Simon Stevin | |
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| Born | 1548 Bruges,Habsburg Netherlands |
| Died | 1620 (aged 71–72) The Hague?[1] |
| Alma mater | Leiden University |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Decimal fractions[a] Delft tower experiment Intermediate value theorem Stevin's law |
Simon Stevin (Dutch:[ˈsimɔnsteːˈvɪn]; 1548–1620), sometimes calledStevinus, was aFlemishmathematician, scientist andmusic theorist.[1] He made various contributions in many areas ofscience andengineering, both theoretical and practical. He also translated various mathematical terms intoDutch, making it one of the few European languages in which the word formathematics,wiskunde (wis andkunde, i.e., "the knowledge of what is certain"), was not aloanword fromGreek but acalque viaLatin. He also replaced the wordchemie, the Dutch for chemistry, byscheikunde ("the art of separating"), made inanalogy withwiskunde.
Very little is known with certainty about Simon Stevin's life, and what we know is mostly inferred from other recorded facts.[2] The exact birth date and the date and place of his death are uncertain. It is assumed he was born inBruges, since he enrolled atLeiden University under the nameSimon Stevinus Da Brugensis (meaning "Simon Stevin from Bruges"). His name is usually written as Stevin, but some documents regarding his father use the spellingStevijn (pronunciation [ˈste:vεɪn]); this was a common spelling shift in 16th-century Dutch.[3] Simon Stevin's mother, Cathelijne (or Catelyne), was the daughter of a wealthy family fromYpres; her father Hubert was apoorter of Bruges. Cathelijne would later marry Joost Sayon, who was involved in the carpet andsilk trade and was a member of theschuttersgilde Sint-Sebastiaan. Through her marriage, Cathelijne became a member of a family ofCalvinists; it is thought that Simon Stevin was likely brought up in the Calvinist faith.[4]
It is believed that Stevin grew up in a relatively affluent environment and enjoyed a good education. He was likely educated at aLatin school in his hometown.[5]
Stevin left Bruges in 1571 apparently without a particular destination. Stevin was most likely aCalvinist since aCatholic would likely not have risen to the position of trust he later occupied withMaurice, Prince of Orange. It is assumed that he left Bruges to escape the religious persecution of Protestants by the Spanish rulers. Based on references in his work"Wisconstighe Ghedaechtenissen" (Mathematical Memoirs), it has been inferred that he must have moved first to Antwerp where he began his career as a merchant'sclerk.[6] Some biographers mention that he travelled toPrussia,Poland,Denmark,Norway andSweden and other parts ofNorthern Europe, between 1571 and 1577. It is possible that he completed these travels over a longer period of time. In 1577 Simon Stevin returned to Bruges and was appointedcity clerk by thealdermen of Bruges, a function he occupied from 1577 to 1581. He worked in the office of Jan de Brune of theBrugse Vrije, thecastellany of Bruges.
Why he had returned to Bruges in 1577 is not clear. It may have been related to the political events of that period. Bruges was the scene of intense religious conflict. Catholics and Calvinists alternately controlled the government of the city. They usually opposed each other but would occasionally collaborate in order to counteract the dictates of KingPhilip II of Spain. In 1576 a certain level of official religious tolerance was decreed. This could explain why Stevin returned to Bruges in 1577. Later the Calvinists seized power in many Flemish cities and incarcerated Catholic clerics and secular governors supportive of the Spanish rulers. Between 1578 and 1584 Bruges was ruled by Calvinists.
In 1581 Stevin again left his native Bruges and moved toLeiden where he attended the Latin school.[5] On 16 February 1583 he enrolled, under the nameSimon Stevinus Brugensis (meaning "Simon Stevin from Bruges"), atLeiden University, which had been founded byWilliam the Silent in 1575. Here he befriended William the Silent's second son and heir PrinceMaurice, the Count of Nassau.[4] Stevin is listed in the university's registers until 1590 and apparently never graduated.
Following William the Silent's assassination and Prince Maurice's assumption of his father's office, Stevin became the principal advisor and tutor of Prince Maurice. Prince Maurice asked his advice on many occasions, and made him apublic officer – at first director of the so-called "waterstaet"[7] (the government authority forpublic works, especially water management) from 1592, and laterquartermaster-general of the army of the States-General.[8] Prince Maurice also asked Stevin to found an engineering school within the University of Leiden.
