Citizenship French Name Pierre Varignon Residence Paris, France | Nationality French Role Mathematician Fields Mathematics | |
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Institutions Academie Royale des Sciences, College Royal, College Mazarin, Berlin Academy, Royal Society Known for statics, mechanics, infinitesimal calculus, convergence of series, water clock, mechanical explanation of gravitation, Varignon's theorem Died December 23, 1722, Paris, France Education University of Caen Normandy Books Analyse des Infiniment Petits pour l'Intelligence des Lignes Courbes | ||
Pierre Varignon (Caen 1654 – 23 December 1722 Paris) was a French mathematician. He was educated at the Jesuit College and the University in Caen, where he received his M.A. in 1682. He took Holy Orders the following year.
Varignon gained his first exposure to mathematics by reading Euclid and then Descartes' La Geometrie. He became professor of mathematics at the College Mazarin in Paris in 1688 and was elected to the Academie Royale des Sciences in the same year. In 1704 he held the departmental chair at College Mazarin and also became professor of mathematics at the College Royal. He was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1713 and to the Royal Society in 1718. Many of his works were published in Paris in 1725, three years after his death. His lectures at Mazarin were published in Elements de mathematique in 1731.
Varignon was a friend of Newton, Leibniz, and the Bernoulli family. Varignon's principal contributions were to graphic statics and mechanics. Except for l'Hopital, Varignon was the earliest and strongest French advocate of infinitesimal calculus, and exposed the errors in Michel Rolle's critique thereof. He recognized the importance of a test for the convergence of series, but analytical difficulties prevented his success. Nevertheless, he simplified the proofs of many propositions in mechanics, adapted Leibniz's calculus to the inertial mechanics of Newton's Principia, and treated mechanics in terms of the composition of forces in Projet d'une nouvelle mecanique in 1687. Among Varignon's other works was a 1699 publication concerning the application of differential calculus to fluid flow and to water clocks. In 1690 he created a mechanical explanation of gravitation. In 1702 he applied calculus to spring-driven clocks.