Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728 to 1777) was a scholar from Mulhouse in Alsace who contributed to mathematics, physics, astronomy and philosophy. The son of a tailor, he left school at twelve and educated himself in the evenings while working as a clerk, secretary and private tutor, before moving to Berlin in 1764 at the invitation of Euler and joining the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He was the first to give a rigorous proof that pi is irrational, in a paper presented to the Academy in 1768, and in it he conjectured that e and pi are transcendental. He studied the parallel postulate in his 1766 Theorie der Parallellinien, made the first systematic development of hyperbolic functions, and wrote on photometry, cosmology, cartography and probability.
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Source Johann Heinrich Lambert (MacTutor)
Source Johann Heinrich Lambert (MacTutor)
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Source Johann Heinrich Lambert (MacTutor)
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1. Johann Heinrich Lambert (MacTutor)
Quick Info, born
26 August 1728
Biography text
He became tutor to the Count's grandson and his cousin, who were both eleven years old
In Branch: Non-Euclidean Geometry, Biography, parallel postulate
he managed to deduce a large number of non-euclidean results
In Branch: Probability and Statistics, Biography, probability
his contributions to the theory of probability
Principal Result: Proof that Pi is Irrational, Summary
Johann Lambert was the first to provide a rigorous proof that
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