Let's Find Out - The Life of Euler: the Greatest Mathematician (part 1) | ASMR math history

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician and engineer, who made profound and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics. Check out part 2 (his actual maths) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQMJxqn10zA Euler was one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 18th century and is held to be one of the greatest in history. He is also widely considered to be the most prolific mathematician of all time. His collected works fill 60 to 80 quarto volumes, more than anybody in the field. Let's find out about his life trials and triumphs. In part 2 we will dive deeper into his mathematics and physics. Music used: aphex twin "blue calx" #ASMR #math #history

that spread the good word about mathematicians. Maddox is arguably the most useful tool humans have ever created. It's the factory in which humankind's geniuses have often dreamt up the abstract nuts and bolts that engineers then use to make absolutely formidable technologies. You know, the ones that function so well that we first worlders at least, usually forget all about the suffering they keep at pay. At least until maybe a particularly bad day shows its ugly head. And the power goes out, your car engine maybe overheats, or maybe even the road you use every day gets flooded. We start to notice some of these technologies.

sweat while we walk miles to a place we normally arrive at in minutes. Cursing the damn cell reception for not giving us something to listen to along the way. Math is critical to you and me either. Think about the building or car you're probably sitting in. Buildings don't exist without trigonometry or numeracy. Cars don't work without geometry. of gears, for instance. TV, music, movies,

they don't exist without compression algorithms. Encryption. Do anything without conductor chips in our cell phones. Do it physically on a circuit board using gates that flip, open and closed. Bliss, you know, is vast, but certainly not infinite. The point is that engineering science, inventions, medicines, technology, they all need mathematics

to exist. Oh, esoteric, so abstracted, and literally a foreign language to so many people that sometimes the most uniquely genius humans in history rarely get a proper

recognition for their contributions to humanity. This is pretty crazy to think about, literally I'm using a phone right now, to record this in radio waves very very accurately cell phones actually emit catches to a satellite in space ancient Egyptians using a measuring stick to build the pyramids it's the measure of all things we relate things called according to to our bodies we build things so that we can use them

to manipulate the world and interact with each other realities of the world like weather, all these great, fantastic achievements that we've so far created and are continuing every day to create. So in honor of some of the greatest thinkers of mankind, I'm going to celebrate Euler today. Leonard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, because he was one of the most prolific mathematicians. to have ever. So Carl, I'm glad you suggested in this video. Looking into, gave me a reason to look into some of the more fantastic mathematicians in the world.

Maybe make this a recurring series about the famous, the lives and works of the most famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, artists, anybody who's manipulate and view since they've existed. So let's find out how one of the most prolific mathematicians grew up, revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and ultimately left us. Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, and engineer, who, while primarily known for his important mathematical discoveries, was also known for as work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and even music theory, a lot of which we'll get to later.

Wheeler was one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 18th century and maybe even the greatest in history. You know, he's also prolific mathematicians signals and systems. that your cell phones and all modern electronics uses. So he's a credible guy to quote, and he expresses Oilers' influence on mathematics as 5th, 1707. Still somehow managing to write it out of frame. Sorry. Side note, interestingly.

Switzerland. So if I draw on real quick. Very, very, very rough drawing. It looks something like this. Okay, right there. See him we got Germany. This is, so it's like, almost makes you ask, like, what's in the water there? Father Paul Euler was, he, uh, he was friends with some of the most famous mathematicians.

It's supposed to be a prayer right there. He's a happy kid because he comes from a relatively affluent. Well, I would say just absolutely affluent family. Um, his dad. friends with a family of mathematicians, the Brunulis. He himself is a pastor. So it's from day one, he has an interesting mix of the in addition symbol. From day one, you can see he's instilled and probably inspired next to a godly man and a mathematical.

Started in about in 1720 at the age of 13 years old, at the university. actually taught there. In 1723, the age of 16, he received a master's philosophy with a dissertation comparing

Descartes. Those two names are so commonly. Descartes was famous, mathematically at least. He was a great, great philosopher. But he was also famous for defining a brilliant way to look

Yeah, to really visualize mathematics in the form of a Cartesian coordinate system. That's the way, that's the common graph that everyone's taught in the school. As you plot X, plot values along the X and Y axis to make a function. And he compared the philosophies of Descartes and Newton. Newton here, I'm just defining as an originator. of the calculus, which was a huge revolutionary leap forward. Two huge mathematical giants. The integral is the area under the curve of an equation.

