Moivre, Abraham de

Moivre, Abraham de

▪ French mathematician
born May 26, 1667, Vitry, Fr.
died Nov. 27, 1754, London

      French mathematician who was a pioneer in the development of analytic trigonometry and in the theory of probability.

      A French Huguenot, de Moivre was jailed as a Protestant upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. When he was released shortly thereafter, he fled to England. In London he became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and the astronomer Edmond Halley. De Moivre was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1697 and later to the Berlin and Paris academies. Despite his distinction as a mathematician, he never succeeded in securing a permanent position but eked out a precarious living by working as a tutor and a consultant on gambling and insurance.

      De Moivre expanded his paper “De mensura sortis” (written in 1711), which appeared in Philosophical Transactions, into The Doctrine of Chances (1718). Although the modern theory of probability (probability theory) had begun with the unpublished correspondence (1654) between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat and the treatise De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae (1657; “On Ratiocination in Dice Games”) by Christiaan Huygens of Holland, de Moivre's book greatly advanced probability study. The definition of statistical independence—namely, that the probability of a compound event composed of the intersection of statistically independent events is the product of the probabilities of its components—was first stated in de Moivre's Doctrine. Many problems in dice and other games were included, some of which appeared in the Swiss mathematician Jakob (Jacques) Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi (1713; “The Conjectural Arts”), which was published before de Moivre's Doctrine but after his “De mensura.” He derived the principles of probability from the mathematical expectation of events, just the reverse of present-day practice.

      De Moivre's second important work on probability was Miscellanea Analytica (1730; “Analytical Miscellany”). He was the first to use the probability integral in which the integrand is the exponential of a negative quadratic,

      He originated Stirling's formula, incorrectly attributed to James Stirling (1692–1770) of England, which states that for a large number n, n! equals approximately (2πn)1/2e-nnn; that is, n factorial (a product of integers with values descending from n to 1) approximates the square root of 2πn, times the exponential of -n, times n to the nth power. In 1733 he used Stirling's formula to derive the normal frequency curve as an approximation of the binomial law.

      De Moivre was one of the first mathematicians to use complex numbers in trigonometry. The formula known by his name, (cos x + i sin x)n = cos nx + i sin nx, was instrumental in bringing trigonometry out of the realm of geometry and into that of analysis.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Moivre , Abraham De — See De Moivre, Abraham …   Scientists

  • De Moivre, Abraham — De Moivre , Abraham …   Scientists

  • Abraham de Moivre — Moivre redirects here; for the French commune see Moivre, Marne. Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre Born …   Wikipedia

  • Abraham De Moivre — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Moivre. Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Abraham de moivre — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Moivre. Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Abraham de Moivre — (* 26. Mai 1667 in Vitry le François; † 27. November 1754 in London) war ein französischer Mathematiker, der vor allem für den Satz von Moivre bekannt ist. Leben und Werk De Mo …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • MOIVRE (A. de) — MOIVRE ABRAHAM DE (1667 1754) Mathématicien né en France, à Vitry le François, et mort à Londres. Abraham de Moivre devint anglais par suite de l’émigration de sa famille à Londres après la révocation de l’édit de Nantes. C’est à la lecture des… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Abraham (Vorname) — Abraham ist ein männlicher Vorname, kommt aber auch als Familienname vor. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Herkunft und Bedeutung des Namens 2 Namenstage 3 Varianten 4 Bekannte Namensträger 4.1 Vorname …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • De Moivre , Abraham — (1667–1754) French mathematician Although born at Vitry in France, as a Huguenot De Moivre was forced to flee to England to escape the religious persecution that flared up in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In England he came to …   Scientists

  • Abraham de Moivre — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Moivre. Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre Naissance 26  …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”