Loading.
Hide Menu Show Menu

Johann Heinrch Lambert

(1728 – 1777)

Johann Heinrich Lambert was born on August 26, 1728 in Alsace, to which his ancestors had fled as Calvinist refugees from neighboring Lorraine. Johann’s father, Lukas, was a tailor who struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to support his wife and seven children.

Johann was expected from the age of twelve to work in his father’s shop. Educating a child old enough to augment the family’s meager income was a luxury the impoverished Lamberts could ill afford. Johann left school, as his parents demanded, but was determined to continue his education. Each night, after a long day’s work, Johann studied. He was particularly interested in philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics and eventually acquired a remarkable proficiency in these disciplines, entirely through self-instruction.

Lambert had the good fortune in 1748 to be appointed tutor to three children of the Swiss nobility. The family’s extensive library was at Johann’s disposal, and he was left with plenty of time each day to pursue his own intellectual interests. It was during the ten years he spent as a tutor that Lambert laid the foundations of his later work.

In 1756, Lambert and two of his students set off on a two-year tour of Europe. Their Bildungsreise, or educational journey, took them to Göttingen, Paris, the Hague, and Milan. Everywhere they went, Lambert met with such influential men as the French mathematician Jean Le Rond D’Alembert and the German mathematician and astronomer Johann Tobias Mayer. These men, and others like them, recognized Lambert’s exceptional abilities and freely discussed their research with him.

Lambert resigned his position as tutor in 1758, when the Bildungsreise ended. He considered himself qualified for a permanent scientific position, but such a post proved elusive. For the next five years Lambert wandered throughout Europe, working occasionally as a surveyor and part-time instructor, and publishing reports of his work in mathematics and astronomy. Not until January 1764, when he was invited on the basis of his reputation to join the faculty of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, did Lambert receive the recognition he deserved. He was warmly welcomed by Euler, who was then teaching at the Academy, but there was still one impediment to his final approval. Lambert, a maverick who never learned to dress for success, made such a poor impression on Germany’s Frederick the Great that the king first refused to admit Lambert to the Academy’s faculty, believing Lambert to be “the greatest blockhead.”

Frederick soon learned to look beyond the scientist’s odd appearance, and saw instead his “immeasurableness of insight.” During his twelve years at the Academy, Lambert published over 150 papers of great significance, on subjects as diverse as mathematics, physics, philosophy, and astronomy. Lambert was an especially gifted and imaginative mathematician. His contributions to the discipline were many, but among the most important were these: he was the first to produce a rigorous proof that π is an irrational number, and he devised the first systematic development of the theory of hyperbolic functions. Lambert’s notations for these functions are those we use today.

King Frederick is reported to have asked Lambert at which science he was most proficient, to which Lambert retorted, “All.” It has been suggested that Lambert would have been more influential and successful had he focused his remarkable intellect on only one or two disciplines; nonetheless, his achievements were extraordinary, given the obstacles to his education.

Lambert died in Berlin on September 25, 1777, at the age of forty-nine.

Links

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lambert.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/654/000096366/

References

  • Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972.
  • Boyer, Carl B. A History of Mathematics. 2d ed., rev. Uta C. Merzbach. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991.
  • Burton, David M. The History of Mathematics. 2d ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 1988.
  • Dunham, William. Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1990.
  • Eves, Howard. An Introduction to the History of Mathematics. 6th ed. Fort Worth: Saunders College Publishing, 1992.
  • Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. VII. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.
 

Contact Us

If you are in need of technical support, have a question about advertising opportunities, or have a general question, please contact us by phone or submit a message through the form below.