Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert summary

Find out about the life of Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert and his contributions to mathematics

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Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert, (born, Nov. 17, 1717, Paris, France—died Oct. 29, 1783, Paris), French mathematician, scientist, philosopher, and writer. In 1743 he published a treatise on dynamics containing “d’Alembert’s principle,” relating to Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. He developed partial differential equations and published findings of his research on integral calculus. He was associated with the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot from c. 1746 as editor of its mathematical and scientific articles; he contributed articles on music as well, and he also published treatises on acoustics. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1754.

Encyclopédie Summary

Encyclopédie, (French: “Encyclopaedia, or Classified Dictionary of Sciences, Arts, and Trades”), the 18th-century French encyclopaedia that was one of the chief works of the Philosophes, men dedicated to the advancement of science and secular thought and the new tolerance and open-mindedness of the

mechanics Summary

Mechanics, science concerned with the motion of bodies under the action of forces, including the special case in which a body remains at rest. Of first concern in the problem of motion are the forces that bodies exert on one another. This leads to the study of such topics as gravity, electricity,

mathematics Summary

Mathematics, the science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from elemental practices of counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects. It deals with logical reasoning and quantitative calculation, and its development has involved an increasing degree of idealization and