Stanislav Vydra (13 November 1741 in

Hradec Králové Hradec Králové (; german: Königgrätz) is a city of the Czech Republic. It has about 91,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Hradec Králové Region. The historic centre of Hradec Králové is well preserved and is protected by law as an ...

– 2 December 1804 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

) was a

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

priest, writer, and mathematician.

Life

Vydra entered the Jesuit

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

of Hradec Králové in 1757. After two years in Brno, he studied philosophy and mathematics from 1762 to 1764 at

Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , undergr ...

. His teachers included

Joseph Stepling Joseph Stepling (29 June 1716 − 11 July 1778) was a Bohemian Jesuit priest, astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. Stepling founded the Clementinum Observatory in Prague in 1751 fitted with the best instruments available in that period, some ...

and Jan Tesánek. In 1765, he went as a teacher to

Jičín Jičín (; german: Jitschin or ''Gitschin'') is a town in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 16,000 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an Cultural monument (Czech Republi ...

and became Stepling's assistant a year later. He ministered as parish priest in Vilémov from 1771 to 1772. In 1772, Vydra was appointed professor of mathematics in

in Prague. Here he taught until 1773. From 1789 to 1799, he was appointed to the mathematics faculty and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts. He became the rector of the university in 1800. He went blind in 1803 and died one year later. He is buried in Prague at the

Olšany Cemetery Olšany Cemeteries (''Olšanské hřbitovy'' in Czech, ''Wolschan'' in German) is the largest graveyard in Prague, Czech Republic, once laid out for as many as two million burials. The graveyard is particularly noted for its many remarkable art ...

in Prague.

Teachings

Stanislav Vydra taught elementary mathematics, a compulsory subject for the students at the philosophical faculty since 1752. He published “Elementa calcvli differentialis et integralis” in 1783, which became a well-known calculus textbook in Prague. After his death, his pupil and successor Josef Ladislav Jandera published his book Pocátkowé Arytmetyky, which was the first text book of elementary mathematics in

Selected works

*Historia Matheseos in Bohemia et Moravia cultae, 1778 *Elementa Calcvli Differentialis, et Integralis, 1783 *Počátkowé Arytmetyky, 1806

References

*Between elementary mathematics and national wiedergeburt – 274 sides, Broschur *George Schuppener, Karel Macek: Stanislav Vydra (1741–1804),

Leipzig University Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...

publishing house (2004) {{DEFAULTSORT:Vydra, Stanislav 1741 births 1804 deaths Czech Jesuits Czech male writers Czech mathematicians People from Hradec Králové Academic staff of Charles University