Jean le Rond d'Alembert (November 16, 1717 – October 29, 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's method for the wave equation is named after him. Image File history File links Jean_d'Alembert. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... November 16 is the 320th day of the year (321st in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 45 days remaining. ... // Events January 4 — The Netherlands, Britain & France sign Triple Alliance February 26-March 6 What is now the northeastern United States was paralyzed by a series of blizzards that buried the region. ... October 29 is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1783 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Leonhard Euler is considered by many to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time A mathematician is the person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics. ... Mechanics (Greek ) is the branch of physics concerned with the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effect of the bodies on their environment. ... ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Portrait of Diderot by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767 Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ... The wave equation is an important partial differential equation that describes a variety of waves, such as sound waves, light waves and water waves. ...

Childhood

Born in Paris, d'Alembert was the illegitimate child of the writer Claudine Guérin de Tencin and the chevalier Louis-Camus Destouches, an artillery officer. Destouches was abroad at the time of d'Alembert's birth, and a couple of days after birth his mother left him on the steps of the Saint-Jean-le-Rond de Paris church. According to custom, he was named after the protecting saint of the church. D'Alembert was placed in an orphanage for found children, but was soon adopted by the wife of a glazier. Destouches secretly paid for the education of Jean le Rond, but did not want his parentage officially recognised. City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin (1681 - 4 December 1749) was a French courtesan and author. ... Louis-Camus Destouches was born in 1668, and died at Paris on 11 March 1726. ... Artillery with Gabion fortification Cannons on display at Fort Point Continental Artillery crew from the American Revolution Firing of an 18-pound gun, Louis-Philippe Crepin, (1772 – 1851) A forge-welded Iron Cannon in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. ... An orphanage (historically an orphans asylum before the latter word took on its modern insane asylum connotation) is an institution dedicated to caring for orphans (children who have lost their parents) and abused, abandoned, and neglected children. ...

Studies

D'Alembert first attended a private school. The chevalier Destouches left d'Alembert an annuity of 1200 livres on his death in 1726. Under the influence of the Destouches family, at the age of twelve D'Alembert entered the jansenist Collège des Quatre-Nations (the institution was also known under the name "Collège Mazarin"). Here he studied philosophy, law, and the arts, graduating as bachelier in 1735. In his later life, D'Alembert scorned the Cartesian principles he had been taught by the Jansenists: "physical premotion, innate ideas and the vortices". An annuity (from Latin annus, a year), is an investment that provides a defined series of payments in the future in exchange for an up-front sum of money. ... The livre tournois (or Tournoise pound) was a currency used in France, named after the town of Tours, in which it was minted. ... Events George Friderich Handel becomes a British subject. ... Jansenism was a branch of Catholic thought tracing itself back to Cornelius Otto Jansen (1585 – 1638), a Flemish theologian. ... The Collège des Quatre-Nations. ... This article is 58 kilobytes or more in size. ... Lady Justice is a personification of the law. ... The Bath, a painting by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). ... Louis Bachelier was a French mathematician at the turn of the 20th Century. ... Events April 16 - The London premiere of Alcina by George Frideric Handel, his first the first Italian opera for the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. ... René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ...

The Jansenists steered D'Alembert toward an ecclesiastical career, attempting to deter him from pursuits such as poetry and mathematics. Theology was, however, "rather unsubstantial fodder" for d'Alembert. He entered law school for two years, and was nominated avocat in 1738. The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... Theology (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογια, logia, words, sayings, or discourse) is reasoned discourse concerning religion, spirituality and God or the gods. ... Avocat can refer to: Avocat, Trinidad and Tobago, a village in southern Trinidad, near Fyzabad a lawyer Category: ... Events February 4 - Court Jew Joseph Suss Oppenheimer is executed in Württenberg April 15 - Premiere in London of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel. ...

He was also interested in medicine and mathematics. Jean was first registered under the name Daremberg, but later changed it to d'Alembert. In July of 1739 he made his first contribution to the field of mathematics, pointing out the errors he had detected in L'analyse démontrée (published 1708 by Charles René Reynaud) in a communication addressed to the Académie des Sciences. At the time L'analyse démontrée was a standard work, which D'Alembert himself had used to study the foundations of mathematics. D'Alembert was also a Latin scholar of some note and worked in the latter part of his life on a superb translation of Tacitus, from which he received wide praise including that of Denis Diderot. medicines, see medication and pharmacology. ... // About the number 1739 1739 is the smallest integer that can be written as sum of three perfect cubes, in two ways. ... // Events March 23 - James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth July 1 - Tewoflos becomes Emperor of Ethiopia September 28 - Peter the Great defeats the Swedes at the Battle of Lesnaya Kandahar conquered by Mir Wais In Masuria one third of the population die during the plague J... Louis XIV visiting the Académie in 1671 The French Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. ... Portrait of Diderot by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767 Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer. ...

