LOGARITHMs from 1 to 108000, invented a cowcatcher for the
front of a train, invented colored lights for the theater that were
never used in public because of fear that they would cause a
fire, was lowered into a volcano to observe lava, and created
uniform postal rates. His greatest accomplishment was also his
biggest defeat during his lifetime. In 1823 he started work on
the “Difference Engine,” the world’s first computer. Politics,
public ridicule, and lack of enough funding to finish the work
caused the project to drag out until 1842, when the British
government decided that, after not funding the project for the
past eight years, it would officially stop funding. Babbage’s
work on his Difference Engine, and his drawings on the
Analytical Engine, a larger computerized machine, were the
basis for modern computing.Bari, Nina Karlovna (1901–61) The first woman admitted into
Moscow State University, this Russian mathematician is
known for her work on the theory of trigonometrical series.
She wrote the books Higher Algebraand The Theory of Series,
and her work is considered to be the standard for those who
study functions and trigonometric series.Bernoulli, Jakob (James, Jacques) (1654–1705) The oldest of the
mathematical Bernoulli brothers, this Swiss mathematician
is most renowned for his calculus, for SOLVING THE
EQUATIONy^1 +P(x)y=Q(x)yn, nowcalled the Bernoulli
equation, and for an unfinished work that was finally
published eight years after his death, entitled Ars
Conjectandi,which, among other things, discusses the
theory of PROBABILITY, and gives us the Bernoulli numbers
but with little evidence of how he arrived at the series.Bernoulli, Johann (John, Jean)(1667–1748) Swiss mathematician
Johann Bernoulli, the younger brother of JAKOB BERNOULLI
and a bitterly competitive man, proposed many mathematical
problems to see if his brother, among others, was smart enough
to solve them. One such challenge, the brachistochrone
problem, led to Johann’s fame as the founder of calculus of
variations. Credit for his work in calculus was stolen from him
by a private student, Guillaume de l’Hôpital, who published
Johann’s teachings in the form of the first calculus textbook
ever written, entitled Analyse des infiniment petits pourBIOGRAPHIES Bari – Bernoulli
BIOGRAPHIES Bari – Bernoulli