Pierre François Verhulst

Pierre -François Verhulst [ vəɾhʏlst ] ( born October 28, 1804 in Brussels, † February 15, 1849 ) was a Belgian mathematician. Today, he is best known as the discoverer of the logistic equation.

Life and work

Verhulst began first in Brussels to study classical philology, but then turned to the study of mathematics in Ghent, where he received his doctorate in 1825. As a student, he received two awards for his work on the calculus of variations. Later, he published articles in the field of number theory and physics.

1829 published Verhulst, along with Quételet, a French translation of John Herschel's Theory of Light. During this time, Verhulst was temporarily also politically engaged. So he tried in 1830 to persuade the Pope from giving the Papal States Constitution during a stay in Rome. The Belgian Revolution of 1830 and the Dutch invasion of 1831 led him to political activities. 1835 Verhulst was appointed to the Université Libre de Bruxelles and in 1840 to the Royal Military School.

His interest in probability theory had been aroused by a new lottery game. However, he began, supported by Adolphe Quételet, soon also apply to the areas of political economy and the population statistics that were understood at the time by the work of Thomas Robert Malthus on the rise.

His 1838 imagined mathematical model of population growth based on an analysis of existing statistics and supplemented the theory of exponential growth (or geometric progression ) by growth-inhibiting terms. He developed it further and finally published it in a work of 1845. Since the 70s of the 20th century, it is used as an important example of chaos theory again a lot of attention (see Logistic equation).

His real major work is Traité des fonctions elliptiques (1841 ), for which he was taken unanimously at the Royal Academy of Belgium. In 1848 he took advantage of the function of the President of the Academy.

Works (selection)

• Pierre -François Verhulst: Notice sur la loi que la population dans son poursuit accroissement. In: Corresp. Math Phys .. 10, 1838, pp. 113-121 ( OnePage http://books.google.com/books?hl=fr&id=8GsEAAAAYAAJ&jtp=113 # v = & q = & f = false).
• Pierre -François Verhulst: Traité des fonctions élémentaire elliptiques. Hayez, Brussels 1841 ( http://books.google.com/books?id=WS8LAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover ).
• Pierre -François Verhulst: Recherches Mathématiques sur la loi d' accroissement de la population. In: Mémoires de l' Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Bruxelles. 18, Brussels 1845, pp. 1-42 ( http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PPN=PPN129323640_0018&DMDID=dmdlog7 ).
• Pierre -François Verhulst: Deuxième mémoire sur la loi d' accroissement de la population. In: Mémoires de l' Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux- Arts de Belgique. 20, 1847, pp. 1-32 ( http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PPN=PPN129323659_0020&DMDID=dmdlog29 ).