Joseph Plateau was a Belgian mathematician best known for Plateau's problem on surfaces of minimal area. He was born in Brussels, then part of the French Empire, on 14 October 1801 and died in Ghent on 15 September 1883. The problem asks whether a given closed curve in space bounds a surface of least area, and soap films stretched on a wire frame show the answer experimentally, which is why he is remembered as the physicist whose experiments inspired a century of minimal-surface mathematics.
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Source Joseph Plateau, Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics)SummaryQuote, Summary
Joseph Plateau was a Belgian mathematician best known for Plateau's problem on surfaces of minimal area.
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1. Joseph Plateau, Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics)
Biography
He wanted Joseph to follow an artistic career and his schooling was arranged with this aim.
In Branch: Differential Geometry, Summary
Joseph Plateau was a Belgian mathematician best known for Plateau's problem on surfaces of minimal area.
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