Abraham de Moivre
Abraham de Moivre FRS (French pronunciation: [abʁaam də mwavʁ]; 26 May 1667 – 27 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory.
Abraham de Moivre | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 May 1667 Vitry-le-François, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 27 November 1754 (aged 87) London, England |
| Alma mater | Academy of Saumur Collège d'Harcourt |
| Known for | De Moivre's formula De Moivre's law De Moivre's martingale De Moivre–Laplace theorem Inclusion–exclusion principle Generating function |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
He moved to England at a young age due to the religious persecution of Huguenots in France which reached a climax in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling. Among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of the editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux.
De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of the golden ratio φ to the nth Fibonacci number. He also was the first to postulate the central limit theorem, a cornerstone of probability theory.