A 6th-grade teacher posed the following problem to one of her arithmetic classes:
“A wealthy man dies and leaves ten million dollars.
One-fifth is to go to his wife, one-fifth is to go to his son, one-sixth to his butler, and the rest to charity.
Now, what does each get?”
After a very long silence in the classroom, one little boy raised his hand.
With complete sincerity in his voice, answered, “A lawyer!”
Jean le Rond D'AlembertDied 29 Oct 1783 at age 65 (born 16 Nov 1717). French mathematician known for his work in various fields of applied mathematics, in particular dynamics. In 1743 he published his Traité de dynamique (Treatise on Dynamics). The d'Alembert principle extends Newton's third law of motion, that Newton's law holds not only for fixed bodies but also for free moving bodies. D'Alembert also wrote on fluid dynamics, the theory of winds, the properties of vibrating strings and conducted experiments on the properties of sound . His most significant purely mathematical innovation was his invention and development of the theory of partial differential equations. He published eight volumes of mathematical studies (1761-80). He was editor of the mathematical and scientific articles for Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie. |
