Information about Abraham De Moivre

''"Moivre" redirects here; for the French commune see Moivre, Marne.


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Abraham de Moivre.


Abraham de Moivre (May 26, 1667 in Vitry-le-François, Champagne, FranceNovember 27, 1754 in London, England; pronounced as /abʁam də mwavʁ/) was a French mathematician famous for de Moivre's formula, which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697, and was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and James Stirling. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux.

The social status of his family is unclear, but de Moivre's father, a surgeon, was able to send him to the Protestant academy at Sedan (1678-82). de Moivre studied logic at Saumur (1682-84), attended the Collège de Harcourt in Paris (1684), and studied privately with Jacques Ozanam (1684-85). It does not appear that De Moivre received a college degree.

de Moivre was a Calvinist. He left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and spent the remainder of his life in England.

Throughout his life he remained poor. It is reported that he was a regular customer of Slaughter's Coffee House, St. Martin's Lane at Cranbourn Street, where he earned a little money from playing chess.

He died in London and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields, although his body was later moved.

de Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, entitled The Doctrine of Chances. It was said that his book was highly prized by gamblers. It is reported in all seriousness that De Moivre correctly predicted the day of his own death. Noting that he was sleeping 15 minutes longer each day, De Moivre surmised that he would die on the day he would sleep for 24 hours. A simple mathematical calculation quickly yielded the date, November 27, 1754. He did indeed pass away on that day.

He first discovered the "closed form" expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of phi to the nth Fibonacci number.

He is also known for de Moivre's theorem which transfers a problem from complex numbers to trigonometry. One can derive many trigonometric identities by applying de Moivre's theorem.

References

  • H. J. R. Murray. History of Chess. Oxford University Press, 1913, p 846.
Donald E. Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming, Second Edition. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts, 1973, p 82. See de Moivre's Miscellanea Analytica (London: 1730) p 26-42.

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mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics.

Problems in mathematics

Some people incorrectly believe that mathematics has been fully understood, but the publication of new discoveries in mathematics continues at an immense
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de Moivre's formula, named after Abraham de Moivre, states that for any complex number (and, in particular, for any real number) x and any integer n it holds that



The formula is important because it connects complex numbers (
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In mathematics, a complex number is a number of the form


where a and b are real numbers, and i is the imaginary unit, with the property i ² = −1.
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Trigonometry (from Greek trigōnon "triangle" + metron "measure"[1]), informally called trig, is a branch of mathematics that deals with triangles, particularly triangles in a plane where one angle of the triangle is 90 degrees (right angled
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normal distribution, also called the Gaussian distribution, is an important family of continuous probability distributions, applicable in many fields. Each member of the family may be defined by two parameters, location and scale: the mean ("average",
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Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with analysis of random phenomena.[1] The central objects of probability theory are random variables, stochastic processes, and events: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic events or measured quantities
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Born 4 January 1643(1643--) [OS: 25 December 1642]
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Edmond Halley FRS (sometimes "Edmund"; IPA: /ˈɛdmənd ˈhɔːlɪ/) (November 8, 1656 – January 14, 1742) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist.
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James Stirling (April 22, 1692–December 5, 1770) was a Scottish mathematician.
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Pierre des Maizeaux (also spelled "Desmaizeaux"). (1666?-1745). French Huguenot in exile in England. Member of the Royal Society. Colleague of Anthony Collins. Editor of the writings of John Locke (1720). Translator and biographer of Pierre Bayle.
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Jacques Ozanam (1640 - April 3, 1717) was a French mathematician.

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Jacques Ozanam was born in Bouligneux, Ain, France.

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