ABSTRACT
The Bernoullis came of a Dutch Protestant family, which had sought religious freedom in Switzerland. The oldest, and one of the most distinguished of the numerous mathematicians which the family produced was Jakob Bernoulli, whose work forms a connecting link between the mathematics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the eighteenth century pure mathematics was enriched by the development of the resources of the infinitesimal calculus; mechanics was wrought into a systematic body of theory. The development of both pure and applied mathematics during the eighteenth century was principally the work of a few Continental mathematicians who showed equal genius in either branch. The genius of the Bernoullis extended to yet a third generation; but only Jakob, Johann, and Daniel belong to the front rank of mathematicians. Leonhard Euler was succeeded as mathematical director of the Berlin Academy by Joseph Louis Lagrange, the greatest mathematician of his period.