If you have x squared, or if you have 2x, and you take the integral of that, that would be x squared. And that would be the area under the curve of... So during that time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from who, but Joanne or Johann Bernoulli. I mean, he's getting lessons. He's getting tutored. He would be like me getting tutored in physics by Richard Feynman or Stephen Hawking, you know. But Bernoulli quickly discovered that, okay, Wheeler actually knows his stuff, or at least has a great proclivity to learn.

mathematics. So from a young age he was encouraged to learn and not only learn math though, his dad again was pulling him towards religion. So he was really a Renaissance guy, learning cutting-edge math and science using the most advanced, you know, methods and calculus that the Bernoulli's were, in fact, at the head of moving forward. And his dad was pushing him towards theology, a career as a priest. So he was learning Greek in Hebrew. So he was, you know, Greek. I think it's pretty cool if you can read something that a lot of privileged, I guess.

People were taught, and that meant you can read ancient Greek in Hebrew. If you knew those, you could read the ancient texts. such as the Bible, Torah, and then, I mean, many foundational, philosophical texts in Greek. So the Greek looks like the word God, for instance, looks like this. Hope I'm not being sacrosanct. It looks like this. Letter pie right there, seven. But luckily the Bernoulli's convinced his father,

to, well, maybe not luckily. Maybe he would have made a revolutionary change in our morality and the way we looked at religion. But, um, nonetheless, fate would have it that his tutor, you know, pretty much like me being, you being taught physics by Einstein, pushed him, obviously,

with his skill towards a career in mathematics. So he, uh, he ultimately, We chose math. Either way, he was a brilliant mind, so it was good for the human race. In 1726, Oiler completed his a dissertation, propagation, of sound. It's just crazy how many different areas Oiler was proficient in that he applied mathematics to. Tritese was called DeSono.

DeSona. Desono. At that time, he was unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a position at the University of Basel. It was a lifetime ago that he had been there. But 1727, he first entered the Paris Academy Prize Problem Competition. The problem was, that year, the best way to place a mast. This was an engineering problem that would, I haven't taken mechanical engineering courses, but I know oiler is definitely significant contributor to engineering in general based on this. So they could navigate much more efficiently now. So based on this, it gun his feet wet with engineering, practical applications of his. knowledge, his day, deep, deep, deep, knowledge of math.

And despite coming up with a genius solution to it, he, uh, has a consolation prize. The man he took second place, too, became the father engineering. So, uh, person to lose too. But, you know, that didn't stop him. Euler ended up, let's see, he ended up entering this contest again. in winning first. Not 10, not 11, but 12.

12 fricking times. Brilliant guy. At only 20 years old, Euler moved now, after a pretty successful, pretty bright promising future. To St. Petersburg, Russia. So, I think it was,

I looked up the number earlier. It was something like 25. 500 kilometers away. And when I looked it up, it actually was on Google Maps and it gave me three big warning signs. That was, what was it? There's tolls. There's all countries you're going to travel through. And if that didn't deter you, it's a different time zone.

Sure you want to do this? But Euler did, and after Johann's son, Daniel Bernoulli, had recommended him for the post in physiology at the Imperial Russian Academy. So this was, this move was made because of Johann, one of the, I think Jacob Bernoulli was the most famous Brunuli, but Johann's son, Daniel, Jacob Bernoulli's nephew. I think, had recommended Euler. He was already over at the Imperial This is a significant part of Euler's life, so we'll go ahead and write this out.

The Imperial Russian Academy misspell that word. Sciences. So Daniel was already over there. And so Euler had a connect. He was able to network and get in in the post of of all things, physiology.

So, he was in the university, the academy, rather. And this was actually a good move for him as far as he thought. Because at that time, the academy in St. Petersburg, which is actually, I drew it like this. Oh, shit, where am I? I drew it like this because it's right near Finland. So it's not all the way into the depths of Asia. It's still relatively close to Europe. But also it came with a few benefits.

It was established by Peter the Great, intended to improve education in Russia, slows the scientific gap between Russia being kind of geographically distant. And so he had intended to initially even provide it. He was setting up a business model to really ramp up the research and the quality of science done there by attracting the greatest minds with the greatest benefits. he had ample funding and a heavy, heavy focus on research. So, Bernoulli and Euler then, this came with some great benefits.

