Briefwechsel mit Daniel Bernoulli
Teil I: Einleitungen, Briefwechsel 1726–1743
Leonhard Euler, Emil A. Fellmann, Gleb K. Mikhajlov
Die insgesamt 191 Briefe dieser Korrespondenzen und einige dazugehörige Dokumente – darunter Daniel Bernoullis kurze Autobiographie von 1776 – werden hier zum Teil erstmals veröffentlicht: mit Übersetzungen vieler Stücke in modernes Deutsch, Kommentaren zu den darin angesprochenen Fragestellungen – vor allem aus Physik und Astronomie – und einem ausführlichen Registerteil. Der Band bietet wesentliche Einblicke in die Biographien zweier grosser Wissenschafter und in das akademische Leben ihrer Zeit.
In 1727 Leonhard Euler, at the age of twenty, joined the recently founded Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences; his appointment had been negotiated by his teacher Johann I Bernoulli at Basel and Johann’s son Daniel (1700–1782), who already worked at St. Petersburg. Euler’s correspondence with Daniel Bernoulli intensified when Bernoulli returned to Basel in 1733 and was continued after Euler’s move to Berlin in 1741. In the context of the publication of Johann Bernoulli’s (1742) and a prize competition of the Berlin Academy in 1746 tension arose between the two; from 1750 to 1767 only few letters were exchanged, most of them by Daniel’s brother Johann II and nephew Johann III acting as intermediaries. After Euler’s return to Russia and the re-establishment of Daniel Bernoulli’s membership in the Petersburg Academy that he mediated, the correspondence was resumed, now increasingly through Euler’s son Johann Albrecht and his Basel-born assistant Niklaus Fuss.
The volume offers important insights into the biographies of two great scientists and into the academic life of their time.
