Nicolaus Mercator
Born: 1620 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark (now
Germany)
Died: 14 Jan 1687 in Paris, France
Nicolaus Mercator entered the University of Rostock in
1632. He received a degree in 1641, then went to Leiden for a short period.
After his return to Rostock in 1642 he was appointed to a post in the
university.
In 1648 Nicolaus moved to the University of Copenhagen
but, after working there for six years, he had to leave when the university was
closed due to the plague. From this time on things were not too good for him.
He went to England in 1660 attempting to bring in some
money and did some private tutoring. He was recognised in England however since
he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1666. This was on the strength
of a pendulum clock which Mercator designed to work at sea and thus be used to
determine longitude. He also made measurements of air pressure for the Royal
Society.
In 1682 he moved to France, this time with a specific
position, namely to design the waterworks at Versailles.
While he was working at Copenhagen, Mercator published
a number of textbooks on spherical trigonometry, geography and astronomy. These
were Trigonometria sphaericorum logarithmica (1651), Cosmographia (1651), and
Astronomica sphaerica (1651). He published further works in astronomy while in
England, for example Hypothesis astronomia nova (1664) and Institutiones
astronomicae (1676).
Mercator discovered the well known series, sometimes
called Mercator's series,
ln(1+x) = x - x2/2 + x3/3 - x4/4
+ ...
He published this in Logarithmotechnia 1668. This
series was also investigated by
Mengoli.
There is some reason to confuse Nicolaus Mercator
with Gerardus Mercator since Nicolaus
also worked on Gerardus Mercator's map
projection.
J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
Список
литературы
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данной работы были использованы материалы с сайта http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/