Jakob Bernoulli

Born in Basel, Switzerland in 1654, Jakob Bernoulli met Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke on a trip to England in 1676, after which he devoted his life to science and mathematics. He lectured at the University of Basel[?] from 1682, becoming Professor of Mathematics in 1687.

He corresponded with Gottfried Leibniz, and thus learnt calculus, and collaborated with his brother Johann. His early papers on transcendental curves[?] (1696) and isoperimetry[?] (1700, 1701) are early examples of its application.

His masterwork was Ars Conjectandi of 1713, a groundbreaking work on probability theory. The terms Bernoulli trial, Bernoulli Theorem, and Bernoulli Numbers result from this work, and are named after him.