Michel Rolle

Michel Rolle (* April 21, 1652 in Ambert, Basse- Auvergne, † November 8, 1719 in Paris) was a French mathematician and member of the Académie des sciences.

Role was the son of a shopkeeper and essentially self-taught. He worked as an assistant to a notary and for different lawyers before he went in 1675 to Paris, where he married soon after. He was renowned as a mathematician and 1682 by Jean -Baptiste Colbert a reward for the solution of an application made by Jacques Ozanam number theoretic problem. Colbert gave him a small pension and the war minister, François- Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois introduced him as a mathematics teacher for one of his sons ( Camille Le Tellier de Louvois ) a - another small post in the Ministry of War was not to Rolles taste so that he soon gave it back. On the influence of Louvois back in 1685, he also became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1699 he was Pensionnaire GEOMETRE the Academy. In 1708 he suffered a stroke and then published no mathematical work more.

Role was primarily algebraists, who also dealt with Diophantine equations in number theory. In 1690 he published his treatise on algebra Traité d' algèbre, in which he also introduced the now common sign of nth roots. Other mathematical notations he sat with by, the usual sign = for equality, previously introduced by Robert Recorde, but at that time not a common practice.

Known in the Analysis is named after him Rolle's theorem ( 1691) on differentiable functions. This set has the Analysis role with its origins in a broader algebraic theory, which he called theory of cascades and consisted essentially in the transition from one polynomial to its derivation, although roll itself still did not use any concepts of calculus. He even refused because it provided his opinion, no new truths, and the contrary was even incorrect ( compared to the algebraic methods of Pierre de Fermat and Johann van Waveren Hudde ).

From 1700 to 1701 it came into the Paris Academy of Sciences in an altercation between the roller and Pierre Varignon over introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton Analysis. Role continued the discussion after the Academy was no agreement be reached, in the Journal of Sçavans gone, but in the end confessed his mistake.