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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Louis_Lagrange
Note he did not have a doctoral advisor but academic genealogy authorities link his intellectual heritage to Leonhard Euler, who played the equivalent role.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange, born Giuseppe Lodovico (Luigi) Lagrangia, was a mathematician and astronomer born in Turin, Piedmont, who lived part of his life in Prussia and part in France. He made significant contributions to all fields of analysis, number theory, and classical and celestial mechanics. On the recommendation of Euler and d'Alembert, in 1766 Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, where he stayed for over twenty years, producing a large body of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences. Lagrange's treatise on analytical mechanics (MÈcanique Analytique, 4. ed., 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1888-89), written in Berlin and first published in 1788, offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century.
Lagrange's parents were Italian, although he also had French ancestors on his father's side. In 1787, at age 51, he moved from Berlin to France and became a member of the French Academy, and he remained in France until the end of his life. Therefore, Lagrange is alternatively considered a French and an Italian scientist. Lagrange survived the French Revolution and became the first professor of analysis at the École Polytechnique upon its opening in 1794. Napoleon named Lagrange to the Legion of Honour and made him a Count of the Empire in 1808. He is buried in the Panthéon and his name appears as one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Scientific contribution
Lagrange was one of the creators of the calculus of variations, deriving the Euler _Lagrange equations for extrema of functionals. He also extended the method to take into account possible constraints, arriving at the method of Lagrange multipliers. Lagrange invented the method of solving differential equations known as variation of parameters, applied differential calculus to the theory of probabilities and attained notable work on the solution of equations. He proved that every natural number is a sum of four squares. His treatise Theorie des fonctions analytiques laid some of the foundations of group theory, anticipating Galois. In calculus, Lagrange developed a novel approach to interpolation and Taylor series. He studied the three-body problem for the Earth, Sun,and Moon (1764) and the movement of Jupiter _s satellites (1766), and in 1772 found the special-case solutions to this problem that are now known as Lagrangian points. But above all he impressed on mechanics, having transformed Newtonian mechanics into a branch of analysis, Lagrangian mechanics as it is now called, and exhibited the so-called mechanical "principles" as simple results of the variational calculus.
Early years
Lagrange was born of French and Italian descent (a paternal great grandfather was a French army officer who then moved to Turin) as Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin. His father, who had charge of the Kingdom of Sardinia's military chest, was of good social position and wealthy, but before his son grew up he had lost most of his property in speculations, and young Lagrange had to rely on his own abilities for his position. He was educated at the college of Turin, but it was not until he was seventeen that he showed any taste for mathematics, his interest in the subject being first excited by a paper by Edmund Halley which he came across by accident. Alone and unaided he threw himself into mathematical studies; at the end of a year's incessant toil he was already an accomplished mathematician, and was made a lecturer in the artillery school.
Variational calculus
Lagrange is one of the founders of the calculus of variations. Starting in 1754, he worked on the problem of tautochrone, discovering a method of maximizing and minimizing functionals in a way similar to finding extrema of functions. Lagrange wrote several letters to Leonhard Euler between 1754 and 1756 describing his results. He outlined his "delta-algorithm", leading to the Euler-Lagrange equations of variational calculus and considerably simplifying Euler's earlier analysis. Lagrange also applied his ideas to problems of classical mechanics, generalizing the results of Euler and Maupertuis.
Euler was very impressed with Lagrange's results. It has been stated that "with characteristic courtesy he withheld a paper he had previously written, which covered some of the same ground, in order that the young Italian might have time to complete his work, and claim the undisputed invention of the new calculus"; however, this chivalric view has been disputed. Lagrange published his method in two memoirs of the Turin Society in 1762 and 1773.
Miscellanea Taurinensia
In 1758, with the aid of his pupils, Lagrange established a society, which was subsequently incorporated as the Turin Academy of Sciences, and most of his early writings are to be found in the five volumes of its transactions, usually known as the Miscellanea Taurinensia. Many of these are elaborate papers. The first volume contains a paper on the theory of the propagation of sound; in this he indicates a mistake made by Newton, obtains the general differential equation for the motion, and integrates it for motion in a straight line. This volume also contains the complete solution of the problem of a string vibrating transversely; in this paper he points out a lack of generality in the solutions previously given by Brook Taylor, D'Alembert, and Euler, and arrives at the conclusion that the form of the curve at any time t is given by the equation y = a \sin (mx) \sin (nt)\,. The article concludes with a masterly discussion of echoes, beats, and compound sounds. Other articles in this volume are on recurring series, probabilities, and the calculus of variations.
The second volume contains a long paper embodying the results of several papers in the first volume on the theory and notation of the calculus of variations; and he illustrates its use by deducing the principle of least action, and by solutions of various problems in dynamics.
The third volume includes the solution of several dynamical problems by means of the calculus of variations; some papers on the integral calculus; a solution of Fermat's problem mentioned above: given an integer n which is not a perfect square, to find a number x such that x2n + 1 is a perfect square; and the general differential equations of motion for three bodies moving under their mutual attractions.
