Remarkable Physicists From Galileo to Yukawa

Ioan James

Mathematical Institute, Oxford

Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782)

The remarkable Bernoulli family, originally from Antwerp, left the Spanish Netherlands in the late
sixteenth century to escape the persecutionof Protestants and settled in Basel, where they married into
the merchant class. Generation after generation they produced remarkable mathematicians, beginning
with the brothers Jakob and Johann. It is Johann’s irascible son, the polymath Daniel, who is profiled
here, although we could wish to know much more about him. He was arguably the ablest Bernoulli of
them all; he contributed ideas and insights that not only shaped eighteenthcentury science but also
presaged future discoveries. Like Newton, he was even more famous as a physicist than as a
mathematician, but he flourished at a time when the two subjects were closely inter-related.Johann
Bernoulli was professor of mathematics at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands; his wife
Dorothea was the daughter of the patrician Daniel Faulkner. Their second son Daniel, the subject of this
pro- file, was born on February 8, 1700. Five years later Johann was appointed to replace his elder
brother Jakob as professor of mathematics at the University of Basel and so, with his family, he returned
to the main base of the Bernoulli clan. The brothers Jakob and Johann were involved in several quarrels.
The most notable of these started with misunderstandings on both sides, but quickly exploded into a
public dispute, in which each opponent challenged the other, found mistakes in the work of the other
and expressed his low opinion of the work of the other, not only in private letters but also in print.In
1699 both brothers were elected to the Paris Academy on condition that they would cease their
disputes. The young Daniel was a precocious student who studied logic and philosophy at the university,
earning a master’s degree at the age of sixteen. At the same time his father Johann and elder brother
Nikolaus helped him to learn some mathematics. However, as a career for his son Johann first tried to
interest him in commerce and then, when that was a failure, grudgingly allowed him to study medicine,
first in Basel, then in Heidelberg and then in Strasbourg, before returning to Basel. Daniel Bernoulli
graduated from the University of Basel in 1721 by writing a dissertation on the mechanicsof respiration.
Having tried without success to obtain a teaching position in Switzerland (the final decision among
qualified candidates was decided by lot, and Daniel was unlucky), he followed in his brother’s footsteps
by moving to Venice. There he gained some experience of practical medicine and was going on to
continue his medical studies in Padua when he was taken seriously ill. At the same time he was pursuing
research in mathematics and the result of this was his important Exercitationes quaedam mathematicae
(Mathematical Exercises), published in Venice in 1724. In this he discussed a wide variety of scientific
subjects, including probability and fluid dynamics. This attracted a great deal of attention and on the
strength of it he was offered a teaching position at the St Petersburg Academy. Prize competitions were
an important feature of scientific life at least until the end of the nineteenth century. Originally they
were a way of seeking solutions to specific problems. They usually emanated from the royal academies,
notably those in Berlin and Paris, and, although they provided an opportunity for an unknown young
researcher, it was quite normal for the well-established to enter. In the case of the Paris Academy, for
example, prizes were awarded for memoirs addressing specific problems in the mathematical and
physical sciences. Among the rules of procedure, each entry had to be under a pseudonym or motto,
accompanied by a sealed envelope similarly inscribed containing the name of the author, although this
could often be guessed by the judges. The Bernoullis were often successful in these competitions. In
1725 Daniel, who had returned to Basel, won the prize (later he was to win nine more) and then took up
his appointment in St Petersburg, accompanied by his brother Nikolaus. Although he was officially a
professor of mathematics, he worked in many different fields. For example, his medical publications
include important papers on muscular contraction and the optic nerve, and his writings on physics
include a paper on oscillation. In mathematics he was particularly interested in probability and statistics.
He corresponded with d’Alembert about the correct way to assess the value of risky medical procedures
for patients of various ages. He demonstrated the importance of probability for economics, and its
relevance to gambling. Unfortunately the harsh climate of the Russian capital proved too much for his
brother, who died in 1726 of a ‘hectic fever’. However, the next year Daniel’s young friend and
compatriot Leonhard Euler came out to join him in St Petersburg. Daniel Bernoulli provided Euler with
accommodation, and they regularly took meals together. The two men often worked together during the
next six years, Daniel’s most creative period. Daniel’s research interests at this stage lay mainly in
mechanics, physics and particularly hydrodynamics. Although his work in St Petersburg was highly
successful, he began to look for an opportunity to return to Basel. The only vacancy at the university was
a chair in anatomy and botany. Although these were not subjects he was much interested in, he took the
position. Accompanied by his shy younger brother, named Johann after their father, Daniel went to Basel
via Danzig and Hamburg, then across the Netherlands to Paris, where he was given a particularly warm
reception. Daniel continued to win the prize competitions of the Paris Academy; he won ten altogether,
