(January 25, 1736 – April 10, 1813)

This Italo-Franco prime mover was born and baptized as Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin, Italy. But he later adopted the French version of his name. Like some of his scientific predecessors, Joseph-Louis Lagrange pursued a career in law before developing interest in mathematics. And despite being largely self-taught, his proficiency enabled the 19-year-old to be appointed tutor at Turin’s Royal Artillery College in 1755. His expertise includes Number Theory, Analysis and Rational Mechanics. He was so brilliant and improvising that Leonhard Euler (his academic adviser via correspondence) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (his mentor) recommended him to succeed Euler as the Math Director of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, when Euler left for Saint Petersburg in 1766. Lagrange would spend 20 years in Berlin: producing fantastic works on both maths and mathematical physics. He returned to Paris in 1787, joined France’s Academy of Sciences; and in the following year, published his highly influential masterpiece: Mécanique Analytique, which he had written in Berlin. This helped transform both Classical and Celestial mechanics. His other acclaimed treatises include: Theorie des Fonctions Analytiques and Résolution des Équations Numériques. At this time, he was math professor at the École Polytechnique Paris (which was established in 1794). Within Analysis, Lagrange researched extensively on Calculus of Variations, and in the process, consolidated the Variation of Parameters. He even devised ways of using Differential Calculus to solve multifarious problems: including the Theory of Probabilities. Of all the geniuses whose maths and physics crowned the 18th century, only Leonhard Euler surpassed Lagrange.

 

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