Jean-Robert Argand

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Jean-Robert Argand
Jean-Robert Argand
Jean-Robert Argand
Born July 18, 1768
Geneva, Switzerland
Died August 13, 1822
Paris
Nationality France
Fields mathematics
Known for Argand diagram

Jean-Robert Argand (July 18, 1768 - August 13, 1822) was a non-professional mathematician. In 1806, while managing a bookstore in Paris, he published the idea of geometrical interpretation of complex numbers known as the Argand diagram.

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[edit] Life

Jean-Robert Argand was born in Geneva, Switzerland to Jacques Argand, his father, and Eve Carnac, his mother. His background and education are mostly unknown. Since his knowledge of mathematics was self-taught and he did not belong to any mathematical organizations, he likely pursued mathematics as a hobby rather than a profession.

Argand moved to Paris in 1806 with his family and, when managing a bookshop there, privately published his Essai sur une manière de représenter les quantitiés imaginaires dans les constructions géométriques (Essay on a method of representing imaginary quantities). In 1813, it was republished in the French journal Annales de Mathematiques.

The Essay discussed a method of graphing complex numbers via analytical geometry. The topic of complex numbers was also being studied by other mathematicians, notably Carl Friedrich Gauss and Caspar Wessel. Wessel's 1799 paper on a similar graphing technique did not attract attention.

Jean-Robert Argand died of an unknown cause on August 13, 1822 in Paris.

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