Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński
Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński (Polish: [ˈjuzɛf ˈxɛnɛ ˈvrɔj̃skʲi]; French: Josef Hoëné-Wronski [ʒɔzɛf ɔɛne vʁɔ̃ski]; 23 August 1776 – 9 August 1853) was a Polish messianist philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, lawyer, occultist and economist. He was born as Hoëné to a municipal architect in 1776 but changed his name in 1815 to Józef Wroński. Later in life he changed his name to Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, without using his family's original French spelling Hoëné. At no point in his life, neither in Polish or French, was he known as Hoëné-Wroński; nor was the common French transliteration, Josef Hoëné-Wronski, ever his official name in his native Poland (though it might have served as his chosen French nom de plume on some work).
Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński | |
|---|---|
Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, by Laurent-Charles Maréchal | |
| Born | Josef Hoëné 23 August 1776 Wolsztyn, Poznań Province, Poland |
| Died | 9 August 1853 (aged 76) Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy Polish philosophy French philosophy |
| School | Polish messianism |
Main interests | Philosophy, mathematics, physics, engineering, law, occultism, economics |
Notable ideas | The Wronskian Polish Messianism Continuous track |
In 1803, Wroński joined the Marseille Observatory but was forced to leave the observatory after his theories were dismissed as grandiose rubbish. In mathematics, Wroński introduced a novel series expansion for a function in response to Joseph Louis Lagrange's use of infinite series. The coefficients in Wroński's new series form the Wronskian, a determinant Thomas Muir named in 1882.