Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Jean le Rond d'Alembert (16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie.

• Rien n'est plus incontestable que l'existence de nos sensations; ...
  • Nothing is more incontestable than the existence of our sensations; ...
    • in the Discours préliminaire de l’Encyclopédie.

• D'Alembert was always surrounded by controversy. … he was the lightning rod which drew sparks from all the foes of the philosophes. … Unfortunately he carried this... pugnacity into his scientific research and once he had entered a controversy, he argued his cause with vigour and stubbornness. He closed his mind to the possibility that he might be wrong...
  • Thomas L. Hankins (1990). Jean D'Alembert: Science and the Enlightenment. Taylor & Francis. p. 236. ISBN 2881243991. 

• Historically, Jean d’Alembert precedes Augustin-Louis Cauchy. However, in the context of functional equations, it seems more natural to consider his contributions after Cauchy. Jean d’Alembert was a man of many names. The illegitimate son of an army officer, Louis-Camus Destouches, and a writer, Claudine Guérin de Tencin, he was born in Paris in 1717, while his father was abroad. Shortly after his birth, his mother abandoned him at the church of Saint-Jean-le-Rond. Following tradition, he was named Jean le Rond after the church, and placed in an orphanage. Upon the return of his father, he was removed from the orphanage, and placed with Mme. Rousseau, the wife of a glazier. Although Destouches continued to support his son financially, he chose not to publicly acknowledge his son. In 1738, Jean le Rond entered law school, where he was registered under the name Daremberg. He later changed this name to d’Alembert.
  • Christopher G. Small (3 April 2007). Functional Equations and How to Solve Them. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-0-387-48901-8.