Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli

Born: 8 Feb 1700 in Groningen, Netherlands
Died: 17 March 1782 in Basel, Switzerland

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Daniel Bernoulli's most important work considered the basic properties of fluid flow, pressure, density and velocity, and gave their fundamental relationship now known as Bernoulli's principle.

Daniel Bernoulli was the second son of Johann Bernoulli and the nephew of Jacob Bernoulli. and brother of Nicolaus Bernoulli and Johann(II) Bernoulli.

In 1725 Daniel and his brother Nikolaus were invited to work at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. There he collaborated with Euler, who came to St. Petersburg in 1727.

In 1731 Daniel extended his researches to cover problems of life insurance and health statistics Specimen theoriae novae de meensura sortis . He was to return to these topics in 1759 in Disquisitiones analyticae de novo problemate conjecturali .

In 1733 Daniel returned to Basel where he taught anatomy, botany, physiology and physics.

His most important work was Hydrodynamica which considered the basic properties of fluid flow, pressure, density and velocity, and gave their fundamental relationship now known as Bernoulli's principle. In this book he also gave a theoretical explanation of the pressure of a gas on the walls of a container.

He also established the basis for the kinetic theory of gases.

Between 1725 and 1749 he won ten prizes for work on astronomy, gravity, tides, magnetism, ocean currents, and the behaviour of ships at sea.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Show me the Bernoulli family tree

Daniel Bernoulli worked on the Epicycloid and on the Hypocycloid

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. R Wolf, Daniel Bernoulli von Basel, 1700-1782, Biographien zur Kulturgeschichte der Schweiz (Zurich, 1860), 151-202.
  4. M G Kendall, Daniel Bernoulli on maximum likelihood, Biometrika 48 (1961), 1-18.
  5. H Bernhard, The Bernoulli family, in H Wussing and W Arnold, Biographien bedeutender Mathematiker (Berlin, 1983). 
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