Abraham de Moivre (nonfiction)
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.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
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