Most Eminent Persons IN EVERY NATION; PARTICULARLY THE BRITISH AND IRISH; Their remarkable ACTIONS and SUFFERINGS, ARE ACCURATELY DISPLAYED. With a CATALOGUE of their LITERARY PRODUCTIONS. A NEW EDITION, IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES, GREATLY ENLARGED AND IMPROVED. VOL. VI. LONDON: Printed for G. G. and J. ROBINSON, J. JOHNSON, J. NICHOLS, J. SEWELL, G. NICOL, E. NEWBERY, HOOKHAM and CARPENTER, R. FAULDER, W. CHAPMAN and SON, J. DEIGHTON, D. WALKER, J. ANDERSON, T. PAYNE, J. LOWNDES, P. MACQUEEN, J. WALKER, T. EGERTON, T. CADELL jun. and W. DAVIES, R. EDWARDS, and HURST, and J. WHITE. 1798, NEW AND GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. EULER ULER (LEONARD) was born at Bafil, on the 14th of April 1707 [A]; he was the fon of Paul Euler, and of Margaret Brucker of a family illustrious in literature); and fpent the first year of his life at the village of Richen, of which place his father was Proteftant minifter. Being intended for the church, his father, who had him felf ftudied under James Bernouilli, taught him mathematics, with a view to their proving the ground-work of his other ftudies, and in hopes that they would turn out a noble and ufeful fecondary occupation. But they were deftined to become a principal one; and Euler, affifted and perhaps fecretly encouraged by John Bernouilli, who cafily dif covered that he would be the greateft fcholar he should ever edu cate, foon declared his intention of devoting his life to that pur Tuit. This intention the wife father did not thwart, but the fon did not fo blindly adhere to it, as not to connect with it a more than common improvement in every other kind of useful learning, infomuch that in his latter days men often wondered how with fuch a fuperiority in one branch, he could have been fo near to eminence in all the reft. Upon the foundation of the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, in 1723, by Catherine I, the two younger Bernouillis, Nicholas and Daniel, had gone thither, promifing, when they fet out, to endeavour to procure Euler a place in it: they accordingly wrote to him foon after, to apply his mathematics to phyfiology; he did fo, and ftudied under the best naturalifts at Bafil, but at the fame time, i. e. in 1727, published a differtation on the nature and propagation of found; and an answer to the question on the mafting of fhips, which the Academy of Sciences at Paris judged [A] Eloge, by N, Fufs; from Maty's Review, March 1784. VOL. VI. B worthy worthy of the acceffit. Soon after this, he was called to St. Petersburgh, and declared adjutant to the mathematical clafs in the academy, a clafs, in which, from the circumstances of the times (Newton, Leibnitz, and fo many other immortals having just ceased to live), no eafy laurels were to be gathered. Nature, however, who had organized fo many mathematical heads at one time, was not yet tired of her miracles; and the added Euler to the number. He indeed was much wanted; the science of the calculus integralis, hardly come out of the hands of its creators, was ftill too near the ftage of its infancy not to want to be made more perfect. Mechanics, dynamics, and especially hydrodynamics, and the fcience of the motion of the heavenly bodies, felt the imperfection. The application of the differential calculus, to them, had been fufficiently fuccefsful; but there were difficulties whenever it was neceffary to go from the fluxional quantity to the fluent. With regard to the nature and properties of numbers, the writings of Fermat (who had been fo fuccefsful in them), and together with thefe all his profound tefearches, were loft. Engineering and navigation were reduced to.vague principles, and were founded on a heap of often contradictory: obfervations, rather than a regular theory. The irregularities in the motions of the celeftial bodies, and especially the complication of forces which influence that of the moon, wete till the difgrace of geometers. Practical aftronomy had yet to wrestle with the imperfection of telescopes, infomuch, that it could hardly be faid that any rule for making them exifted.-Euler turned his eyes to all these objects; he perfected the calculus integralis; he was the inventor of a new kind of calculus, that of fines; he fimplified analytical operations; and, aided by thefe powerful helpmates, and the astonishing facility with which he knew how to fubdue expreffions the most intractable, he threw a new light on all the branches of the mathematics. But at Catherine's death the academy was threatened with extinction, by men who knew not the connection which arts and fciences have with the happiness of a people. Euler was offered and accepted a lieutenancy on board one of the emprefs's fhips, with the promise of fpeedy advancement. Luckily things changed, and the learned captain again found his own element, and was named Profeffor of Natural Philofophy in 1733, in the room of his friend John Bernouilli. The number of memoirs which Euler produced, prior to this period, is aftonishing [B], but what he [] On the theory of the more remarkable curves the nature of numbers and feries-the calculus integralis -the movement of the celestial bodies--the attraction of spheroidico-elliptical bodies--the famous folution of the isoperimetrical problemand an infinity of other objects, the hundredth part of which would have made an ordinary man illustrious. |