Louis Necker

Louis Necker, who added "de Germany" to his name after a family estate near Rolle, was born in Geneva in 1730 and died at Cologny in 1804. He studied mathematics and physics at the Academy of Geneva, wrote a thesis on electricity in 1747, and took a law degree in 1751. In 1757 he took the chair of mathematics and the honorary chair of experimental physics at the Academy. His surviving mathematical work includes the solution of a mechanics problem about the curve on which a sliding body, with friction treated as a fixed fraction of the pressure it exerts, always reaches the lowest point in the same time, and the article on forces and friction in the seventh volume of the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d'Alembert. After he resigned his chair in 1761 following a scandal, he moved into trade and banking, first in Marseille and then in Paris, where he became a banker and friend of Benjamin Franklin. He was the elder brother of Jacques Necker, the French finance minister.