Jean-Baptiste-Marie charles meusnier de la place (1754–1793): an historical note
✍ Scribed by Clifford Truesdell
- Book ID
- 104768983
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 351 KB
- Volume
- 31
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0025-6455
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
MEUSNIER passed through mathematics like a comet. His life illustrates the Ancients' prophesy: Whom the gods love dies young. In his boyhood he attended no school but was taught by his father, of an old Touranian family given to law and administration. In those days the only engineering school in France (and perhaps anywhere) was the Ecole Royale du Genie Militaire at Mezieres;' to prepare for it, during 1771-1773 MEUSNIER received private tutoring in Paris. His first appearance at Mezieres was described as follows, eighteen years after his death, by GASPARD MONGE ( 1746-1818),2 who had been his teacher there in MEUSNIER'S twenty-first and twenty-second years, 1774-1775: 'MEUSNIER, 'Memoire sur la courbure des surfaces' (1776), Memoires de Mathematique et de Physique presentes a 1 'Academic Royaie des Sciences, par Divers Savants, & It& dans ses Assembles (Paris) 10 (1785) 477-5 10. 'For nearly all particulars Of MEUSNIER'S life I rely on the excellent article about him by DIRK J. STRUIK in VohIme 9 (1974) of Dictionary of Scientific Biography.