The next work he produced was in 1764 on the libration of the Moon, and an explanation as to why the same face was always turned to the earth, a problem which he treated by the aid of virtual work. His solution is especially interesting as containing the germ of the idea of generalized equations of motion, equations which he first formally proved in 1780.
Berlin Academy
Already in 1756 Euler, with support from Maupertuis, made an attempt to bring Lagrange to the Berlin Academy. Later, D'Alambert interceded on Lagrange's behalf with Frederick of Prussia and wrote to Lagrange asking him to leave Turin for a considerably more prestigious position in Berlin. Lagrange turned down both offers, responding in 1765, “It seems to me that Berlin would not be at all suitable for me while M. Euler is there.”
In 1766 Euler left Berlin for Saint Petersburg, and Frederick wrote to Lagrange expressing the wish of "the greatest king in Europe" to have "the greatest mathematician in Europe" resident at his court. Lagrange was finally persuaded and he spent the next twenty years in Prussia, where he produced not only the long series of papers published in the Berlin and Turin transactions, but his monumental work, the Mécanique analytique. His residence at Berlin commenced with an unfortunate mistake. Finding most of his colleagues married, and assured by their wives that it was the only way to be happy, he married; his wife soon died, but the union was not a happy one.
Lagrange was a favourite of the king, who used frequently to discourse to him on the advantages of perfect regularity of life. The lesson went home, and thenceforth Lagrange studied his mind and body as though they were machines, and found by experiment the exact amount of work which he was able to do without breaking down. Every night he set himself a definite task for the next day, and on completing any branch of a subject he wrote a short analysis to see what points in the demonstrations or in the subject-matter were capable of improvement. He always thought out the subject of his papers before he began to compose them, and usually wrote them straight off without a single erasure or correction.
France
In 1786, Frederick died, and Lagrange, who had found the climate of Berlin trying, gladly accepted the offer of Louis XVI to move to Paris. He received similar invitations from Spain and Naples. In France he was received with every mark of distinction and special apartments in the Louvre were prepared for his reception, and he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, which later became part of the National Institute. At the beginning of his residence in Paris he was seized with an attack of melancholy, and even the printed copy of his Mécanique on which he had worked for a quarter of a century lay for more than two years unopened on his desk. Curiosity as to the results of the French revolution first stirred him out of his lethargy, a curiosity that soon turned to alarm as the revolution developed.
It was about the same time, 1792, that the unaccountable sadness of his life and his timidity moved the compassion of a young girl who insisted on marrying him, and proved a devoted wife to whom he became warmly attached. Although the decree of October 1793 that ordered all foreigners to leave France specifically exempted him by name, he was preparing to escape when he was offered the presidency of the commission for the reform of weights and measures. The choice of the units finally selected was largely due to him, and it was mainly owing to his influence that the decimal subdivision was accepted by the commission of 1799. In 1795, Lagrange was one of the founding members of the Bureau des Longitudes.
Though Lagrange had determined to escape from France while there was yet time, he was never in any danger; and the different revolutionary governments (and at a later time, Napoleon) loaded him with honours and distinctions. A striking testimony to the respect in which he was held was shown in 1796 when the French commissary in Italy was ordered to attend in full state on Lagrange's father, and tender the congratulations of the republic on the achievements of his son, who "had done honour to all mankind by his genius, and whom it was the special glory of Piedmont to have produced." It may be added that Napoleon, when he attained power, warmly encouraged scientific studies in France, and was a liberal benefactor of them.
École normale
In 1795, Lagrange was appointed to a mathematical chair at the newly established École normale, which enjoyed only a brief existence of four months. His lectures here were quite elementary, and contain nothing of any special importance, but they were published because the professors had to "pledge themselves to the representatives of the people and to each other neither to read nor to repeat from memory," and the discourses were ordered to be taken down in shorthand in order to enable the deputies to see how the professors acquitted themselves.
École Polytechnique
Lagrange was appointed professor of the École Polytechnique in 1794; and his lectures there are described by mathematicians who had the good fortune to be able to attend them, as almost perfect both in form and matter. Beginning with the merest elements, he led his hearers on until, almost unknown to themselves, they were themselves extending the bounds of the subject: above all he impressed on his pupils the advantage of always using general methods expressed in a symmetrical notation.
On the other hand, Fourier, who attended his lectures in 1795, wrote: “His voice is very feeble, at least in that he does not become heated; he has a very pronounced Italian accent and pronounces the s like z & The students, of whom the majority are incapable of appreciating him, give him little welcome, but the professors make amends for it.”
Late years
In 1810, Lagrange commenced a thorough revision of the Mécanique analytique, but he was able to complete only about two-thirds of it before his death at Paris in 1813. He was buried that same year in the Panthéon in Paris. The French inscription on his tomb there reads:
JOSEPH LOUIS LAGRANGE. Senator. Count of the Empire. Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of Réunion. Member of the Institute and the Bureau of Longitude. Born in Turin on 25 January 1736. Died in Paris on 10 April 1813.
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