He was the oldest of four children, having two younger sisters, Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena, and a younger brother, Johann Heinrich. 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), whose ancestors include a number of well-known scholars in the classics. He also made substantial contributions to the study of elastic deformations of solid objects. In the field of physics, Euler reformulated Newton's laws of physics into new laws in his two-volume work Mechanica to better explain the motion of rigid bodies. He became famous for, among many other accomplishments, solving the Basel problem, after proving that the sum of the infinite series of squared integer reciprocals equaled exactly π 2/6, and for discovering that the sum of the numbers of vertices and faces minus edges of a polyhedron equals 2, a number now commonly known as the Euler characteristic. Įuler was also the first practitioner of graph theory (partly as a solution for the problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg). He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia.Įuler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter π, the base of the natural logarithm, now known as Euler's number. Several great mathematicians who produced their work after Euler's death have recognised his importance in the field as shown by quotes attributed to many of them: Pierre-Simon Laplace expressed Euler's influence on mathematics by stating, "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Carl Friedrich Gauss wrote: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it." Euler is also widely considered to be the most prolific his 866 publications as well as his correspondences are collected in the Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler which, when completed, will consist of 81 quarto volumes. Įuler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. Leonhard Euler ( / ˈ ɔɪ l ər/ OY-lər, German: ( listen) 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus.
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