LEGENDRE

From Agepedia

LEGENDRE, Adrian Marie ; professor of mathematics at the military school in Paris. In 1787, a dispute having arisen between the English and French astronomers respecting the exact situation of the observatories of Paris and Greenwich, Legendre, together with Cassini and Mechain, was appointed by the French government to measure a degree of the meridian between Dunkirk and Boulogne, whilst the English mathematicians performed the same operation in another place. The results were published by the French savants in 1792. Two years after, Legendre published a Memozre sur les transcendantes Elliptiques, and his Elements de Geometrie, which has since passed through eleven editions, has been translated in the U. States, and is universally considered a classical work. Legendre has made very important and profound researches respecting the attraction of elliptic spheroids, and has the glory of having been the first to prove that the ellipse is the only form that can preserve the equilibrium of a revolving liquid mass, and that the particles of the mass attract each other according to the square of their distances. This inquiry, which he began in 1782, was followed by another, not less important, on the relation of spheroids to each other. At a later period, in conjunction with Prony, he calculated the new trigonometrical tables for the decimal division of the circle. In 1808, Legendre was appointed president of the university for life ; in 1815, honorary member of the committee for public instruction ; and in 1816, with Poisson, examiner of the candidates for the polytechnic school. Among his most important works are1. Nouvelle Theorie des Paralleles (1803); 2. JYouvelles Methodes pour la Determination des Orhites des ComeHes, &c. (1805); 3. Essai sur la ThSorie des Nombres (1798, with a supplementary volume, which appeared in 1816, in 4to.); 4. Exercises de Calcul integral (1807, 4to.). The memoirs of the academy, of which he is a member, also contain valuable contributions from him. His method for the determination of the orbits of comets has been much admired for its profoundness and ingenuity. In 1824, Legendre, then 72 years old, was deprived of his pension of 3000 francs, because he would not vote for the ministerial candidates for the academy.