on subjects as various as astronomy, gravity, tides,magnetism, ocean currents and the behaviour of ships
at sea. In 1734, when the subject was planetary orbits, father and son had separately entered their work
and when they were successful they were told that they could sharethe prize, which was larger than
usual because there had been no award theprevious time one was offered. As a result a bitter dispute
arose between them. In this case Johann had behaved badly, but he was often involved in priority
disputes in which he had a valid case, particularly with his brother Jakob. Several of the discoveries to
which the name Bernoulli is attached were Johann’s but it was Jakob who got the credit. Daniel
Bernoulli’s masterpiece, the seminal Hydrodynamica, sive de viribus et motibus fluidorum commentarii
(Hydrodynamics, or Commentaries on the Forces and Motions of Fluids) was published in 1738, although
it was largely completed in St Petersburg. This confirmed his reputation as one of the leading scientists of
his time. Although he missed finding the basic partial differential equations of hydrodynamics, the
Hydrodynamica contained other important advances. One is the principle, to which the name of
Bernoulli is attached, that the pressure of a fluid diminishes as its velocity increases. This is fundamental
to aerodynamics and much other modern industrial design. Even more important is his explanation of
the mechanics of gases, which he regarded as composed of fast and randoml moving particles. He
established the theory underlying Boyle’s law, which had been deduced experimentally, and realized that
the pressure of a gas is in direct proportion to its temperature. Altogether he may be said to have laid
the foundations of the modern kinetic theory of gases. Unfortunately publication of the Hydrodynamica
was delayed, leaving his claim to priority open to attack, and the one to take advantage of this was his
own father, who rather resented his son’s success. They were already on bad terms because father and
son took different sides in the priority dispute between the followers of Leibniz and Newton regarding
which of them invented the differential and integral calculus. Johann was an ardent disciple of Leibniz
while Daniel, who was more of a physicist, adhered to the side of Newton. Johann attempted a blatant
priority theft by publishing a book on hydrodynamics in 1743 and dating it 1732. Daniel was
understandably upset and wrote to Euler ‘Of my entire Hydrodynamica not one iota of which do I in fact
owe to my father, I am all at once robbed completely and lose thus in one moment the fruits of the work
of ten years. All propositions are taken from my Hydrodynamica, and then my father calls his writings
“Hydraulics, now for the first time disclosed, 1732”, since my Hydrodynamica was printed only in 1738.’
The situation was not quite as clear cut as Daniel claimed, but at any rate Johann Bernoulli’s deception
backfired. His reputation was so tarnished by the episode that he did not even receive credit for the
parts of the work which were original. In 1737 Daniel Bernoulli had delivered a historic lecture about the
work done by the action of the heart. Six years later he was appointed professor of physiology at Basel, a
field he much preferred to botany. Finally, in 1760 he obtained the chair of natural philosophy, or
mathematical physics, which best matched his scientific interests. He applied himself to solving,with the
aid of the new analysis, difficult mechanical problems that had defeated the more geometrical methods
of Newton and Huygens. Although it would be going too far to say that he enunciated for the first time
the principle of the conservation of energy, perhaps the most useful idea in all of science, he came closer
to this than did anyone else until the 1840s. It was in the field of physics that he most brilliantly applied
his mathematical genius. He is regarded as one of the main pioneers of that branch of science later
known as mathematical physics.Daniel Bernoulli also applied his mathematical insights to natural
phenomena. While studying the nature of sound, for example, he discovered distinct mathematical
regularities in the shape of sound waves and so was able to calculate the natural frequencies of a variety
of musical instruments. His seminal work in the field of acoustics directly presaged such great discoveries
of nineteenth-century mathematics as the harmonic analysis of Fourier. What he believed intuitively,
namely that a sound can be represented as a trigonometric function, Fourier was able to demonstrate
mathematically. Daniel Bernoulli, who was an immensely popular lecturer, especially on experimental
physics, continued as professor of natural philosophy until his retirement in 1776. Five years later he died
in Basel on March 17, 1782, at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in the Peterskirche. He regularly
corresponded with other leading scientists of the period. This was the age of the scientific society and
academy; Daniel Bernoulli was a member of many of the most important, including those of Bologna
(1724), St Petersburg (1730), Berlin (1747), Paris (1748), London (1750), Bern (1762), Turin (1764), Zurich
¨(1764) and Mannheim (1767). In contrast to the other physicists profiled in this chapter, we really know
very little about his personal life; we do not even know whether he was married. Of the sons of Johann,
Daniel’s younger brother was also an able mathematician, who was awarded four prizes by the Paris
Academy, but, although he lived to old age, a frail constitution limited his scientific output. Historians of
science are preparing an edition of the Bernoulli papers and, when that is complete, we shall know much
more about the relationships of members of the family with each other and with other scientists of the
period.