Siméon Denis Poisson (nonfiction)
Siméon Denis Poisson (French: [si.me.ɔ̃ də.ni pwa.sɔ̃]; 21 June 1781 – 25 April 1840), was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist, obtaining many important results. Within the elite Académie des Sciences he also was the final leading opponent of the wave theory of light and was proven wrong on that matter by Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
As a teacher of mathematics Poisson is said to have been extraordinarily successful, as might have been expected from his early promise as a répétiteur at the École Polytechnique. As a scientific worker, his productivity has rarely if ever been equalled. Notwithstanding his many official duties, he found time to publish more than three hundred works, several of them extensive treatises, and many of them memoirs dealing with the most abstruse branches of pure mathematics, applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and rational mechanics. (Arago attributed to him the quote, "Life is good for only two things: doing mathematics and teaching it.")
It was in the application of mathematics to physics that his greatest services to science were performed. Perhaps the most original, and certainly the most permanent in their influence, were his memoirs on the theory of electricity and magnetism, which virtually created a new branch of mathematical physics.
In his memoirs on celestial mechanics, he proved himself a worthy successor to Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Augustin-Jean Fresnel (nonfiction)
- Mathematician (nonfiction)
- Physicist (nonfiction)
- Pierre-Simon Laplace (nonfiction)
External links:
- Siméon Denis Poisson @ Wikipedia