Siméon-Denis Poisson (21 June 1781 – 25 April 1840), was a French mathematician, geometer, and physicist. The name is pronounced [simeɔ̃ dəni pwasɔ̃] in French.
Poisson was born in Pithiviers, Loiret.
In 1798, he entered the École Polytechnique in Paris as first in his year, and immediately began to attract the notice of the professors of the school, who left him free to make his own choices as to what he would study. In 1800, less than two years...
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Siméon-Denis Poisson (21 June 1781 – 25 April 1840), was a French mathematician, geometer, and physicist. The name is pronounced [simeɔ̃ dəni pwasɔ̃] in French.
Poisson was born in Pithiviers, Loiret.
In 1798, he entered the École Polytechnique in Paris as first in his year, and immediately began to attract the notice of the professors of the school, who left him free to make his own choices as to what he would study. In 1800, less than two years after his entry, he published two memoirs, one on Étienne Bézout's method of elimination, the other on the number of integrals of a finite difference equation. The latter was examined by Sylvestre-François Lacroix and Adrien-Marie Legendre, who recommended that it should be published in the Recueil des savants étrangers, an unprecedented honour for a youth of eighteen. This success at once procured entry for Poisson into scientific circles. Joseph Louis Lagrange, whose lectures on the theory of functions he attended at the École Polytechnique...
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