Jacob Bernoulli

Life & Legacy

Jacob Bernoulli (6 January 1655 [O.S. 27 December 1654] – 16 August 1705) was a Swiss mathematician. He sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy and was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus, to which he made numerous contributions. A member of the Bernoulli family, he, along with his brother Johann, was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.
Bernoulli's given name is also sometimes given as Jakob (which was his name in German). He was also known as James in English or Jacques in French. When publishing in Latin, as he often did, his name was given as Jacobus Bernoullius. To distinguish him from his relative Jakob II Bernoulli, Bernoulli is sometimes given the generational suffix I, as in Jacob I Bernoulli.