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
Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many app ...
study of
derangement
In combinatorial mathematics, a derangement is a permutation of the elements of a set, such that no element appears in its original position. In other words, a derangement is a permutation that has no fixed points.
The number of derangements of ...
s. He is also known for naming
Pascal's triangle
In mathematics, Pascal's triangle is a triangular array of the binomial coefficients that arises in probability theory, combinatorics, and algebra. In much of the Western world, it is named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, although ot ...
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
A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form . If a finite difference is divided by , one gets a difference quotient. The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the ...
. He determined in 1713 the sum of ''n'' terms of a finite series of the form
:
where Δ is the forward
difference operator
In mathematics, a recurrence relation is an equation according to which the nth term of a sequence of numbers is equal to some combination of the previous terms. Often, only k previous terms of the sequence appear in the equation, for a parameter ...
, a theorem which seems to have been independently rediscovered by
Goldbach in 1718.
References
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External links
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public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
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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