And a heavy focus on research, it's a rarity to get that in the university. That's a very prestigious set of circumstances to have as a professor. I know most professors wish they could research full-time, but instead they have to break it up by lecturing up to students that sometimes don't want to hear them. Instead of yelling, he's researching. I think that's how some professors might view it. Anyways, I remember seeing a graph that was like,

this 5% lectures. It was on one of my physics professors' doors. Let's see. Faculty meetings. They were left with something like 2% research. Essentially shook down like that. So I thought that was pretty funny. But anyways, nice little detour there.

So he's now in Russia. doing awesome work. Full-time researcher, pretty much. At, let's see. So eventually Daniel left. Unfortunately, Daniel's brother had died. And Daniel moved, I believe. And so, Euler somehow, the position opened up.

And now, finally, Oiler was at 24 years old. 24. he was a professor. Before that he was like a visiting assistant, something like that. So generally you have hierarchy of the academic pyramid there. So he started at the bottom, now he's there.

24 years old, that's ridiculously young. So now he's established himself with a good career, a good research publishing record he's in a career that he has a passion for all that's left is to get married so he does and he marries the daughter of a famous Swiss painter

her name is Katharina G-G-S-E-L so they get married outpops 13 children 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Unfortunately, this is crazy survive childhood which

It's really hard for us to think about that nowadays But that was relatively common You know Even for the well to do Like Euler kind of was So concerned about the Continuing turmoil in Russia there was always wars going on, a lot of political turmoil,

even well, well, well before turmoil that is nearer to our present time of the revolutions, the Bolshevik revolutions of the early 20th century, there was turmoil. So he got up and moved back to Berlin. And here, he wrote something like, the fact I already read the two works for which he would actually become most renowned.

The introductory, um, this was in a work on calculus. Those were one of his most. He was even elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, based on his research. In addition, whether he was even asked a tutor, Frederique Charloa of Brandenburg, Shwet, the princess of Analt Desu in Frederick, I want to say, his niece. And interestingly enough, so he wrote something like 200 letters to his student.

And any other type of guy I would have for sure thought there was some sexual love affair going on. but I genuinely think, because I'm a tutor myself, I understand that there's a really intellectually intimate relationship that you can develop that is very useful for obviously the student, but also for the tutor, because like Feynman and many other intellectuals have observed, it's, you can only truly truly. demonstrate mastery of a subject to yourself, among others, when you can explain it to a layman.

And anyways, this book did phenomenally well. Out of all this math, it was a treatise on, as its title, is aptly, if not so elegantly named, Letters of Oiler on Dead. different subjects in natural philosophy. Natural philosophy. Well, his letters of Oiler on different subjects in natural philosophy addressed to a German princess.

This book, the best-selling of all of his works, it contained his exposition on various subjects pertaining to physics, and of course, as well as offering valuable insights, into Oilers' personal and religious beliefs. The book, it became more widely read than any of his mathematical works, which, you know, who can blame the public. And to its credit, it was not only published all across Europe,

but even in the states as well. So it was even powerful enough to penetrate the rough shot ears of the pragmatic Americans of that time, the 1700s pre-revolutionary America, mind you. So that's pretty interesting. The popularity of the letters testifies to his ability, you know, like I said, to communicate scientific matters effectively to a lay audience, which is a rare ability for a dedicated research, scientific. but in personal gift of communication fell a little more flat

Euler was a simple devoutly religious man and he was actually so he never really questioned he was more of a conservative traditional guy and he never questioned the existing social order or conventional beliefs the way many enlightened thinkers and philosophers, even of that era, did.

He was in many ways the polar opposite of another genius. Who was himself actually, in his earlier years, very much derided and criticized. He locked up in the Bastille, the famous French jail at the top of one of their towers. for his blasphemy towards both religion and the earthly kings Voltaire is a famous French Enlightenment writer-historian philosopher

infamous for his wit and criticism of Christianity so it was inevitable in that Euler would... Sorry for that is because I believe almost like Euler might have been a genius in another life

if he had dedicated himself to thoughts on how to act and how to live in the world rather than how to mathematically manipulate objects he probably thought the same about Baltair

he would have been a genius if he had taken up the hard sciences mathematics, logic. Although Voltaire was a deadly logician. But, you know, regardless of Oilers' personal preferences, there was a lot of things about his idiosyncratic character that just didn't quite gel with the powers that be.

