Pierre Varignon

Pierre Varignon ( born in 1654 in Caen - died on December 23, 1722 in Paris) was a French mathematician. Download high resolution version (724x832, 170 KB) This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Download high resolution version (724x832, 170 KB) This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Events April 5 - Signing of the Treaty of Westminster, ending the First Anglo-Dutch War. ... Location within France Hôtel dEscoville, 16th century, Caen Anonymous pen-and-ink birds-eye view of the fortifications of Caen (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) South Wall of the Castle, a huge fortress in the center of the city Town Hall of Caen Caen train station. ... December 23 is the 357th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (358th in leap years). ... // Events Abraham De Moivre states De Moivres theorem connecting trigonometric functions and complex numbers Publication of the first book of Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier Fall of Persias Safavid dynasty during a bloody revolt of the Afghani people. ... The Eiffel Tower, the international symbol of the city For other uses, see Paris (disambiguation). ... Leonhard Euler is considered by many people to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is mathematics. ...

{I love luis 4 eva} Varignon gained his first exposure to mathematics by reading Euclid. After reading Descartes' Géométrie he devoted himself to the mathematical sciences. Varignon became professor of mathematics at the Collège Mazarin in Paris in 1688 and was elected to the Académie Royale des Sciences in the same year. In 1704 he held the departmental chair at Collège Mazarin and also became professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal. He was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1713 and to the Royal Society in 1718. Many of his works were published in Paris in 1725, three years after his death. His lectures at Mazarin were published in Eléments de mathématiques in 1731.

Varignon was a friend of Newton, Leibnitz, and the Bernoullis. Varignon's principal contributions were to graphic statics and mechanics. Except for l'Hospital, Varignon was the earliest and strongest French advocate of differential calculus. He recognized the importance of a test for the convergence of series, but analytical difficulties prevented his success. Nevertheless, he simplified the proofs of many propositions in mechanics, adapted Leibnitz's calculus to the inertial mechanics of Newton's Principia, and treated mechanics in terms of the composition of forces in Projet d'une nouvelle mécanique in 1687. Among Varignon's other works was a 1699 publication concerning the application of differential calculus to fluid flow and to water clocks. In 1702 he applied calculus to spring-driven clocks.

External link

• Varignon and Wittenbauer Parallelograms by Antonio Gutierrez from "Geometry Step by Step from the Land of the Incas"