Stevin moved toThe Hague where he bought a house in 1612. He married in 1610 or 1614 and had four children. It is known that he left awidow with two children at his death in Leiden or The Hague in 1620.[4]
Stevin is responsible for many discoveries and inventions. Stevin wrote numerous bestselling books, and he was a pioneer of the development and the practical application of (engineering related) science such asmathematics,physics and applied science likehydraulic engineering andsurveying. He was thought to have invented thedecimal fractions until the middle of the 20th century, when researchers discovered that decimal fractions had been previously introduced by the medieval Islamic scholaral-Uqlidisi in a book written in 952. Moreover, a systematic development of decimal fractions was given well before Stevin in the bookMiftah al-Hisab written in 1427 byAl-Kashi.
His contemporaries were most struck by his invention of a so-calledland yacht, a carriage with sails, of which a model was preserved inScheveningen until 1802. The carriage itself had been lost long before. Around the year 1600 Stevin, withPrince Maurice of Orange and twenty-six others, used the carriage on the beach betweenScheveningen andPetten. The carriage was propelled solely by the force of wind and acquired a speed which exceeded that of horses.[7]
Stevin's work in thewaterstaet involved improvements to thesluices andspillways to controlflooding, exercises inhydraulic engineering.Windmills were already in use to pump the water out but inVan de Molens (On mills), he suggested improvements including ideas that the wheels should move slowly with a better system for meshing of thegear teeth. These improved threefold the efficiency of the windmills used in pumping water out of thepolders.[9] He received apatent on his innovation in 1586.[8]
Stevin's aim was to bring about a second age ofwisdom, in which mankind would have recovered all of its earlier knowledge. He deduced that the language spoken in this age would have to be Dutch, because, as he showedempirically, in that language, more concepts could be indicated withmonosyllabic words than in any of the (European) languages he had compared it with.[7] This was one of the reasons why he wrote all of his works in Dutch and left the translation of them for others to do. The other reason was that he wanted his works to be practically useful to people who had not mastered the common scientific language of the time, Latin. Thanks to Simon Stevin theDutch language got its proper scientific vocabulary such as "wiskunde" ("kunst van het gewisse of zekere" the art of what is known or what is certain) formathematics, "natuurkunde" (the "art of nature") forphysics, "scheikunde" (the "art of separation") forchemistry, "sterrenkunde" (the "art of stars") forastronomy, "meetkunde" (the "art of measuring") forgeometry.
Stevin was the first to show how to model regular and semiregularpolyhedra by delineating their frames in a plane. He also distinguished stable from unstable equilibria.[7]
Stevin contributed totrigonometry with his book,De Driehouckhandel.
InThe First Book of the Elements of the Art of Weighing, The second part: Of the propositions [The Properties of Oblique Weights], Page 41, Theorem XI, Proposition XIX,[10] he derived the condition for the balance of forces oninclined planes using a diagram with a "wreath" containing evenly spaced round masses resting on the planes of a triangular prism (see the illustration on the side). He concluded that the weights required were proportional to the lengths of the sides on which they rested assuming the third side was horizontal and that the effect of a weight was reduced in a similar manner. It is implicit that the reduction factor is the height of the triangle divided by the side (thesine of the angle of the side with respect to the horizontal). The proof diagram of this concept is known as the "Epitaph of Stevinus". As noted byE. J. Dijksterhuis, Stevin's proof of the equilibrium on an inclined plane can be faulted for usingperpetual motion to imply areductio ad absurdum. Dijksterhuis says Stevin "intuitively made use of the principle ofconservation of energy ... long before it was formulated explicitly".[2]: 54
He demonstrated the resolution of forces beforePierre Varignon, which had not been remarked previously, even though it is a simple consequence of the law of their composition.[7]
Stevin discovered thehydrostatic paradox, which states that the pressure in a liquid is independent of the shape of the vessel and the area of the base, but depends solely on its height.[7]
He also gave the measure for the pressure on any given portion of the side of a vessel.[7]
He was the first to explain thetides using theattraction of the moon.[7]
In 1586, hedemonstrated that two objects of different weight fall with the same acceleration.[11][12]
The first mention of equal temperament related to thetwelfth root of two in the West appeared in Simon Stevin's unfinished manuscriptVan de Spiegheling der singconst(ca 1605) published posthumously three hundred years later in 1884;[13] however, due to insufficient accuracy of his calculation, many of the numbers (for string length) he obtained were off by one or two units from the correct values.[14] He appears to have been inspired by the writings of the Italianlutenist and musical theoristVincenzo Galilei (father ofGalileo Galilei), a onetime pupil ofGioseffo Zarlino.