So he was, uh, just because of his genius, he was allowed and invited into the king's court in Berlin when he was there teaching, in researching, obviously. He didn't jail with the status quo. So he was mentally kicked out. Life before we get into his works was his eyesight deterioration, which this is, it, uh, Kind of seems like an innocuous thing to draw attention to. But his eyesight was actually, in fact, his greatest papers of his life, were actually dictated to a scribe to write them down.

So he was a powerful intellect, being able to like hawking in a lot of ways, do this in his head, because he simply couldn't see to write. Hoyler's eyesight worsened throughout his mathematical career until in 1738, three years after nearly expiring from a fever he became almost blind in his right eye but Oiler actually blamed the painstaking work on cartography

he performed for the St. Petersburg Academy for his condition and didn't blame the fever. Wheeler's vision in that eye worsened throughout this stay in Germany, and to the extent that Frederick referred to him, condescendingly, of course, as the Cyclops. So, poor, I'm drawing everyone with long hair because that's just what people looked like back then. He actually wore quite a few of his portraits, which I didn't find many of, but he wore some type of tunic-looking thing. He's still pretty happy about being able to pursue his passion and get paid for it.

He seemed like a humble guy, a very modest guy. He didn't blame anyone for his troubles, or at least, you know, he blamed the prince for him. making him do cartography in Russia, but he, uh, he didn't, that didn't stop him from pursuing his passion. He actually commented, the visite would lead to less distractions from his work. He's a pretty, pretty hardcore guy. If that wasn't enough, he had developed a cataract that pretty much left him totally blind. Like I said, however, his condition appeared to have a little effect on his productivity. He compensated it with in his head mental means an exceptional memory. For example, Euler couldn't repeat. He could repeat the Aeneid, the entire Aeneid. Avergill.

And he could even give you the page number. If you recited, a line from it. With the aid of his scribes, Willard's productivity on many areas of study actually increased. He produced on average one paper per week in the year 1775. Interestingly, oilers, they might have had a predisposition in the entire family to eye problems. Later on, his lineage actually became known as Oiler Shurpee. Obviously, Oiler Shurpee. C-S-C-C-H-O means, it's derived, I guess, from the words Sherb in Chief, meaning squint or cross-hide.

An unfortunate nickname to assimilate into their surnames. St. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E.E.E.E.E.E.E.m. moved to St. Petersburg, moved back to Berlin, where he did much, much of his work. But then, after, in 1760, with the seven years war rating, Wheeler's farm in Charlottlenburg was ransacked by advancing Russian. The Empress Elizabeth of Russia, through the advice and the mutual respect of high-level generals for Euler in the Russian army compensated him with a payment of

4,000 rubles an exorbitant amount for that time. The political situation in Russia eventually stabilized after Catherine de Great's accession to the throne. So in 1766,

Euler accepted an invitation to return back to St. Petersburg eventually where he died. though he was treated like nobility given a 3,000 ruble annual salary, a pension for his wife and the promise of high-ranking appointments for his sons.

His sons, sorry. So this appeared to be a great circumstance, and it was for about the first five years of his stay back in St. Petersburg, until a great fire destroyed most of the city and including his home and then two years later he lost his wife

Katerina after 40 in the family and three years later he married her half sister Salome Abigail Giselle Nicely this marriage actually lasted all the way until he died

which was not until about 15 years after that it was one of the He was in lunch with his family in discussing the recently discovered planet Uranus. A couple hours later, he died. He died, he lived in. To wrap this up with a quote, mathematician, the French mathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet.

That said, Eulses de calculer et de vivier. He ceased to calculate. and to live. I appreciate you guys watching this if you did all the way through. I don't know well this is going to turn out. We, I really, I was hoping to get through this, his biography and his mathematics in one video, but I really don't think that's going to work out. So next time we'll have an opportunity to dive deep into his math, his physics. I hope I did him some justice because

you know I've taken some upper level college math so I understand even from my limited perspective relative to mathematicians and physicists his really deep unique genius contribution to just our general understanding of the world through

mathematics so if you weren't doing sure why I was choosing this guy next time at least other than just here say you'll have a couple examples and um a nice cameo by uh one of our good friends here at let's find out to help us through the math of one of his most famous famous formulas literally named after him so we'll uh we'll dive into that next time thanks for watching thanks for all your support and your feedback It's always, it's really, really appreciate it. It really is. So we'll, uh, we'll see you guys in part two.

Bye.