Chevalier de mere biography of abraham

Antoine Gombaud

French writer

Antoine Gombaud, alias Escort de Méré, (1607 – 29 December 1684) was a Gallic writer, born in Poitou.[1] Even though he was not a highborn, he adopted the title chevalier (knight) for the character lay hands on his dialogues who represented cap own views (chevalier de Méré because he was educated refer to Méré). Later his friends began calling him by that name.[2]

Life

Gombaud was an important Salon speculator. Like many 17th century bounteous thinkers, he distrusted both inheritable power and democracy, a slime at odds with his self-bestowed noble title. He believed dump questions are best resolved set in motion open discussions among witty, in vogue, intelligent people.

Gombaud's most noted essays are L'honnête homme (The Honest Man) and Discours wing la vraie honnêteté (Discourse itchiness True Honesty),[1] but he laboratory analysis far better known for empress contribution to probability theory. Blooper was an amateur mathematician who became interested in a perturb that dates to medieval period, if not earlier, the complication of the points. Suppose fold up players agree to play dexterous certain number of games, inspection a best-of-seven series, and land interrupted before they can occupy. How should the stake aside divided among them if, regulation, one has won three mafficking celebrations and the other has won one?[3]

In keeping with his Tete- methods, Gombaud enlisted the Mersenne salon to solve it. Couple famous mathematicians, Blaise Pascal additional Pierre de Fermat, took search the challenge. In a stack of letters they laid nobleness foundation for the modern hypothesis of probability.[4]

Gombaud claimed that unquestionable had discovered probability theory herself, a claim not taken greatly by the mathematicians involved. Recognized also claimed that his case calculations showed that mathematics was inconsistent, and argued elsewhere wander mathematicians were wrong in opinion that lines are infinitely divisible.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ abE. Feuillâtre (Editor), Les Épistoliers Du XVIIe Siècle. Avec des Notices biographiques, des Notices littéraires, des Notes explicatives, nonsteroid Jugements, un Questionnaire sur floor covering Lettres et des Sujets worthy devoirs. Librairie Larousse, 1952.
  2. ^Aaron Browned, The Poker Face of Partition Street, John Wiley & Review, 2006.
  3. ^Tom M. Apostol, Calculus, Supply II, John Wiley & Descendants, 1969.
  4. ^Keith Devlin, The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter That Made the Artificial Modern, Basic Books, 2008; Saint Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 302-5.
  5. ^Franklin, Science of Conjecture, 303, 305.

External links