Pierre Raymond de Montmort
Pierre Remond de Mont Mort ( * October 27, 1678 in Paris, † October 7, 1719 ) was a French mathematician who pioneered the theory of probability.
Life
De Mont Mort came from a noble family and a lawyer should be according to the will of his father (François Remond ). He was the second of three sons. Instead, he left at eighteen his parents' house and traveled through Europe, to England, the Netherlands and Germany, where he visited a relative ( Monsieur de Chamois ), who was French ambassador in Regensburg. In 1699 he became reconciled again with his father and began to study Malebranche, especially philosophy, physics ( in the tradition of Descartes) and mathematics under Nicolas. After the death of his father a year later, he was financially independent. In 1700, he revisited London, where he met Isaac Newton. He was Catholic and was prompted by his brother, who previously held this position, in 1700 canon of Notre Dame de Paris, gave his ecclesiastical position but to get married in 1706 to around. Previously, he had in 1704 bought a castle (Château de Mont Mort ) in Mont Mort Lucy, so he assumed the additional name de Mont Mort. The castle is located 120 kilometers east Paris in Marne and is still owned by the family of the Mont de Morts.
He pursued mathematical studies. He became famous for his book Essay d'analyze sur les jeux de hazard from 1708, that dealt with the application of combinatorial considerations, such as occur in elementary probability theory to gambling, especially a card game called XIII. In the book, no author name is called, Mont Mort gave away but it generously so that its authorship was generally known. The idea for the book came from previous studies of Christian Huygens (1657, in the edition of Frans van Schooten ), Blaise Pascal, and references to the then unpublished book Ars conjectandi of James I. Bernoulli in his obituary (he died in 1705). The Book of the Mont Mort suggested Abraham de Moivre in a more thorough treatment of the subject in (published 1718, in an earlier version, 1711 ), so it was a priority dispute - Mont Mort attacked him sharply in the 1713 edition of his book to. Later, the dispute but was resolved peacefully and Mont Mort even tried with de Moivre to begin a correspondence ( he sent him in 1715 many papers, so that they published ). Mont Mort's book also led to compounds with known mathematicians such as Nicholas I Bernoulli, the three months was staying at his castle in 1713. His letters were included in the new edition of Mont Mort's book, which, in turn, Nikolaus Bernoulli incited to publish the complete manuscript at his death almost the Ars Conjectandi his uncle (the book is a milestone of probability theory). He was also a friend of Brook Taylor and stood with Leibniz, Jakob Hermann, John Craig, Edmond Halley and Giovanni Poleni in correspondence. So he stood at that time in seething priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz, who split the mathematicians of Europe into two camps, with both sides well. He died of a chicken pox epidemic.
1715 he was in a visit to England ( he observed, among others, Edmond Halley, a solar eclipse ) Fellow of the Royal Society in 1716 and an associate member of the Academie des Sciences. Since he did not live in Paris, he could not become a full member.
He also established the appointment of Pascal 's Triangle by Blaise Pascal. Even the Springer problem in chess, treated later by Leonard Euler ( 1759), was treated by de Mont Mort, as well as by de Moivre. In his book there is also a set of the calculus of finite differences, which was rediscovered by Christian Goldbach in 1718 .. The method was also the subject of a book from 1717 by François Nicole ( 1683-1758 ), a friend of the de Mont Mort since common mathematics studies in Paris had.
Besides his book on gambling, he published only a treatise on infinite series ( De seriebus Infiniti tractatus, Transactions Royal Society, Volume 30, 1720, pp. 633-675 ), with an appendix of Brook Taylor.
He was married to Mademoiselle de Romicourt, the niece of the Duchess of Angouleme, who lived in the neighborhood of Mont Mort. Marriage should have been happy. The Duchess lived until her death in 1710 at the castle of Mont Mort.
Writings
- Essay d'analyze sur les jeux de hazard, Paris. Jacque Quillau, 1708 2nd edition (supplemented and re-edited, including letters from Nicholas Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli ) 1713