Leonhard Euler: Google Doodle Honors 306th Birthday of Swiss Mathematician

He is best-known for his contributions to pure mathematics, calculus and Sudoku.

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Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 306th birthday of Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), who made important contributions to the study of geometry, algebra, calculus, mechanics and number theory.

Born Apr. 15, 17o7, in Basel, Switzerland, he was the son of a Calvinist minister who started college at the University of Basel at 13 and earned his master’s degree in philosophy by age 16. While Frederick the Great invited him to join the Berlin Academy at one point, he spent most of his career working in St. Petersburg, Russia.

(PHOTOS: A History of Google Doodles)


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Euler was one of the most published mathematicians of all time, penning more than 800 papers (many in Latin) before his death at age 76. In fact, he produced nearly half of his work after going completely blind at age 59. Most notably, he wrote about the significance of “e,” an irrational number and the base of natural logarithms that is approximately equal to 2.7183. Readers of the journal Mathematical Intelligencer voted his equation “ei(pi) + 1 = 0″ the “single most beautiful equation in all of mathematics” in a 1988 poll.

Euler may also be the father of sudoku, for he created the Latin Square, “arrangements of groups of numbers in grids that do not repeat vertically or horizontally,” according to a 2005 Los Angeles Times article.

(MORE: How Worrying About Math Hurts Your Brain)

He was also known for having an amazing memory and reportedly could recite every word of Virgil’s Aeneid. 

Euler worked furiously up to the end of his life; on the day he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on Sep. 18, 1783, he had been calculating how high hot-air balloons can rise, as well as the orbit of the planet Uranus, which had recently been discovered.

“Euler’s work is at the root of almost every equation, formula, theorem or other relationship used in mathematics, from the simplest to the highest levels,” Afred S. Posamentier, former dean of the School of Education at the City University of New York, wrote in a Newsday editorial published on the occasion of Euler’s 300th birthday in 2007. Ronald S. Calinger, mathematics historian at the Catholic University of America, argued in the Washington Post that Euler is one of “the four greatest mathematical scientists of all time,” alongside Archimedes, Isaac Newton, and Carl Friedrich Gauss.

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De acuerdo a este artículo de Olivia B. Waxman el profesor Ronald S. Calinger alegó esto: "Euler is one of “the four greatest mathematical scientists of all time,” alongside Archimedes, Isaac Newton, and Carl Friedrich Gauss."

Diré que a Calinger le faltó mencionar a Gottfried Leibniz:

"Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz  (July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician andphilosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy.

Leibniz developed the infinitesimal calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and Leibniz's mathematical notation has been widely used ever since it was published. His visionary Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity only found mathematical implementation in the 20th century through non-standard analysis. He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe apinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is at the foundation of virtually all digital computers."


¡Así que no son solo 4 los grandes matemáticos y científicos de todos los tiempos, falta Leibniz!


Where would these two be in a Euler diagram? Both would be in HUMAN. Love Humanity!


Time, National geographic, canada's toronto star, and many others, including WIkipedia are following the google doodle and all of a sudden doing the same thing, in unison, proclaiming this unknown, forgotten person as really something, just because of a google doodle. this show how obsolete and forgetful our society is on men, if only google remembered and now every other media mogul is all of a sudden interested, it really shows how absolutely lazy and laxidasical you all are, the google bandwagon, and every one on it, check wikipedia, they added this man overnight, no, today..isnt that great...its darwinians all over the place, what allows one to survive, all other men follow suit, in this case a bogus man, and a bogus memorial, this man used a fake name and did not much, and has no known students that kept his work going, nothing like darwin who said, men, if one does it, they all do  it, no matter where they are on planet earth. they are copycats, they share in each others lies.


@DromiaPleasant You have no clue what you are talking about. 

I encounter  Leonhard Euler in my work daily - I  work in digital signal processing and electronics. When you use a smartphone you unknowingly reap the benefits of the genius' work......

Dream on Dromia for you will be forgotten in a hundred years, not so Leonhard Euler. 

An irritated engineer


Odd thing to get so upset about. A great mind unknown to the general public gets one day in the sunshine and you blow your top because...why? I'm not sure. You (In obvious disagreement with mathematicians) find him unworthy? Or you like keeping him as a Trivial Pursuit answer that you have know about "the whole time"? Because he isn't Charles Darwin? Or education - regardless of the means - is an example foolish, lazy herd behavior? I'm surprised you didn't use the word "sheep" to dismiss the readers who chose to learn a little bit more.

BTW that article didn't appear in Wikipedia today it was updated today. I know because I read it a long time ago following information regarding Napier's Constant.

Well, at least no one can accuse you of going along with the pack when it comes to spelling, puntuation and capitalization.

KyWilliams like.author.displayName like.author.displayName 2 Like

@DromiaPleasant You really need to dissolve this hate you have for people who SHARE. It is how we live. No one is original. No one is super special. We are all people tapping into what we have to keep the whole going whether we choose to perceive it or not. You are not an individual. As much as you would like to be you simply aren't. The mere fact that you are on the internet also implies that you are not, for if you were, you'd be in the woods somewhere growing your own food and coming up with your own theories. Best is, all of those theories you would come up with you'd find out sooner or later that someone else already came up with them anyway. Probably not even a Doctor, as many would assume, or scientist even, but sometimes just a kid sitting in his bedroom doodling on a piece of paper with his crayons. We are all connected. Use your intelligence and ability to notice the patterns, that is that there is ONE language and that we all JUST translate it into our own perception, to make a difference in this world instead of dragging it all down with so much judgment and harsh criticism. EVERYONE IS A COPY CAT. But they do not SHARE in each other lies, but rather SHARE in each other's successes. People copy what keeps them going. Being that human beings are social creatures, this is the very evolution that has brought us this far and will continue to push us forward. Whats wrong with survival? Absolutely nothing.  Get over it and start discovering peace my friend. Because you are holding yourself back and you have too much potential to be doing so.