Abraham de Moivre (nonfiction)

Abraham de Moivre.

Abraham de Moivre (French pronunciation: ​[abʁaam də mwavʁ]; 26 May 1667 – 27 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory.

He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling.

Even though he faced religious persecution he remained a "steadfast Christian" throughout his life. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux.

De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers.

De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of the golden ratio φ to the nth Fibonacci number. He also was the first to postulate the central limit theorem, a cornerstone of probability theory.

Fiction cross-reference

• Crimes against mathematical constants
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Mathematician
• Mathematics

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Jacques Philippe Marie Binet (nonfiction)
• Golden ratio (nonfiction)
• Edmond Halley (nonfiction)
• Isaac Newton (nonfiction) - Influence
• Mathematics (nonfiction)
• Jacques Ozanam (nonfiction) - Academic advisor
• James Stirling (nonfiction)

External links:

• Abraham de Moivre @ Wikipedia