Why a Bernoulli Edition?

The Bernoulli Family

Works and correspondence

The scientific legacy

The Edition (about us)

Links

Contacts:
P. Radelet : General Editor
F. Nagel : Editor responsible for Correspondence
q B. Gaino : Secretary

JOHANN II (1710–1790)

The quietest and shiest of the three sons of Johann I and although it is clear from what has come down from him that, in native ability, he need not yield to either of his brothers, he is the one with the smallest quantity of published work. One of the explanations for the "laziness" attributed to him, was the fact that unlike Daniel he was not blessed with a robust constitution: but by careful conservation of his resources he enjoyed a long and fruitful life.

While still very young he qualified Licencié in Jurisprudence in 1728, and received the Doctorate in 1732. The work in Mathematics and Physics he undertook in those years we know from the essays he submitted in the competition for the prize of the Paris Academy—which he was awarded four times. Probably the most important and far-reaching was that for 1736 (when he was 26 years old) entitled Recherches physiques et geometriques sur la question: Comment se fait la propagation de la lumière?

Herein appears for the first time the concept of "transverse vibrations of the ether" which receives attention in Maxwell's Comprehensive Theory in the following century. This feature of Johann's work is noted in Whittaker's History of the Theories of the Æther and Electricity.

When Johann I retired from his position as Professor of Mathematics in Basel in 1743, Johann II was appointed to succeed him. It appears he stayed in that position until the end in 1790. It was he who supervised the publication of the Opera Omnia of Johann I in four volumes under the editorship of G. Cramer (Geneva, 1742).

Although he published little, it is evident that he maintained a lively correspondence with his fellow mathematicians and friends throughout Europe, of which over 1,000 items survive. This correspondence is significant for the history of the period—particularly the important exchanges between Johann and both Maupertuis and Voltaire as well as with La Condamine. As a result of the bitterness of the controversy between Maupertuis and Voltaire, Maupertuis resigned from the Presidency of the Berlin Academy (1756) and decided to leave the city. Johann welcomed him to Basel and extended to him the hospitality of his house; it was there that Maupertuis died in 1759.

Ó Mathúna, 1999