From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
French mathematician and historian (1725?1799)
Jean-Etienne Montucla
|
---|
|
Born
| (
1725-09-05
)
5 September 1725
|
---|
Died
| 18 December 1799
(1799-12-18)
(aged 74)
|
---|
Known for
| Histoire des Mathematiques
|
---|
Jean-Etienne Montucla
(5 September 1725 ? 18 December 1799) was a French
mathematician
and historian.
Montucla was born at
Lyon
,
France
.
Career
In 1754 he published an anonymous treatise on
quadrature
,
Histoire des recherches sur la quadrature du cercle
.
[1]
Montucla's deep interest in
history of mathematics
became apparent with his publication of
Histoire des Mathematiques
, the first part appearing in 1758. According to
George Sarton
, the
Histoire
is
- a history of the mathematical sciences, and might almost be called a
history of science
from the mathematical angle, even as many histories of medicine are to some extent histories of science written from the medical angle.
[2]
He was appointed intendant-secretary of
Grenoble
in 1758, secretary to the expedition for colonizing
Cayenne
in 1764, and chief architect and censor-royal for mathematical books in 1765.
In 1778 he re-edited
Jacques Ozanam
's
Recreations mathematiques
, afterwards published in English by
Charles Hutton
(4 vols, London, 1803).
[3]
The
French Revolution
deprived him of his income and left him in great destitution. The offer in 1795 of a mathematical chair in one of the schools of Paris was declined on account of his infirm health.
He was still in dire circumstances in 1798, when he published a second edition of the first part of his
Histoire
. After his death, his
Histoire
was completed by
Jerome Lalande
, and published at Paris in 1799?1802 (4 vols).
[3]
Ivor Grattan-Guinness
described the
Histoire
as a milestone:
- His first volume covered Greek, Roman, and Eastern traditions, while the second covered geometry, mechanics and optics up to the seventeenth century. Forty years later the second edition began to appear, although the author then died and task of completion fell to Jerome Lalande. With the help of various colleagues, he completed the third volume and wrote the fourth within four years. The first two volumes covered the same material as before, while the other two handled all aspects of the eighteenth century; the whole encompassed around 3000 pages, including indexes (themselves an excellent feature)...One curious feature of the work, especially in chapters on applied mathematics, is the lack of mathematical symbolism in the text: Montucla and Lalande were often content with a verbal account of the work without entering into symbolic renderings. Of course many basic aspects of the history of mathematics were thus left out.
[4]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
J. Montucla (1873)
History of the Quadrature of the Circle
, J. Babin translator, William Alexander Myers editor, link from
HathiTrust
- ^
George Sarton
(1936)
Jean-Etienne Montucla (1725?1799). His Life and Works
,
Osiris
1: 519?67
- ^
a
b
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain
:
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911). "
Montucla, Jean Etienne
".
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 796.
- ^
Ivor Grattan-Guinness
(1994)
Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences
, volume 2, page 1666,
Routledge
ISBN
0-415-09239-6
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Academics
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|