Johann Andreas Segner

Johann Andreas von Segner was a Hungarian scientist of German descent, born in Pozsony, then the Hungarian capital and now Bratislava, on 9 October 1704 and dead on 5 October 1777. His father was a tax clerk, and the family had been granted nobility in 1596 by Rudolph II for military services. He studied at Pressburg and Debrecen and from April 1725 at the University of Jena, where under the guidance of Georg Erhard Hamberger he developed a proof for the Cartesian rule of signs. In his third year at Jena he began to teach other students mathematics, supported by Hermann Friedrich Teichmeyer, who lectured in the faculty of medicine. In October 1729 he graduated in medicine under Simon Paul Hirscher. His article gives his later career as a teacher of mathematics and physics; he is remembered for work in mathematics and for the reaction water wheel that bears his name.