CHEBICHEV, PAFNUTIY LVOVICH (1821-1894)

This article appears in Volume V06, Page 20 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHA-CHR

CHEBICHEV, PAFNUTIY LVOVICH (1821-1894) ,

Russian

RUSSIAN

mathematician, was born at Borovsk on the 26th of May 1821. He was educated at the university of Moscow, and in 1859 became professor of mathematics in the university of St Peters-burg, a position from which he retired in 1880. He was chosen a correspondent of the Institute of France in 186o, and succeeded to the high honour of associe etranger in 1874. He was also a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. After N. I. Lobachevskiy he probably ranks as the most distinguished mathematician

Russia

RUSSIA
RUSSIA (Rossiya)

has produced. In 1841 he published a valuable

paper

PAPER
PAPER (Fr. papier, from Lat. papyrus)

, " Sur la convergence de la serie de Taylor," in Crelle's

Journal

JOURNAL
JOURNAL (through Fr. from late Lat. diurnalis, daily)

. His best-known papers, however, deal with prime numbers; in one of these ("Sur les nombres premiers," 185o) he established the existence of limits within which must be comprised the sum of the logarithms of the primes inferior to a given number. Another question to which he devoted much attention was that of obtaining rectilinear motion by linkage. The parallel motion known by his name is a three-bar linkage, which gives a very close approximation to exact rectilinear motion, but in spite of all his efforts he failed to devise one that produced absolutely true rectilinear motion. At last, indeed, he came to the conclusion that to do so was impossible, and in that conviction set to

work

WORK

to find a rigorous proof of the impossibility. While he was engaged on this task the desired linkage, which moved the highest admiration of J. J. Sylvester, was discovered and exhibited to him by one of his pupils, named Lipkin, who, however, it was afterwards found, had been anticipated by A. Peaucellier. Chebichev further constructed an

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

for drawing large circles, and an arithmetical

machine

with continuous motion. His mathematical writings, which account for some

forty

FORTY

entries in the Royal Society's catalogue of scientific papers, cover a wide range of subjects, such as the theory of probabilities, quadratic forms, theory of integrals, gearings, the construction of geographical maps, &c. He also published a Traite de la theorie des nombres. He died at St

Petersburg

PETERSBURG

on the 8th of December 1894.

End of Article: CHEBICHEV, PAFNUTIY LVOVICH (1821-1894)

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/CHA_CHR/CHEBICHEV_PAFNUTIY_LVOVICH_182.html">
CHEBICHEV, PAFNUTIY LVOVICH (1821-1894)
</a>

(Previous)
CHEATING

(Next)
CHEBOYGAN

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email