Joseph Lagrange was born on January 25, 1736 in the city of Turin (located in northern Italy) to an extremely wealthy family. Brought up with the best education available, Lagrange began to find a massive interest in mathematics, primarily influenced by the works of Edmund Halley. Determining to go into a life a math and sciences at the age of seventeen, Lagrange managed to turn himself into a formidable mathematician in only a year, and was soon teaching classes at nearby schools.
By 1754 Lagrange was delving into advanced mathematics, and began making contact with mathematician Leonhard Euler. Both Euler and Lagrange made significant discoveries in variational calculus within close proximity of each other, and even had a dispute over who discovered it first. These discoveries ultimately culminated in Lagrange’s establishment of the Turin Academy of Sciences, in which at the age of only twenty-two Lagrange began critiquing Newton’s mathematics, recording his discoveries in variational calculus, and wrote volumes on new areas of mathematics and science.
In 1766, after years of being in contact with King Frederick of Prussia, Joseph Lagrange was finally convinced to spend his next twenty years of life being Prussia’s resident mathematician. Frederick won Lagrange over by calling him the “greatest mathematician in Europe”. Lagrange spent his time in Prussia working as hard as he ever had. Every day Lagrange set himself a goal, and would spend nearly every hour he was awake writing about various subject matters pertaining to mathematics. During this time Lagrange also made some of his most notable discoveries in the area of astronomy. Lagrange was an astronomy theorist however, unlike an observational astronomer he made no discoveries in viewing the heavens. Instead his discoveries were made with the mathematical laws that govern the universe. Lagrange discovered a significant amount on the orbits of planets and comets, and why they behave the way they do. His ability to calculate the perturbations of comets and development of formulas for these perturbations has been the framework for future work on the topic. While making these discoveries, Lagrange worked himself to a point close to nervous breakdowns, and soon learned the importance of pacing himself, in order to avoid going completely insane. The death of his first wife didn’t help either, and his stay in Prussia was becoming increasingly stressful.
King Frederick died in 1786, and Lagrange saw this as an excellent opportunity to get out of Prussia, which he found to be an extremely stressful environment. This time the king of France, Louis XVI, wanted him. Lagrange’s contribution to the study of astronomy during this tame came in three papers he wrote on the methods of interpolation, which is a method of determining the value of a point based on the values of other points around it. Unfortunately, shortly after Lagrange came to France revolution began to stir up and Lagrange’s comfortable work for Louis XVI was short lived. Although Lagrange constantly feared violence from the revolution, no individual actually wanted him dead, and no threats were made against him. In fact, Lagrange was mostly rewarded for his continued service, becoming a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and was appointed a professor at one of the French Universities. As Lagrange delved into old age, he was praised as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, being rewarded constantly for his work by the French and Italian government. Joseph Lagrange died in Paris, France in 1813, working on revisions to his mathematical formulas up until the day he died.
Lagrange’s influence on the world was massive, primarily in the areas of mathematics which delved significantly into astronomy. While not necessarily planning on creating mathematical formulas for the study of the universe, Lagrange’s formulas ultimately became very useful in various areas of astronomy, such as the orbits of objects and their locations. Ultimately, Lagrange was a mathematical genius, on par with Euler, Halley, and even Newton. In fact, Lagrange even found some fundamental flaws with some of Newton’s formulas, and worked tirelessly to perfect them, along with his own work. Lagrange’s achievements are massive, and have been expanded on throughout the past centuries to help expand the human understanding of the universe.
