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Daniel Bernoulli

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Mathematician

The Resume

    (February 8, 1700-March 27, 1782)
    Born in Groningen, Netherlands
    Mathematician and physicist
    Held chairs in botany (1732), physiology (1743), and physics (1750) at the University of Basel
    Wrote 'Hydrodynamica' (1738)
    Namesake for Bernoulli's Principle that the velocity and static pressure of a fluid are inversely related (increasing the velocity decreases the pressure)

Why he might be annoying:

    He studied medicine at the insistence of his father, who argued that the financial rewards for mathematicians were inadequate.
    Although he was the first to observe Bernoulli's principle, the actual mathematic equations governing it were derived by Leonhard Euler.
    He discovered that if you punctured the wall of a pipe with an open-ended straw, the height of fluid in the straw directly correlated with the fluid pressure in the pipe. As a result, for a century and a half physicians would measure blood pressure by jabbing sharpened glass tubes into their patients' arteries.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He earned a bachelors degree at age 15, a masters degree at 16.
    He won the Grand Prize of the Academy of Paris ten times, for work in fields including astronomy, gravitation, magnetism, ocean currents and tides, and the behavior of ships at sea.
    In economics, he contributed the idea that the perceived value of gaining money decreases with the amount of money one already has. (Essentially, a chance to gain $1,000 is more attractive to someone worth $10,000 than to someone worth $50,000.)
    His father Johann plagiarized sections of 'Hydrodynamica,' then backdated his own book to make it look as if he had published first.

Credit: C. Fishel


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Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying