Leonard Euler: The return to St. Petersburg and the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts
1766 to 1783

by Ronald S. Calinger

March 23, 2017, 8 to 9:30 p.m.

Contemporary mathematicians called him” Euler the Great.” Legendary by his return in 1766 to St Petersburg, the only person better known than Euler in Europe was Voltaire. History reveals that his academic era in Berlin from 1741 to 1766 resulted in over a hundred computational discoveries for differential and integral calculus, his research is exemplified. 

This lecture concentrates on his major discovery in mechanics at age 73.  Catherine the Great recruited him and acknowledged his immeasurable success. The lecture acknowledges selected contribution of the Euler circle; a group of ten that included his son Johann Albrecht, Nicholas Fuss and Anders Lexell. To be noted is his letters to a German Princess. The lecture closes with his election, one of the first Europeans, to the new American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781.                                

The Science College is part of Concordia University.  It offers gifted science undergraduates the opportunity to complement their regular curriculum with interdisciplinary training and early introduction to the methods of scientific research.