University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rare Book Room Exhibit

Joseph-Louis Lagrange became professor of mathematics at the royal Artillery School in his hometown of Turin at age 19. His masterwork Mechanique Analytique extended and formalized Isaac Newton's work on mechanics. It is also significant for its use of differential equations. Lagrange published the book without a single diagram or construction; his discussion of mechanics was purely algebraic. Lagrange was the president of the commission set up in 1793 to standardize French weights and measures, and in this sense was the "father of the metric system"

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