Jacob Bernoulli (1655 - 1705)

Jacob Bernoulli

Jakob Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician. One of the founders of probability theory and mathematical analysis. Johann Bernoulli's older brother. Proved a special case of the law of large numbers - Bernoulli's theorem. Professor of Mathematics at the University of Basel (since 1687). Foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1699) and the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1702).

Jacob Bernoulli contributed greatly to the development of analytical geometry and the birth of the calculus of variations. Bernoulli's lemniscate is named after him. He also investigated the cycloid, the chain line, and especially the logarithmic spiral. The last of these curves Jacob willed to be drawn on his grave; through ignorance, Archimedes' spiral was depicted there.

Jacob Bernoulli is credited with significant achievements in series theory, differential calculus, probability theory, and number theory, where the "Bernoulli numbers" are named after him.