Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born
Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia (also reported as
Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia ), 25 January 1736 in Turin, Piedmont; died 10 April 1813 in Paris) was an Italian Enlightenment Era mathematician and astronomer. He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics. In 1766, on the recommendation of Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Prussia, where he stayed for over twenty years, producing volumes of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences. Lagrange's treatise on analytical mechanics (
Mécanique Analytique, 4. ed., 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1888–89), written in Berlin and first published in 1788, offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century. In 1787, at age 51, he moved from Berlin to Paris and became a member of the French Academy. He remained in France until the end of his life.