Laguerre

Edmond Nicolas Laguerre

Born: 9 April 1834 in Bar-le-Duc, France
Died: 14 Aug 1886 in Bar-le-Duc, France

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Edmond Laguerre attended the École Polytechnique in Paris but only ranked 46th in his class. He was an artillery officer from 1854 to 1864 when he returned to the École Polytechnique where he remained for the rest of his life.

His most important work was in the areas of analysis and geometry. His work in geometry was important at the time but has been overtaken by Lie group theory, Cayley's work and Klein's work.

Laguerre studied approximation methods and is best remembered for the special functions the Laguerre polynomials which are solutions of the Laguerre differential equations.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Laguerre's work on abstract linear spaces

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. H Poincaré, Oeuvres de Laguerre (Paris, 1898).
  3. A Erdelyi et al., Higher Transcendental Functions (New York, 1953). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996