
During a heated discussion over the newly discovered planet, Uranus, Euler suffered a brain aneurysm. The latter, in fact, ultimately led to his death. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist who made fundamental contributions to countless areas of mathematics. Much of his work has implications in the fields of physics and astronomy. A reflection of this can be seen in the two numbers named after him (he is the only mathematician to have more than one): Euler’s Number in calculus, which goes by the notation e, and the Euler-Mascheroni Constant γ (gamma), sometimes referred to as just “Euler’s constant.”Įuler’s contributions to the world extended beyond mathematics as well. His contributions to mathematics are almost unparalleled. Leonhard Euler is best known as a prolific mathematician, but he also made notable contributions in optics and astronomy. 9 Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Eulers moved from Basel to.

He had two younger sisters, Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena, and a younger brother, Johann Heinrich. Trigonometry notations, for example, were completely of his design. Leonhard Euler was born on 15 April 1707, in Basel, Switzerland, to Paul III Euler, a pastor of the Reformed Church, and Marguerite née Brucker, another pastor’s daughter. Much of the terminology, notation, and function of modern mathematics was created by Euler. He lived from 1707 to 1783.Įuler’s contributions to the field of mathematics are most noticeable in the way the subject is taught and learned. He was a revolutionary thinker in the fields of geometry, trigonometry, calculus, differential equations, number theory, and notational systems.

He is widely considered to be the pre-eminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest to have ever lived. Euler also pioneered the use ofanalytic methods to. Petersburg, Russia and Berlin, Germany, Euler was born and educated in Basel, Switzerland. Euler invented the calculus ofvariations including its most well-known result, the EulerLagrange equation. That’s a rate of one publication for every month of his entire life! Of course, Euler did not actually start publishing his mathematical works from birth, but rather published the vast majority during the last 20 years of his life, a time during which he had completely lost his sight.Īlthough he spent most of his life in St. This Swiss mathematician spent most of his working life in Russia, where his number theoretic work was suggested by issues raised by Pierre de Fermat, as well as his own ideas. Episode #1 of the course “Greatest Mathematicians”Ĭombining all his books and papers, Leonhard Euler has 885 published works to his name. Leonhard Euler made many contributions to the field of mathematics, including his work in number theory.
