Pierre Frédéric Sarrus (; 10 March 1798,
Saint-Affrique
Saint-Affrique (; Languedocien: ''Sant Africa'') is a commune in the Aveyron department in Southern France.
History
Saint-Affrique grew in the 6th century around the tomb of St. Africain, bishop of Comminges. In the 12th century a fortre ...
– 20 November 1861) 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 ...
.
Sarrus was a professor at the
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers.
The French university traces its history to the ea ...
, France (1826–1856) and 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 at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at ...
in Paris (1842). He is the author of several treatises, including one on the solution of numeric equations with multiple unknowns (1842); one on multiple
integrals
In mathematics, an integral assigns numbers to functions in a way that describes displacement, area, volume, and other concepts that arise by combining infinitesimal data. The process of finding integrals is called integration. Along with d ...
and their integrability conditions; and one on the determination of the orbits of the
comets
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...
. He also discovered a
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...
rule for solving the
determinant
In mathematics, the determinant is a scalar value that is a function of the entries of a square matrix. It characterizes some properties of the matrix and the linear map represented by the matrix. In particular, the determinant is nonzero if a ...
of a 3-by-3
matrix
Matrix most commonly refers to:
* ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise
** '' The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film
** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchi ...
, named
Sarrus' scheme. Sarrus also demonstrated the fundamental
lemma
Lemma may refer to:
Language and linguistics
* Lemma (morphology), the canonical, dictionary or citation form of a word
* Lemma (psycholinguistics), a mental abstraction of a word about to be uttered
Science and mathematics
* Lemma (botany), ...
of the
calculus of variations
The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions
and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...
.
Sarrus numbers are
pseudoprime
A pseudoprime is a probable prime (an integer that shares a property common to all prime numbers) that is not actually prime. Pseudoprimes are classified according to which property of primes they satisfy.
Some sources use the term pseudoprime to ...
s to base 2.
Sarrus also developed the
Sarrus linkage
The Sarrus linkage, invented in 1853 by Pierre Frédéric Sarrus, is a mechanical linkage to convert a limited circular motion to a linear motion or vice versa without reference guideways. It is a spatial six-bar linkage (6R) with two grou ...
, the first linkage capable of transforming rotary motion into perfect straight-line motion, and vice versa.
19th-century French mathematicians
Linear algebraists
1798 births
1861 deaths
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