Ján Andrej Segner

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Johann Andreas Segner (in Slovak: Ján Andrej Segner, in Hungarian: Segner János András, 9 October 1704, Bratislava (in German: Pressburg, in Hungarian: Pozsony), Kingdom of Hungary (today: Slovakia) – 5 October 1777, Halle) was a Carpatho-German mathematician, physicist, doctor. Inventor of the Segner-wheel. Professor of the universities of Jena, Göttingen and Halle.

His ancestors came from Styria to Bratislava in the 16th century (in the 18th century a predominantly German town) and have been living there since. He studied at Bratislava, Győr and Debrecen. He went to the University of Jena in 1725. In 1729 he got a medical certificate and he returned to Bratislava, where he started to work as a doctor (he also worked as a doctor in Debrecen for a while), but in 1732 he went back to Jena. He was a professor at the University of Jena, later on - for 20 years - in Göttingen and finally in Halle. He established an observatory in Halle.

He was one of the best-known scientists of his age. Four prestigious academies (Berlin, Göttingen, London, Saint-Petersburg) made him their member.

He was the first mathematician who demonstrated the sign convention of Descartes.