Abraham de Moivre
| Abraham de Moivre | |
|---|---|
Abraham de Moivre
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| Born | 26 May 1667 Vitry-le-François, Champagne, France |
| Died | 27 November 1754 (aged 87) London, England |
| Residence | England |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Alma mater |
Academy of Saumur Collège d'Harcourt |
| Academic advisors | Jacques Ozanam |
| Known for |
De Moivre's formula Theorem of de Moivre–Laplace |
| Influences | Isaac Newton |
Abraham de Moivre (French pronunciation: [abʁaam də mwavʁ]; 26 May 1667 – 27 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, one of those that link complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling. Even though he faced religious persecution he remained a "steadfast Christian" throughout his life. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux.
De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of the golden ratio φ to the nth Fibonacci number. He also was the first to postulate the central limit theorem, a cornerstone of probability theory.
Abraham de Moivre was born in Vitry-le-François in Champagne on May 26, 1667. His father, Daniel de Moivre, was a surgeon who believed in the value of education. Though Abraham de Moivre's parents were Protestant, he first attended Christian Brothers' Catholic school in Vitry, which was unusually tolerant given religious tensions in France at the time. When he was eleven, his parents sent him to the Protestant Academy at Sedan, where he spent four years studying Greek under Jacques du Rondel. The Protestant Academy of Sedan had been founded in 1579 at the initiative of Françoise de Bourbon, the widow of Henri-Robert de la Marck.
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