Johann Bernoulli was born July 27, 1667 and passed January 1, 1748 in Basel
Switzerland. Johann was one of ten children of Nicolaus and Margaretha
Bernoulli. He was a Swiss mathematician and one of the more famous
mathematicians from the Bernoulli family. Johann was born in Basel, and is the
son of Nicolaus Bernoulli. Johann’s father had high hopes of him studying
business. However, he had high aspirations to venture in medicine. As time progresses, he soon realized his passion for medicine was not there either. He then began to study the field of mathematics with his brother Jacob Bernoulli. They are today known as the Bernoulli brothers, and are notorious for studying calculus. Bernoulli made many contributions, many of which seemed to have some sort of conflict with them.
Switzerland. Johann was one of ten children of Nicolaus and Margaretha
Bernoulli. He was a Swiss mathematician and one of the more famous
mathematicians from the Bernoulli family. Johann was born in Basel, and is the
son of Nicolaus Bernoulli. Johann’s father had high hopes of him studying
business. However, he had high aspirations to venture in medicine. As time progresses, he soon realized his passion for medicine was not there either. He then began to study the field of mathematics with his brother Jacob Bernoulli. They are today known as the Bernoulli brothers, and are notorious for studying calculus. Bernoulli made many contributions, many of which seemed to have some sort of conflict with them.
Johann made his first publication on fermentation in 1690. Although this may not be a math topic, it was his first big accomplishment in education. The following year, he lectured on differential calculus in Geneva. Once his time in Geneva was done, he went to Paris. In Paris he met Malebranche’s circle of mathematicians. This is where he met Guillaume de L’Hopital. He and L’Hopital had an instant connection and starting to engage in math concepts. While he was there, he had a bit of controversy with Guillaume de L’Hopital. Although he was hired by him to tutor in mathematics, he agreed to a contract in which would give the rights of any discoveries Bernoulli had to L’Hopital. In 1696 L’Hopital wrote his first calculus book that consisted mostly of Bernoulli’s work. One of which all use today, being L’Hopitals rule. This was actually Bernoulli’s work. Although Bernoulli did officially sign over his discoveries to L’Hopital, he did not feel he had received adequate credit for his contributions. Bernoulli worked hard for his discoveries, and it is only humane to have felt anger for the lack of acknowledgment he received. In 1694 he considered the function y=x^x and investigated series. He used integration by parts, and was able to sum series discovered addition theorems for trigonometric and hyperbolic functions. This is perhaps his most significant accomplishment in mathematics. He was praised for this achievement by being offered a chair at Halle and at the chair of mathematics at Groningen.
Bernoulli also made another contribution to mechanics in kinetic
energy. Of course, just like all of his other work, this topic was argued over
for many years. Bernoulli was able to accomplish quite a bit during his
lifetime. Although most of his achievements seemed to have some sort of conflict behind them, he still is a very important figure in history. Some people even refer to “Archimedes of his age”, even his tombstone which has that inscribed on it.
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