Joseph Louis Lagrange
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Joseph-Louis Lagrange, comte de l'Empire (January 25, 1736 – April 10, 1813) was an Italian-French mathematician and astronomer who made important contributions to all fields of analysis and number theory and to classical and celestial mechanics.
- Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.
- Lagrange, quoted by F. R. Moulton: Introduction to Astronomy (New York, 1906), p. 199.
- As long as algebra and geometry proceeded along separate paths, their advance was slow and their applications limited. But when these sciences joined company, they drew from each other fresh vitality and thenceforward marched on at a rapid pace toward perfection.
- Lagrange. Leçons Élémentaires sur les Mathematiques, Leçon cinquiéme. [McCormack]; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book, (1914) p. 81; The teaching of mathematics
- An ancient writer said that arithmetic and geometry are the wings of mathematics; I believe one can say without speaking metaphorically that these two sciences are the foundation and essence of all the sciences which deal with quantity. Not only are they the foundation, they are also, as it were, the capstones; for, whenever a result has been arrived at, in order to use that result, it is necessary to translate it into numbers or into lines; to translate it into numbers requires the aid of arithmetic, to translate it into lines necessitates the use of geometry.
- Lagrange. Leçons Élémentaires sur les Mathematiques, Leçon cinquiéme. [McCormack]; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 261); Arithmetics
- It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.
- In: William Hughes (1997), Annual Editions: Western Civilization, p. 64 : About the beheading of his friend Antoine Lavoisier
Quotes about Lagrange
- Lagrange, in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had overcome the difficulty [of the parallel axiom]. He went so far as to write a paper, which he took with him to the Institute, and began to read it. But in the first paragraph something struck him which he had not observed : he muttered II faut que fy songe encore, and put the paper in his pocket.
- Augustus De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, (London, 1872), p. 178; as cited in: Moritz (1914, 161); Persons and anecdotes
- The mathematician is perfect only in so far as he is a perfect being, in so far as he perceives the beauty of truth; only then will his work be thorough, transparent, comprehensive, pure, clear, attractive and even elegant. All this is necessary to resemble Lagrange.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, Zweites Buck; Spriiche in Prosa; Natur, VI, 950; as cited in: Moritz (1914, 120); About the mathematician
- The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.
- W. W. Rouse Ball, History of Mathematics, (London, 1901), p. 463; as cited in: Moritz (1914, 160); Persons and anecdotes
- Lagrange, struck with the circumstance that the calculus had never given any inequalities but such as were periodical, applied himself to the investigation of a general question, from which he found by a method peculiar to himself and independent of any approximation, that the inequalities produced by the mutual action of the planets must in effect be all periodical; that the periodical changes are confined within narrow limits; that none of the planets ever has been or ever can be a comet moving in a very eccentric orbit; but that the planetary system oscillates as it were round a medium state from which it never deviates far: that amid all the changes which arise from the mutual actions of the planets, two things remain perpetually the same, viz. the length of the greater axis of the ellipse which the planet describes, and its periodical time round the sun; or, which is the same thing, the mean distance of each planet from the sun and its mean motion remain constant. The plane of the orbit varies, the species of the ellipse and its eccentricity change, but never, by any means whatever, the greater axis of the ellipse, or the time of the entire revolution of the planet. The discovery of this great principle, which we may consider as the bulwark that secures the stability of our system, and excludes all access to confusion and disorder, must render the name of Lagrange for ever memorable in science, and ever revered by those who delight in the contemplation of whatever is excellent and sublime. After Newton's discovery of the elliptic orbits of the planets from gravitation, Langrange's discovery of their periodical inequalities is, without doubt, the noblest truth in physical astronomy, and in respect of the doctrine of final causes, it may truly be regarded as the greatest of all.
- Who has studied the works of such men as Euler, Lagrange, Cauchy, Riemann, Sophus Lie, and Weierstrass, can doubt that a great mathematician is a great artist? The faculties possessed by such men, varying greatly in kind and degree with the individual, are analogous with those requisite for constructive art. Not every mathematician possesses in a specially high degree that critical faculty which finds its employment in the perfection of form, hi conformity with the ideal of logical completeness; but every great mathematician possesses the rarer faculty of constructive imagination.
- E. W. Hobson, "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science" (1910) in: Nature, Vol. 84, p. 290. Cited in: Moritz (1914, 182); Mathematics as a fine art