In 1740, he submitted his second scientific work from the field of fluid mechanics Memoire sur le refraction des corps solides, which was recognized by Clairaut. In this work d'Alembert theoretically explained refraction. He also wrote about what is now called D'Alembert's paradox: that the drag on a body immersed in an inviscid, incompressible fluid is zero. Events May 31 - Friedrich II comes to power in Prussia upon the death of his father, Friedrich Wilhelm I. October 20 - Maria Theresia of Austria inherits the Habsburg hereditary dominions (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and present-day Belgium). ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Fluid dynamics is the sub-discipline of fluid mechanics dealing with fluids (liquids and gases) in motion. ... Alexis Claude de Clairault (or Clairaut) (May 3, 1713 – May 17, 1765) was a French mathematician and thinker. ... The straw seems to be broken, due to refraction of light as it emerges into the air. ... DAlemberts paradox states that an inviscid (non-viscous), incompressible flow produces no drag on an object surrounded by such fluid, yet it does produce lift. ... An object falling through a gas or liquid experiences a force in direction opposite to its motion. ... The related Category:Units of viscosity has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. ... In mathematics, an incompressible surface is a kind of two-dimensional surface inside of a 3-manifold. ... A fluid is defined as a substance that continually deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress regardless of the magnitude of the applied stress. ...

D'Alembert was a participant several Parisian salons, particularly those of Madame Geoffrin, of the marquise du Deffand and of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. There he met Denis Diderot. A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to... Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699 - October 6, 1777) was a French hostess who played an interesting part in French literary and artistic life. ... Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (1697 - September 23, 1780) was a French hostess and patron of the arts. ... Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse (November 9, 1732 - May 23, 1776), was a French author. ... Portrait of Diderot by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767 Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer. ...

When the Encyclopédie was organized in the late 1740s, d'Alembert was engaged as co-editor (for mathematics and science) with Diderot, and served until a series of crises temporarily interrupted the publication in 1757. He authored over a thousand articles for it, including the famous Preliminary Discourse. The Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot is the primer to Denis Diderots Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres, a collaborative collection of all the known branches of the arts and sciences of...

Aged 23, he entered the Académie des sciences, and joined the Académie de Berlin at 28. In 1754, d'Alembert was elected a member of the Académie française, of which he became Permanent Secretary on 9 April 1772. 1754 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... The Académie française In the French educational system an académie LAcadémie française, or the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. ... April 9 is the 99th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (100th in leap years). ... Year 1772 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...

While he made great strides in mathematics and physics, d'Alembert is also famously known for incorrectly arguing in Croix ou Pile that the probability of a coin landing heads increased for every time that it came up tails. In gambling, the strategy of decreasing one's bet the more one wins and increasing one's bet the more one loses is therefore called the D'Alembert system, a type of martingale. Probability is the extent to which something is likely to happen or be the case[1]. Probability theory is used extensively in areas such as statistics, mathematics, science, philosophy to draw conclusions about the likelihood of potential events and the underlying mechanics of complex systems. ... The term gambling has had many different meanings depending on the cultural and historical context in which it is used. ... The basic meaning of gamblers ruin is a gamblers loss of the last of his bank of gambling money and consequent inability to continue gambling. ... A stopped Brownian motion as an example for a martingale In probability theory, a (discrete-time) martingale is a discrete-time stochastic process (i. ...

He suffered bad health for many years and his death was as the result of a bladder illness. As a known unbeliever, D'Alembert was buried in a common unmarked grave.

In France, the fundamental theorem of algebra is known as the d'Alembert/Gauss theorem. In mathematics, the fundamental theorem of algebra states that every complex polynomial in one variable and of degree  â‰¥  has some complex root. ...   (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. ...

He also created his ratio test, a test to see if a series converges. In mathematics, the ratio test is a criterion for convergence or divergence of a series whose terms are real or complex numbers. ... In mathematics, a series is often represented as the sum of a sequence of terms. ...

He lived in an apartment with Julie de Lespinasse, a famous Parisian salonnière with whom he was infatuated.

Bibliography

• Grimsley, Ronald. (1963). Jean d'Alembert. Oxford: Clarenden Press.
• Briggs, J. Morton. (1970). "Jean le Rond d'Alembert". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1: 110-117. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

The Dictionary of Scientific Biography is a reference work consisting of extensive biographies of scientists from antiquity to modern times, excluding scientists who were alive when the Dictionary was first put out. ...

See also

• Liberalism
• Contributions to liberal theory
• Gambler's fallacy
• Wave equation
• D'Alembert's principle
• Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot

Liberalism is an ideology, philosophical view, and political tradition which holds that liberty is the primary political value. ... This is an (partial) overview of individuals that contributed to the development of liberal theory on a worldwide scale and therefore are strongly associated with the liberal tradition and instrumental in the exposition of political liberalism as a philosophy. ... The gamblers fallacy is a logical fallacy which encompasses any of the following misconceptions: A random event is more likely to occur because it has not happened for a period of time; A random event is less likely to occur because it has not happened for a period of... The wave equation is an important partial differential equation that describes a variety of waves, such as sound waves, light waves and water waves. ... DAlembert DAlemberts-Lagrange principle is a statement of the fundamental classical laws of motion. ... The Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot is the primer to Denis Diderots Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres, a collaborative collection of all the known branches of the arts and sciences of...

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

• English translation of part of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Jean le Rond d'Alembert". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.

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