Lagrange, “Working Mathematician” on Music Considered as a Source for Science

Jean Dhombres

Chapter 4 in Mathematics and Music, 2002, pp 65-78 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Permanent secretary to the First class of the French National Institute, which was then a revolutionary replacement for the Academy of Science, Jean-Baptiste Delambre has left an interesting and rather personal portrait of Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813). In the tradition of academic life, the purpose of such an account written in 1813, was less to explain the scientific achievements of a man, than to portray what a great scientist should be1. Delambre then goes as far as telling us a socially bad story about Lagrange. And it concerns Lagrange’s taste for music, or better said his misuse of music.

Keywords: Academic Life; Teenth Century; Tedious Work; French National Institute; Permanent Secretary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-662-04927-3_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783662049273

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-04927-3_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().