Double-entry bookkeeping may have been known to Stevin, as he was a clerk inAntwerp in his younger years, either practically or via the medium of the works of Italian authors such asLuca Pacioli andGerolamo Cardano. However, Stevin was the first to recommend the use of impersonalaccounts in the national household. He brought it into practice for Prince Maurice, and recommended it to the French statesmanSully.[15][7]
Stevin wrote a 35-pagebooklet calledDe Thiende ("the art of tenths"), first published in Dutch in 1585 and translated into French asLa Disme. The full title of the English translation wasDecimal arithmetic: Teaching how to perform all computations whatsoever by whole numbers withoutfractions, by the four principles of common arithmetic: namely,addition,subtraction,multiplication, anddivision. The concepts referred to in the booklet includedunit fractions andEgyptian fractions.Muslim mathematicians were the first to utilizedecimals instead of fractions on a large scale.Al-Kashi's book,Key to Arithmetic, was written at the beginning of the 15th century and was the stimulus for the systematic application of decimals to whole numbers and fractions thereof.[16][17] But nobody established their daily use before Stevin. He felt that this innovation was so significant, that he declared the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures and weights to be merely a question of time.[18][7]
His notation is rather unwieldy. Thepoint separating theintegers from the decimal fractions seems to be the invention ofBartholomaeus Pitiscus, in whosetrigonometrical tables (1612) it occurs, and it was accepted byJohn Napier in hislogarithmic papers (1614 and 1619).[7]
| Number | 184.54290 |
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| Simon Stevin's notation | 184⓪5①4②2③9④0 |
Stevin printed little circles around the exponents of the different powers of one-tenth. That Stevin intended these encircled numerals to denote mere exponents is clear from the fact that he employed the same symbol for powers ofalgebraic quantities. He did not avoid fractional exponents; only negative exponents do not appear in his work.[7]
Stevin wrote on other scientific subjects – for instance optics, geography, astronomy – and a number of his writings were translated into Latin by W. Snellius (Willebrord Snell). There are two complete editions in French of his works, both printed in Leiden, one in 1608, the other in 1634.[7]
Stevin wrote hisArithmetic in 1594. The work brought to the western world for the first time a general solution of thequadratic equation, originally documented nearly a millennium previously byBrahmagupta in India.
According toVan der Waerden, Stevin eliminated "the classical restriction of 'numbers' to integers (Euclid) or to rational fractions (Diophantos)...the real numbers formed a continuum. His general notion of a real number was accepted,tacitly or explicitly, by all later scientists".[19] A recent study attributes a greater role to Stevin in developing thereal numbers than has been acknowledged byWeierstrass's followers.[20] Stevin proved theintermediate value theorem for polynomials, anticipatingCauchy's proof thereof. Stevin uses adivide and conquer procedure, subdividing the interval into ten equal parts.[21] Stevin's decimals were the inspiration forIsaac Newton's work oninfinite series.[22]
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Stevin thought theDutch language to be excellent for scientific writing, and he translated many of the mathematical terms to Dutch. As a result, Dutch is one of the few Western European languages that have many mathematical terms that do not stem from Greek or Latin. This includes the very namewiskunde (mathematics).
His eye for the importance of having the scientific language be the same as the language of the craftsman may show from the dedication of his bookDe Thiende ('The Disme' or 'The Tenth'): 'Simon Stevin wishes the stargazers, surveyors, carpet measurers, body measurers in general, coin measurers and tradespeople good luck.' Further on in the same pamphlet, he writes: "[this text] teaches us all calculations that are needed by the people without using fractions. One can reduce all operations to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with integers."
Some of the words he invented evolved: 'aftrekken' (subtract) and 'delen' (divide) stayed the same, but over time 'menigvuldigen' became 'vermenigvuldigen' (multiply, the added 'ver' emphasizes the fact it is an action). 'Vergaderen' (gathering) became 'optellen' (add lit.count up).
Another example is the Dutch word for diameter: 'middellijn', lit.: line through the middle.
The word 'zomenigmaal' (quotient lit. 'that many times') has been replaced by 'quotiënt' in modern-day Dutch.
Other terms did not make it into modern day mathematical Dutch, like 'teerling' (die, although still being used in the meaning as die), instead of cube.
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Following his life, Belgium and the city of Bruges have continued to name places, statues and other topics in honor of Stevin
Amongst others, he published:
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stevinus, Simon".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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