Lectures on Elementary Mathematics

by Joseph-Louis Lagrange

The present work, which is a translation of the Lecons elementaires sur les mathematiques of Joseph Louis Lagrange, the greatest of modern analysts, and which is to be found in Volume VII. of the new edition of his collected works, consists of a series of lectures delivered in the year 1795 at the Ecole Normale,|an institution which was the direct outcome of the French Revolution and which gave the first impulse to modern practical ideals of education. With Lagrange, at this institu-tion, were associated, as professors of mathematics. Monge and Laplace, and we owe to the same historical event the final form of the famous Geometrie descriptive, as well as a second course of lectures on arithmetic and algebra, introductory to these of Lagrange, by Laplace. With the exception of a German translation by Niedermuller (Leipsic, 1880), the lectures of Lagrange have never been pub-lished in separate form; originally they appeared in a fragmen-tary shape in the Seances des Ecoles Normales, as they had been reported by the stenographers, and were subsequently reprinted in the journal of the Polytechnic School. From references in them to subjects afterwards to be treated it is to be inferred that a fuller development of higher algebra was intended,|an intention which the brief existence of the Ecole Normale de-feated. With very few exceptions, we have left the expositions in their historical form, having only referred in an Appendix to a point in the early history of algebra.

Genres: Mathematics, Reference, Classics

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 19, 2008

About the author

French mathematician and astronomer comte Joseph Louis Lagrange developed the calculus of variations in 1755 and made a number of other contributions to the study of mechanics.

Born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia (also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia) this man of Enlightenment era of Italy made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, classical mechanics, and celestial mechanics. He died in Paris.

In 1766, on the recommendation of Leonhard Euler and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian academy of sciences in Berlin, Prussia, where he stayed for more than two decades, producing volumes of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences. Treatise of Lagrange on analytical mechanics (Mécanique 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.

In 1787, at age 51, he moved from Berlin to Paris and became a member of the French Academy. He remained in France until the end of his life. He was significantly involved in the decimalisation in Revolutionary France, became the first professor of analysis at the École Polytechnique upon its opening in 1794, founding member of the Bureau des Longitudes and Senator in 1799.

Reviews

[Pardis TD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found that he explained mathematical series the best, and I liked his sense of ethics.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Handy!