LEONHARD PAUL EULER: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK

Abstract

Leonhard Paul Euler (April 15, 1707 - September 18, 1783) was born in Basel, Switzerland and died in St. Petersburg, Russia. He married and fathered thirteen children, one of which, Jean Albert, was a good applied mathematician. Leonhard was a student of John Bernoulli. In 1735 he lost sight in one eye, but even this did not stay his output. In 1741 he went to Berlin, at the call of Frederick the Great. In 1766 he returned from Berlin to St. Petersburg, at the request of Catherine the Great, where he soon went totally blind. Nevertheless, sustained by an uncommon memory and a remarkable facility in mental computation, he became the most prolific mathematician of all times. He averaged about 800 printed pages a year throughout his long life. Some of the books and 400 of his research papers were written after he became totally blind. He was the central figure in the mathematical activities of the 18th century. Although interested in all fields of mathematics, Euler was primarily an analyst. via his work analysis became more easily applicable to the fields of physics. He contributed much also to the progress of algebra and number theory, as well as to differential geometry and topology. Euler had, however, little concern for rigorous foundations. He was superbly inventive in methodology and a skilled technician. His collected works, although still incomplete, have been published by Teubner and O. Füssli in seventy-two big volumes.