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Leonhard Euler
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Engraved portrait of Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler in profile, wearing a dark coat and ruffled white shirt, from the 1740s.
Euler's Identity: The Most Beautiful of All Equations
A diagram illustrating Euler's formula on the complex plane, showing a unit circle with axes labeled real and imaginary. A red angle theta extends from the origin to a point on the circle, labeled as e^(i?) = cos ? + i sin ?, with the horizontal and vertical components labeled cos ? and sin ?. A diagram of the historic Seven Bridges of Konigsberg, showing seven numbered bridges crossing over a river with multiple land masses, representing the classic mathematical problem.
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Engraved portrait of Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler in profile, wearing a dark coat and ruffled white shirt, from the 1740s.
Leonhard Euler Swiss mathematician (1707–83) whose work established the formulas that bear his name in complex analysis and geometry.

Leonhard Euler

Swiss mathematician
Written by
Carl B. Boyer
Professor of Mathematics, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 1952–76. Author of History of Analytic Geometry and others.
Carl B. Boyer
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Leonhard Euler (born April 15, 1707, Basel, Switzerland—died September 18, 1783, St. Petersburg, Russia) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist, one of the founders of pure mathematics. He not only made decisive and formative contributions to the subjects of geometry, calculus, mechanics, and number theory but also developed methods for solving problems in observational astronomy and demonstrated useful applications of mathematics in technology and public affairs. Euler’s mathematical ability earned him the esteem of Johann...

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