New details of Euler's life in two essays, one by Ronald Calinger and one he co-authored with Elena Polyakhova- New information on Euler's work in differential geometry, series, mechanics, and other important topics including his influence in the early 19th century


Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Euler

Author: Ronald Calinger

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 689

ISBN-13: 0691196400

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"This is the first full-scale biography of Leonhard Euler (1707-83), one of the greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists of all time. In this comprehensive and authoritative account, Ronald Calinger connects the story of Euler's eventful life to the astonishing achievements that place him in the company of Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss. Drawing chiefly on Euler's massive published works and correspondence, which fill more than eighty volumes so far, this biography sets Euler's work in its multilayered context--personal, intellectual, institutional, political, cultural, religious, and social. It is a story of nearly incessant accomplishment, from Euler's fundamental contributions to almost every area of pure and applied mathematics--especially calculus, number theory, notation, optics, and celestial, rational, and fluid mechanics--to his advancements in shipbuilding, telescopes, ballistics, cartography, chronology, and music theory. The narrative takes the reader from Euler's childhood and education in Basel through his first period in St. Petersburg, 1727-41, where he gained a European reputation by solving the Basel problem and systematically developing analytical mechanics. Invited to Berlin by Frederick II, Euler published his famous Introductio in analysin infinitorum, devised continuum mechanics, and proposed a pulse theory of light. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1766, he created the analytical calculus of variations, developed the most precise lunar theory of the time that supported Newton's dynamics, and published the best-selling Letters to a German Princess--all despite eye problems that ended in near-total blindness. In telling the remarkable story of Euler and how his achievements brought pan-European distinction to the Petersburg and Berlin academies of sciences, the book also demonstrates with new depth and detail the central role of mathematics in the Enlightenment."--Publisher's description.


Leonhard Euler and the Foundations of Celestial Mechanics

Leonhard Euler and the Foundations of Celestial Mechanics

Author: Dora Musielak

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-01

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 3031123220

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The intention of this book is to shine a bright light on the intellectual context of Euler’s contributions to physics and mathematical astronomy. Leonhard Euler is one of the most important figures in the history of science, a blind genius who introduced mathematical concepts and many analytical tools to help us understand and describe the universe. Euler also made a monumental contribution to astronomy and orbital mechanics, developing what he called astronomia mechanica. Orbital mechanics of artificial satellites and spacecraft is based on Euler’s analysis of astromechanics. However, previous books have often neglected many of his discoveries in this field. For example, orbital mechanics texts refer to the five equilibrium points in the Sun-Earth-Moon system as Lagrange points, failing to credit Euler who first derived the differential equations for the general n-body problem and who discovered the three collinear points in the three-body problem of celestial mechanics. These equilibrium points are essential today in space exploration; the James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble), for example, now orbits the Sun near L2, one of the collinear points of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, while future missions to study the universe will place observatories in orbit around Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon equilibrium points that should be properly called Euler-Lagrange points. In this book, the author uses Euler’s memoirs, correspondence, and other scholarly sources to explore how he established the mathematical groundwork for the rigorous study of motion in our Solar System. The reader will learn how he studied comets and eclipses, derived planetary orbits, and pioneered the study of planetary perturbations, and how, old and blind, Euler put forward the most advanced lunar theory of his time.


Between Theory and Observations

Between Theory and Observations

Author: Steven Wepster

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-11-11

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1441913149

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In the 18th century, purely scientific interests as well as the practical necessities of navigation motivated the development of new theories and techniques to accurately describe celestial and lunar motion. "Between Theory and Observations" presents a detailed and accurate account, not to be found elsewhere in the literature, of Tobias Mayer's important contributions to the study of lunar motion—including the creation of his famous set of lunar tables, which were the most accurate of their time.


Leonhard Euler

Leonhard Euler

Author: Emil A. Fellmann

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-04-05

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 3764375396

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Euler was not only by far the most productive mathematician in the history of mankind, but also one of the greatest scholars of all time. He attained, like only a few scholars, a degree of popularity and fame which may well be compared with that of Galilei, Newton, or Einstein. Moreover he was a cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word; he lived during his first twenty years in Basel, was active altogether for more than thirty years in Petersburg and for a quarter of a century in Berlin. Leonhard Euler’s unusually rich life and broadly diversified activity in the immediate vicinity of important personalities which have made history, may well justify an exposition. This book is based in part on unpublished sources and comes right out of the current research on Euler. It is entirely free of formulae as it has been written for a broad audience with interests in the history of culture and science.


A History of Modern Planetary Physics

A History of Modern Planetary Physics

Author: Stephen G. Brush

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-04-26

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780521552141

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Where did we come from? Before there was life there had to be something to live on - a planet, a solar system. During the past 200 years, astronomers and geologists have developed and tested several different theories about the origin of the solar system and the nature of the Earth. Together, the three volumes that make up A History of Modern Planetary Physics present a survey of these theories. The early twentieth century saw the replacement of the Nebular Hypothesis with the Chamberlain-Moulton theory that the solar system resulted from the encounter of the Sun with a passing star. Fruitful Encounters follows the eventual refutation of the encounter theory and the subsequent revival of a modernised Nebular Hypothesis. Professor Brush also discusses the role of findings from the Apollo space programme, especially the analysis of lunar samples, culminating in the establishment, in the 1980s, of the 'giant impact' theory of the Moon's origin.


When Computers Were Human

When Computers Were Human

Author: David Alan Grier

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1400849365

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Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.


Interpreting Newton

Interpreting Newton

Author: Andrew Janiak

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-01-12

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1107376769

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This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading scholars presents research on Isaac Newton and his main philosophical interlocutors and critics. The essays analyze Newton's relation to his contemporaries, especially Barrow, Descartes, Leibniz and Locke and discuss the ways in which a broad range of figures, including Hume, Maclaurin, Maupertuis and Kant, reacted to his thought. The wide range of topics discussed includes the laws of nature, the notion of force, the relation of mathematics to nature, Newton's argument for universal gravitation, his attitude toward philosophical empiricism, his use of 'fluxions', his approach toward measurement problems and his concept of absolute motion, together with new interpretations of Newton's matter theory. The volume concludes with an extended essay that analyzes the changes in physics wrought by Newton's Principia. A substantial introduction and bibliography provide essential reference guides.