Pierre Varignon (1654–1722)
Born 1654 CE, died 1722 CE.
Pierre Varignon (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ vaʁiɲɔ̃]; 1654 – 23 December 1722) was a French mathematician. He was educated at the Jesuit College and the University of Caen, where he received his M.A. in 1682. He took Holy Orders the following year. Varignon gained his first exposure to mathematics by reading Euclid and then René Descartes' La Géométrie. He became professor of mathematics at the Collège Mazarin in Paris in 1688 and was elected to the Académie Royale des Sciences in the same year. In 1704, he held the departmental chair at Collège Mazarin and also became professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal. He was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1713 and to the Royal Society in 1718. Many of his works were published in Paris in 1725, three years after his death. His lectures at Mazarin were published in Elements de mathematique in 1731. Varignon was a friend of Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and the Bernoulli family. Varignon's principal contributions were to graphic statics and mechanics.
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