Michel Rolle
| Michel Rolle | |
|---|---|
| Born |
21 April 1652 Ambert, Basse-Auvergne |
| Died | 8 November 1719 (aged 67) Paris, Kingdom of France |
| Residence | Paris, France |
| Citizenship | French |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Académie Royale des Sciences |
| Known for | Gaussian elimination, Rolle's theorem |
Michel Rolle (21 April 1652 – 8 November 1719) was a French mathematician. He is best known for Rolle's theorem (1691). He is also the co-inventor in Europe of Gaussian elimination (1690).
Rolle was born in Ambert, Basse-Auvergne. Rolle, the son of a shopkeeper, received only an elementary education. He married early and as a young man struggled to support his family on the meager wages of a transcriber for notaries and attorney. In spite of his financial problems and minimal education, Rolle studied algebra and Diophantine analysis (a branch of number theory) on this own. He moved from Ambert to Paris in 1675.
Rolle’s fortune changed dramatically in 1682 when he published an elegant solution of a difficult, unsolved problem in Diophantine analysis. The public recognition of his achievement led to a patronage under minister Louvois, a job as an elementary mathematics teacher, and eventually to a short-termed administrative post in the Ministry of War. In 1685 he joined the Académie des Sciences in a very low-level position for which he received no regular salary until 1699. Rolle was promoted to a salaried position in the Academy, a pensionnaire géometre,. This was a distinguished post because of the 70 members of the Academy, only 20 were paid. He had then already been given a pension by Jean-Baptiste Colbert after he solved one of Jacques Ozanam's problems. He remained there until he died of apoplexy in 1719.
While Rolle’s forté was always Diophantine analysis, his most important work was a book on the algebra of equations, called Traité d’algèbre, published in 1690. In that book Rolle firmly established the notation for the nth root of a polynomial, and proved a polynomial version of the theorem that today bears his name. (Rolle’s Theorem was named by Giusto Bellavitis in 1846.)
Rolle was one of the most vocal early antagonists of calculus – ironically so, because Rolle’s Theorem is essential for basic proofs in calculus. He strove intently to demonstrate that it gave erroneous results and was based on unsound reasoning. He quarreled so vehemently on the subject that the Académie des Sciences was forced to intervene on several occasions.
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