Jakob Bernoulli
Jakob Bernoulli's family had fled Spanish religious persecution, moving the family spice business from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland. Bernoulli's parents became promiment members of Basel society and compelled their eldest son Jakob to study theology and philosophy. Jakob greatly resented this and studied mathematics and physics secretly and against his parents wishes. In doing so, he started a long and distinguished family tradition of studying mathematics, sometimes in rebellion against parental wishes.
Bernoulli's younger brother Johann was initially forced to study medicine but followed in Jakob's footsteps and studied mathematics and physics instead. Johann's initial training was from Jakob who was 13 years his senior. The two began as collaborators but then, rivals for positions and prestige, they entered into a bitter and very public set of disagreements, with Johann boasting of his superior abilities and Jakob unjustly disparaging his brother. This was especially unfortuneate since each brother made fundamental and highly original contributions to mathematics.
Jakob and Johann were the first of three generations of Bernoullis to study mathematics, although only Johann's son Daniel achieved stature to rival his father and uncle.
Among his many contributions, some of the most important of Jakob Bernoulli dealt with probability. In 1689 he formulated his version of the law of large numbers and deduced a formula for mathematical expectation. His last book Ars Conjectandi, incomplete at the time of his death and published posthumously in 1713 was perhaps his most original work. It solves many problems related to games of chance, Bernoulli numbers are introduced as well as a discussion of the exponential series.
Jakob Bernoulli held the chair in mathematics at Basel University until his death in 1705 when he was succeeded by his brother Johann who had long coveted the position. Jakob has been honored on many stamps, including the one pictured below from Switzerland showing his formula for expectation.
Born: 27 Dec 1654 in Basel, Switzerland
Died: 16 Aug 1705 in Basel, Switzerland
The premiere site for biographies of mathematicians on the web is at The University of Saint Andrews in Scotland; this is the primary source of the information in these short biographies. Some biographies used additional web resources as noted in the biography.
The postage stamp images came from a wonderful site on mathematicians on stamps maintained by Jeff Miller, a mathematics teacher in Florida.
The Free Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia is also an excellent source of information and was used as a reference for many bographies.
The opinions expressed in these biographies are those of the author and do not reflect official views of the University of Oklahoma.
