The Master of Us All

By Nowsherwan Khan
Team Research

A man once asked the question “ what will happen if I stand on a block of mass which is moving with speed of light?”. E=mc^2 was formed and the rest is history. But if you ask the same question from a common man, his answer would be ‘’this is for the crazy people’’. The inventions and advancements in the 21st century is all due to these crazy people who asked such questions and then shaped the world. We all know about the greatest scientists and physicists who worked on such crazy questions and then gave us the scientific wonders. Take tesla coil for example. If tesla had not showed us how to control lightening and make plasma to cut steel like a piece of cake, how would we have made the monumental Millau bridge? this is one of the thousands wonders of science which we use today for our ease. Take medicines for example, diseases are treated with ease and there is almost no risk of operations. That’s all because of those people who worked on secrets of cosmos and now we all remember them.

There is one genius in particular, the one that was called master by every other scientist, physicists, and mathematician, his name was Leonhard Euler, The greatest mathematician of All time.

Leonhard Euler was born in 1707 in Basel, Switzerland. Euler initially learnt some mathematics from his father but after sometime it got hard for his father to continue teaching him. Fortunately his father was friend with the Bernoulli family. Euler would go into university of Basel and would study under the guidance of Johann Bernoulli who was one of the greatest mathematician of that time. As a young guy, Euler showed such signs of genius that he was guided and mentored by Johan Bernoulli who was then on the faculty at the university of Basel. Johann Bernoulli saw immense talent and mathematical skills in Euler and persuaded his father that Euler should choose maths as a career instead of other professions. In 1722, Euler graduated from the university of Basel, and if you get your calculator out, you will see that he was 15 at the time of graduation. This alone is enough to show that his talent was way ahead of his time. By the age of 20 he had won a prize from the Paris academy. In those days, the academies would throw difficult challenges at mathematicians and the one which Euler won, was about analyzing masts on a sailing ship. He had actually won second prize in that and later would go on to win dozens of first prizes over the course of his career. After this success, Euler applied for a job at the faculty of University of Basel, but to his dismay, it was not given to him. But Euler’s fortune improved with an offer from the St. Petersburg academy in Russia. His appointment came through the influence of Daniel Bernoulli, son of Johann, who himself had secured a position at the St. Petersburg academy a few years before. So Euler bid farewell to Basel, and went to St. Petersburg academy in 1727. He worked there until 1741 when he accepted an offer from the Berlin academy. He worked there under Fredrick the great until friction between them increased much. Euler returned to St. Petersburg academy in 1766, where he worked and then died in 1783.

It was during his first stay in Russia where he married a Lady named Katherine. Euler and Katherine would eventually have 13 children, but the child mortality took a dreadful toll in those days, and only 5 of those children would survive.

Vision Problem

Euler had a problem in his right eye and by his early 30’s he lost vision in his right eye, but his productivity didn’t go down. It was an ocular infection which can be cured today for sure but not in those days. Euler suffered a lot of pain due to this but he kept on working and was producing magical mathematics even with one blind eye. Visual limitations aside, Euler continued his research and was increasing his productivity till the year 1771, when he lost vision in his left eye. This was due to a cataract. Such a disease, which can be cured easily today was a very serious matter in those days. Euler’s doctor tried an eye surgery but doing an eye surgery doesn’t sound so good in 18th century. The procedure was unsuccessful. By 1771, Euler was essentially blind.

Mathematical genius inside him.

Many people would think that if he was blind by 1771, he would not have contributed anything to maths after that, right? Wrong!!!!. Euler’s productivity kept on increasing even after being blind. He was the mathematician that could not be stopped. He instructed his assistants to read the newly arrived papers, journals, by lagrange, or anyone. Euler would do maths in mind. Someone would just read the paper to him and he would solve it, analyze it, reshape it, it was like a play for him. It is said that Euler could do maths faster in brain faster than most people could write. And he daily put assistants to the test. In 1775, when he was blind, He would produce a paper a week. Like Beethoven, who wrote music that he never heard, Euler created mathematics that he never saw. Producing Mathematics, while you are blind is enough proof that Euler was ahead of his time and no one could match his genius mind. 

He had a Phenomenal memory, he could memorize books, tables, logarithms. this would serve him well, as even he was blind, he was producing mathematics.

Quality and quantity of his Mathematics:

Quantity and Quality of His Mathematics

Euler’s mathematics is distinguished by its quality and quantity. Both of these are superior beyond imagining. 

Quantity

Nobody did more maths than Euler, nobody ever published more maths than Euler. In terms of quantity, Euler had no peers. By the dawn of 20th century, the scholar Gustav Enestrom had identified a total of 866 books and papers that Euler had published over his lifetime. Enestrom described each of them in one catalogue that ran to 388 pages itself. In 1911, the swiss academy of sciences decided that they would publish Euler’s collected work. In 1911 one volume came out, in 1912, another volume came out, in 1913 another volume came out, thereafter, the books kept coming and coming. Currently there are about 75 volumes and the project is still not complete yet. They are still coming. His collected work called the “Opera Omnia”, contain 75 volumes, over 25000 pages. And nobody knows when they are gonna finish this, its gonna be deep into the 21st century. The grand children of the original editor of this are old and its still coming out. The quantity of his work is breath taking.

Lets give u another small example of quantity of his work. After Euler died, there was a backlog, there were papers on his desk, it took decades to clear the backlog and after he was dead, he published 228 papers. Now trust me that’s more than what most living people could publish, Euler published more mathematics, dead. 

Quality of His Work

We know his quantity of work was breath taking but if it wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be remembering him. About the quality of his work, here’s a small example. If you go to the online dictionary Mathworld and type Euler, any term in mathematics that carries his name would appear. If its in the mathematical dictionary its really important, I mean its not a normal term associated to him. If you do this and search Euler in Mathworld, you will find 96 entries!!!. 96 things in all mathematics are named after him, for example Euler line, Euler identity, Euler integral, Euler theorem, Euler product sum formula , Euler number etc etc.

Newton is known most famously for calculus, Einstein most famously for E=mc^2, then there is Euler, 96 entries are after him. Imagine the quality of work.

The Number ‘e’

The Number ‘e’ which is very important in calculus, probability etc, was introduced by Euler in 1748 which he called the base of natural logarithm, the number e is a long expansion of e^x where you put x=1 and you get e= 1+1/1 + 1/1.2 + 1/1.2.3+…upto infinity. The number is irrational and Euler loved calculating upto many decimal places. In original paper, he said the letter ‘e’ for the sake of brevity stands for 2.718281828459…… 

Nowadays we know ‘e’ appears everywhere. From calculus, to probability and games. The number e is everywhere.

(You can read the remaining article in Part 2 of the series)