Mathematicians 19th century
Joseph Georg Böhm was an Austrian astronomer, astrophysicist, cartographer, mathematician, and educator.
At the University of Prague, Böhm attended lectures in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and, after receiving his doctorate, became an assistant at the Vienna Observatory under Joseph Johann von Littrow. He then worked at the observatory at Othen and taught mathematics at the University of Salzburg. In 1839 he was appointed professor of mathematics and practical geometry at the University of Innsbruck, and in 1848 he was elected its rector. In 1852 Böhm was appointed director of the Prague Observatory and professor of theoretical and practical astronomy at the University of Prague.
Georg Böhm published several significant astronomical papers on solar observation. He is the creator of several instruments for astronomical measurements and observations, and he designed the Uranoscope and Universal Gnomon for amateur astronomical observations for the general public. As a member of the commission for the repair of the Prague Astronomical Clock, which he joined in 1865, he wrote a detailed description of it in the work Beschreibung der alterthümlichen Prager Rathausuhr. In addition to astronomy and its popularization, he was also involved in agriculture, economics, and geodesy. One of his important works is Ballistic Experiments (1865).
Bernard Bolzano, full name Bernard Placidus Johann Nepomuk Bolzano, was an Italian-born Czech scientist, mathematician, logician, philosopher and theologian.
Bolzano graduated from the University of Prague and was immediately appointed professor of philosophy and religion at the university. Within a few years, however, Bolzano had already shown himself to be a free thinker with his teachings on the social costs of militarism and the needlessness of war. He called for a complete reform of the educational, social, and economic systems that would direct the nation's interests toward peace rather than armed conflict between states. In 1819, Bolzano was expelled from the university for his beliefs and thereafter turned his full attention to works on social, religious, philosophical, and mathematical issues.
Bolzano held advanced views on logic, mathematical quantities, limits, and continuity. He is the author of the first rigorous theory of real numbers and one of the founders of set theory. In his studies of the physical aspects of force, space, and time, he proposed theories opposed to those advanced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. His contributions to logic, in particular, established his reputation as the greatest logician of his time. Much of his work remained unpublished during his lifetime and was not widely disseminated until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a number of his conclusions were reached independently.
Bolzano was multi-talented in various fields of science to which he made significant contributions. His published works include The Binomial Theorem (1816), A Purely Analytic Proof (1817), The Functional Model and the Scientific Model (1834), An Attempt at a New Statement of Logic (1837), and The Paradoxes of Infinity (1851).
Among other things, Bolzano was also a great philanthropist. Together with his friends and students, he supported the activities of almshouses, homes for the blind, loan banks for the working class, libraries, and elementary schools in rural areas.
Victor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (Russian: Ви́ктор Я́ковлевич Буняко́вский) was a Russian mathematician, teacher, historian of mathematics, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences in 1864-1889. He made a significant contribution to number theory.
Augustin Louis Cauchy was a French mathematician and mechanic, military engineer, and founder of mathematical analysis.
Cauchy studied at the École Polytechnique and at the Paris School of Bridges and Roads. After becoming a military engineer, he went to Cherbourg in 1810 to work on harbors and fortifications for Napoleon's English invasion. Here he began independent mathematical research. Cauchy returned to Paris in 1813, and Lagrange and Laplace convinced him to devote himself entirely to mathematics. The following year he published a memoir on definite integrals, which formed the basis of the theory of complex functions. From 1816, Cauchy held professorships at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, the Collège de France, and the École Polytechnique in Paris.
Cauchy developed the foundation of mathematical analysis, and made enormous contributions to analysis, algebra, mathematical physics, and many other areas of mathematics. He almost single-handedly founded the theory of functions of a complex variable, which has extensive applications in physics. Cauchy's greatest contributions to mathematics are published primarily in three of his treatises, "Courses in Analysis at the Royal Polytechnic School" (1821), "Summary of Lessons on Infinitesimal Calculus" (1823), and "Lessons on the Application of Infinitesimal Values in Geometry" (1826-28). In all, Augustin Louis Cauchy wrote about 800 scientific articles.
Cauchy was a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and other academies.
Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a British writer and photographer, philosopher and logician, and professor of mathematics.
In 1851 Lewis entered one of the best colleges in Oxford - Christ Church. Showing an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics, soon he was able to give lectures himself, and for the next quarter of a century he was a professor of mathematics at Oxford. In parallel with his studies, the young man began to compose short stories and poems, publishing them under a pseudonym.
