Pierre Remond de Montmort was a French
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
. He was born in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
on 27 October 1678 and died there on 7 October 1719. His name was originally just Pierre Remond. His father pressured him to study law, but he rebelled and travelled to England and Germany, returning to France in 1699 when, upon receiving a large inheritance from his father, he bought an estate and took the name de Montmort. He was friendly with several other notable mathematicians, and especially
Nicholas Bernoulli, who collaborated with him while visiting his estate. He was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1715, while traveling again to England, and became a member of the
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...
in 1716.
De Montmort is known for his book
on
probability
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...
and games of chance,
Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard
''Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard'' ("Analysis of games of chance") is a book on combinatorics and mathematical probability written by Pierre Remond de Montmort and published in 1708. The work applied ideas from combinatorics and probability ...
, which was also the first to introduce the
combinatorial study of
derangements. He is also known for naming
Pascal's triangle after
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic Church, Catholic writer.
He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pa ...
, calling it "Table de M. Pascal pour les combinaisons."
Another of de Montmort's interests was the subject of
finite differences. He determined in 1713 the sum of ''n'' terms of a finite series of the form
:
where Δ is the forward
difference operator, a theorem which seems to have been independently rediscovered by
Goldbach in 1718.
References
*
External links
*
*
*
*
:''This article incorporates text from a
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
source.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Remond De Montmort, Pierre
1678 births
1719 deaths
18th-century French mathematicians
French Roman Catholics
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of the French Academy of Sciences