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 equaled. 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.
François Arago attributed to Poisson 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 pure mathematics, his most important works were his series of memoirs on definite integrals and his discussion of Fourier series, the latter paving the way for the classic researches of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet and Bernhard Riemann on the same subject; these are to be found in the Journal of the École Polytechnique from 1813 to 1823, and in the Memoirs de l'Académie for 1823.
He also studied Fourier integrals.
The Poisson distribution in probability theory is named after him.
In his memoirs on celestial mechanics, he proved himself a worthy successor to Pierre-Simon Laplace.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
- Crimes against mathematical constants
- Crimes against physical constants
- Gnomon algorithm
- Gnomon Chronicles
Nonfiction cross-reference
- François Arago (nonfiction)
- Augustin-Jean Fresnel (nonfiction)
- Mathematician (nonfiction)
- Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (nonfiction)
- Physicist (nonfiction)
- Pierre-Simon Laplace (nonfiction)
External links:
- Siméon Denis Poisson @ Wikipedia