JOSEPH LOUIS LAGRANGE

                                    

                                     

Lagrange

          JOSEPH LOUIS LAGRANGE was born on Italy of Franchise ancestry on January 25, 1736. He became captivated by mathematics at an early age when he read on essay on Halley on Newton's calculus. At the age of 19, he became professor of mathematics at the Royal Artillery School in Turin. Lagrange made significant contributions to many branches of mathematics and physics, among them the theory of numbers, the theory of equations, ordinary and partial differential equations, the calculus of variations, analytic geometry, fluid dynamics, and celestial mechanics. His methods for solving third and fourth degree polynomial equations by radicals laid the groundwork for the group-theoretic approach to solving polynomials taken by Galois. Lagrange was a very careful writer with a clear and elegant style.

                               

Lagrange stamp

                "Lagrange is the Lofty Pyramid of the Mathematical Sciences."

                                                                          NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 

At the age of 40, Lagrange was appointed Head of Berlin Academy, succeeding Euler

 In offering this appointment, Frederick The Great proclaimed that the  "greatest king in Europe" ought to have the "greatest mathematician in Europe" at his court. In 1787, Lagrange was invited to Paris by Louis XVI and became a good friend of the king and his wife, Marie Antoinette. In 1793, Lagrange headed a commission, which included Laplace and Lavoisier, to devise a new system of weights and measures. Out of this came the metric system. Late in his life he made a count by Napoleon. Lagrange died on April 10, 1813.