Pierre Varignon

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Pierre Varignon

Pierre Varignon (1654, Caen – December 23, 1722, Paris) was a French mathematician.

Pierre Varignon was educated at the Jesuit College in Caen. After further studies at the University of Caen he received his M.A. in 1682. He was ordained a Catholic priest the following year.

Varignon gained his first exposure to mathematics by reading Euclid. After reading Descartes' La Géométrie he devoted himself to the mathematical sciences. Varignon became professor of mathematics at the Collège Mazarin in Paris in 1688 and was elected to the Académie Royale des Sciences in the same year. In 1704 he held the departmental chair at Collège Mazarin and also became professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal. He was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1713 and to the Royal Society in 1718. Many of his works were published in Paris in 1725, three years after his death. His lectures at Mazarin were published in Eléments de mathématiques in 1731.

Varignon was a friend of Newton, Leibniz, and the Bernoullis. Varignon's principal contributions were to graphic statics and mechanics. Except for l'Hospital, Varignon was the earliest and strongest French advocate of differential calculus. He recognized the importance of a test for the convergence of series, but analytical difficulties prevented his success. Nevertheless, he simplified the proofs of many propositions in mechanics, adapted Leibnitz's calculus to the inertial mechanics of Newton's Principia, and treated mechanics in terms of the composition of forces in Projet d'une nouvelle mécanique in 1687. Among Varignon's other works was a 1699 publication concerning the application of differential calculus to fluid flow and to water clocks. In 1702 he applied calculus to spring-driven clocks.