Free Essay Sample - Henri Poincare

It is important to note that Henri Poincare was a mathematical genius who made a significant contribution to the field of celestial mechanics since the time of Isaac Newton. Henri was born in a wealthy family in April 1854 in the city of Nancy, France (Folina, 2016). His father was a great physician and professor of medicine while his mother is also described as an intelligent woman who came from a wealthy family too. These parental traits describe the success that Henri Poincare had in his career. The paper seeks to discuss Henri Poincare and his contribution to the field of mathematics.

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It is believed that Henri began school at the age of eight. He later joined Lycee Nancy high school, where one of his teachers informed his mother that her son would become a great mathematician in the future (Folina, 2016). True to his word, Henri became one of the greatest in the field of mathematics. However, he did not know what he would do in the future as he was gifted in physics, writing literature, philosophy, acting, engineering, and even arts. All these were interesting to him. At the age of 19, Henri joined Ecole Polytechnique having the highest marks in that year’s examinations (Folina, 2016). He graduated in 1875 and immediately enrolled at Ecole des Mines in Paris, an engineering school. He graduated in 1878 as a mining engineer. In the following year, and at the age of 25, Henri Poincare obtained his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris. As had been mentioned, his thesis on partial differential equations led to new mathematical concepts (Folina, 2016).

Notably, one of Henri’s initial contributions on the n-body problem whose main aim was to determine the stability of the solar system led to his first widely known theory where he gave the initial mathematical description of a dynamic system that behaved chaotically; thus the approach was referred to as Chaos theory (Folina, 2016). Additionally, Henri’s work which was based on special relativity led to the modern form of Lorentz transformations, widely applied in modern mathematical solving problems (Folina, 2016).

In his endeavor to develop mathematical concepts, Henri indicated how information could be obtained from insoluble differential equations (Folina, 2016). It is worth noting that he founded the algebraic topology field, having discovered the automorphic function early in his career. Further, it should be mentioned that until Grigori Perelman came up with a solution in 2002, the Poincare conjecture, was one of the great problems in mathematics that remained unsolved (Folina, 2016). As a result, this shows how deep Henri’s mathematical concepts were.

Understandably, Henri Poincare contributed immensely to the field of mathematics. As had been mentioned, besides his contributions to confirming the stability of the solar system, it should be known that he also contributed to the relativity theory (Folina, 2016). Widely, it is known that relativity theory was associated with Albert Einstein. However, Henri equally contributed to this theory by introducing other concepts like the Lorentz transformations in their modern forms. Also, his chaos theory and n-body problem cannot be understated.

Consequently, his contribution to the field of topology significantly boosted mathematical concepts. He founded algebraic topology in the paper he referred to as Analysis Situs, in 1895 (Folina, 2016). Here, he described how algebraic topology is used to investigate topological space through abstract algebra techniques.

In conclusion, Henri Poincare was a great mathematician from the onset. His various contributions to mathematics and science ensured that modern mathematical problems could easily be solved. Due to his dedication in this field, he discovered theories like Chaos theory, quantitative theory of differential equations, relativity theory, among others. Also, Henri’s contributions to the stability of the solar system and topology showed his great mathematical ideas.

Reference

Folina, J. M. (2016). Poincaré and the Philosophy of Mathematics. Springer. www.books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EPW-DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Henri+Poicare+mathematical+contributions&ots=oQKIHUg4jf&sig=m8_I5bJwiMCCIhXH0LNzflDuvZg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Henri%20Poicare%20mathematical%20contributions&f=false