And then he wrote the famous "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865) and "Alice in Looking-Glass" (Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871). These books quickly became popular, they were translated into numerous languages, and then repeatedly screened. The prototype of the main character was four-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the new dean of the college where Carroll taught. Lewis Carroll also wrote "The Knotty Story", a humorous poem "Hunting the Snark", "Mathematical Curiosities", "Sylvia and Bruno" and other books. Carroll himself considered his main work a slightly absurd novel-tale "Sylvia and Bruno" (1889-1893).
Under his real name, the writer-mathematician published scientific works on mathematics and logic, he also owns a number of popular books on entertaining mathematics. Lewis Carroll left Oxford only once - in 1867, visiting Russia as part of a delegation of the Anglican Church on the route St. Petersburg-Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod. This was Carroll's only overseas trip, and he described it in his Diary of a Trip to Russia 1867. Lewis Carroll was also a talented chess player and amateur inventor. Photography was also a big part of the writer's life.
Joseph Fourier, full name Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, was a French mathematician and physicist and historical Egyptologist.
Fourier famously accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition in 1798 as a scientific advisor and was appointed secretary of the Institute of Egypt. During the occupation of Egypt, Fourier worked in the French administration, supervised archaeological excavations, and worked to shape the educational system.
But the main thing in Fourier's life was science. Back in France, he studied the mathematical theory of heat conduction, established the partial differential equation governing heat diffusion, and solved it using an infinite series of trigonometric functions. Fourier showed that heat diffusion obeyed simple observable physical constants that could be expressed mathematically. His work The Analytic Theory of Heat (1822) had a great influence on the development of physics and pure mathematics.
Joseph Fourier was a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, the French Academy, a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Royal Society of London.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was a British astronomer and son of the Uranus discoverer Wilhelm Herschel. He is credited with the first double star and nebula catalogues of the southern starry sky, which he observed during a five-year stay near Cape Town.
James Clerk Maxwell was a British physicist, mathematician and mechanic, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
James Clerk Maxwell was one of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. His theoretical work on electromagnetism and light largely determined the direction physics would take in the early 20th century. Maxwell conducted research in a number of areas, but was particularly preoccupied with the nature of Saturn's rings. In 1860 he obtained a professorship at King's College, London, and it was his years there that were most fruitful. For his electromagnetic theory,
Maxwell is most often credited with fundamentally changing the course of physics. Maxwell saw electricity not just as another branch of physics, but "as an aid to the interpretation of nature." He showed the importance of electricity to physics as a whole by advancing "the important hypothesis that light and electricity are the same in their ultimate nature." This theory, one of the most important discoveries in nineteenth-century physics, was Maxwell's greatest achievement and laid the foundation for Einstein's theory of relativity.
Giovanni Vincenzo Petrini was an Italian priest and theologian, philosopher, mathematician, and expert in mineralogy.
Along with Scipio Breislacus, Petrini was one of the founders of Italian volcanology. He taught philosophy and mathematics, theology, but specialized in mineralogy and created the Mineralogical Cabinet in Nazareth. This museum was famous in Europe and was visited, among others, by Emperor Joseph II, who gave him rare specimens from the lands of the Empire and especially from Hungary.
Giovanni Petrini was the author of the catalog Gabinetto mineralogico del Collegio Nazareno ("The Mineralogical Cabinet of the Nazarene Collegium, described by external features and distributed by component parts" (Rome, 1791-1792). The specimens in it are classified according to a standard structure: salts, earths, bitumens, combustibles, and metals. There is also a section on gemstones.
Giuseppe Piazzi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician and priest.
Around 1764 Piazzi became a Theatine priest, in 1779 he was appointed professor of theology in Rome, and in 1780 - professor of higher mathematics at the Academy of Palermo. Later, with the assistance of the Viceroy of Sicily, he founded an observatory in Palermo. There he compiled his great catalog of the positions of 7,646 stars and showed that most stars move relative to the Sun. There, on January 1, 1801, Piazzi also discovered the asteroid Ceres.
Giuseppe Piazzi's merits were appreciated: he was a member of the Royal Society of London, a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. A crater on the Moon is named in his honor.
Franz Xaver Freiherr (from 1801) von Zach, Baron (Hungarian: Zách János Ferenc) was an Austro-German astronomer, surveyor, mathematician, science historian and officer of Hungarian origin. He rendered outstanding services in the exploration of the solar system and the organization of international astronomy, after whom a lunar crater (Zach) and an asteroid ((999) Zachia) were named, among others. He was also the founder of the first scientific journals and organised the first astronomical congress in 1798.