Daniel Bernoulli

Created by: Rabbi Choudhury

 Childhood and Early life
Daniel bernoulli was born in February 8th 1700, in the Groningen, Netherlands. He was born into a family of well
established mathematicians so it is no wonder that he became a well known and successful mathematician himself
too. Daniel had always had a fascination with math even from a young age and that had carried out into his older
life. He did not have a great relationship with his father growing up as his father had always wanted him him to
go into business as mathematicians never made a lot of money back in their time which had also carried over to
their family being somewhat poor. Daniel had ended up studying business and medicine at the university of Basel
after all the arguments with his father but with the only exception that his father would teach him mathematics.
Later into his career he had not only became a mathematician but he had also used what he had learned in
medicine and business later on in his life.
 Young adulthood
Daniel bernoulli was always fond about travelling and following up on the promise which he had made to his
father about pursuing medicine as his career if his father had taught him math, he travelled around to many
countries to learn more about medicine. Daniel Bernoulli had a thing where he always wanted to not only be good
at whatever he was doing but great at it which ended him up in Venice in order to study medicine to help him get
his doctorate he had became extremely ill. However, that did not stop him from continuing his goals as he
published his first mathematical work in his career in that time span in which he was stuck in Venice. As you can
probably tell by now he had spent a lot of time in Venice and he had also invented/designed an hourglass of which
can be used at sea while always staying even. He had later won the award of the Paris Academy.
 St Petersburg
As I have mentioned earlier Daniel Bernoulli was into travelling and getting as many experiences as possible
which why he could not refuse the offer of “The Chair of Mathematics” at St Petersburg and it also helped that
his brother was also offered the same role of whom he was very close with. But before long a great tragedy had
come upon Daniel as his brother had died from fever which had left Daniel very unhappy and it did not help that
the climate at St Petersburg was terrible and so it did not take long after that before daniel had asked his dad for
company for the rest of his time in St Petersburg. Daniels dad, Johann Bernoulli had managed to get one of his
best pupils Leonhard Euler to sub in for his did brothers presence if I may say so myself. When Euler arrived at St
Petersburg in 1727 it was another 6 years until Daniel Bernoulli left St Petersburg. Although St Petersburg was a
sad time for Daniel He had also made one of his most famous discoveries. He had discovered that musical
instruments strings have an infinite number of vibrations all in one string. That was not all that he had discovered
at St Petersburg as he had also discovered something more on the political standpoint. He had discovered that the
amount of wealth someone has is proportional to the amount of wealth that they had earlier in their life. This
could have also worked the other way around as, the amount of money that have in the current l=time is
proportional to the amount of money that you will make later in your life.
 Late Adulthood
After Daniel had left St Petersburg he had still maintained ties with Euler and the two of them had exchanged
their thoughts on vibrating systems. This is something like how our phones vibrate or machines vibrate when
working hard. Euler and Daniel were working machines as the used each others knowledge to benefit each other.
One pf the cases would be that Daniel would us his mathematical insights to create theories where Euler would
then come in and turn that into mathematical form on paper. Daniel was working on one his largest breakthroughs
named the Hydrodynamica where he talked about jet fluids and the force of water against an incline plain. He had
also talked about the applications to the propulsion of ships. In 1737 he had won yet another prize of the Paris
Academy for designing the best shape for a ship’s anchor but this time he was a joint winner meaning he had to
share the prize with someone else named Poleni. The article Hydrodynamica was published in the year 1738 but
by the next year his father had also published Hydraulica which was an almost identical copy from his sons work
which Daniel thought of it as an attempt of his dad trying to steal or take credit for his work as his father was also
a well established mathematician. This had further ruined the relationship between Daniel and his father. This is
also around the time when Daniel began working on mechanics and used the principle of conversion of energy
which was a follow up on Newton's work. In Daniel later life some of the last projects which Daniel had worked
on was mathematical physics which he was using to enhance some of Newton’s theories. Daniel Bernoulli had
later died at the ripe old age of 82 from old age which was actually really impressive for his times standards.
 Daniel bernoulli accomplishments
Daniel bernoulli had accomplished a lot of things in his career including the fact the he had created the
foundations of aerodynamics which is what we had built upon in order for us to be able to fly airplanes and get
closer to the 2 second 0-60 mph that is so coveted among car enthusiasts. He had also created the basic properties
of fluid flow, pressure, density, velocity, and the Bernoulli principle. He was also one of the best doctors of his
time on top of all his mathematical and physics accomplishments which he had. He had also received The Grand
Prize of Paris 10 times.
 Why I chose Daniel Bernoulli
Now I am going to be quite honest here as I think most people will not but I did not know much about Daniel
Bernoulli at first but I had to find a mathematician fast before all of them were taken so I ended up with him as
my last good option with a familiar name. Although Daniel was not my first choice I actually became extremely
interested about this guy through all of his accomplishments in his life which had led me to the point where I
ended up keeping him as my mathematician to do this project on. The main thing that had drawn me towards
choosing Daniel as my mathematician is the fact that he had discovered the foundations of aerodynamics which is
one of my largest fascinations in life because that is the thing that allows planes to fly and for super/hyper cars to
become a thing. I also found it interesting that his entire family were also famous mathematicians as well which
had helped him become as famous today as he is. He was also a really good person which is something that I had
liked about him because a lot of the time that you hear or learn about high iq people they are usually self centred
which Daniel was not due to the major contribution that he had made towards the ending of the smallpox virus.
The last and most important thing that had led me towards choosing Daniel Bernoulli as my mathematician or
keeping him as my mathematician was the fact that he was not only an absolute genius in math but he was also a
genius in almost everything else that he had done in his life such as physics, medicine, biology mechanics,
business, and more.
Thank You for listening or reading this
presentation
By: Rabbi Choudhury