Everything about Jurij Vega totally explained
Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega (also correct
Veha; official ; ) (
March 23,
1754 –
September 26,
1802) was a
Slovene mathematician,
physicist and
artillery officer.
Early life
Born in the small village of Zagorica, near Dolsko, east of
Ljubljana in
Slovenia, Jurij was 6 years old when his father Jernej Veha died. Jurij (or
George in
English) was educated first in Moravče and later in 1767 attended high school for six years in Ljubljana, studying Latin,
Greek,
religion, German,
history,
geography,
science, and
mathematics. At that time there were about 500 students there. He was a schoolfellow of
Anton Tomaž Linhart, a Slovenian writer and historian. Jurij completed high school when he was 19, in 1773. After completing
Lyceum in Ljubljana he became a navigational engineer.
Tentamen philosophicum, a list of questions for his comprehensive examination, was preserved and is available in the Mathematical Library in Ljubljana. The problems cover
logic,
algebra,
metaphysics,
geometry,
trigonometry,
geodesy,
stereometry,
geometry of
curves,
ballistics, and general and special
physics.
Military service
Jurij left Ljubljana five years after graduation and entered military service in 1780 as Professor of Mathematics at the Artillery School in Vienna. At that time he started to sign his last name as Vega and no longer Veha. When Jurij was 33 he married Josefa Svoboda (Jožefa Swoboda) (1771–1800), a
Czech noble from
České Budějovice who was 16 at that time.
Vega participated in several wars. In 1788 he served under Austrian Imperial Field-Marshal
Ernst Gideon von Laudon (1717&ndash1790) in a campaign against the
Turks at
Belgrade. His command of several
mortar batteries contributed considerably to the fall of the Belgrade fortress. Between 1793 and 1797 he fought
French Revolutionaries under the command of Austrian General
Dagobert-Sigismond de Wurmser (1724–1797) with the European coalition on the Austrian side. He fought at
Fort Louis,
Mannheim,
Mainz,
Wiesbaden,
Kehl, and
Dietz. In 1795 he'd two 30-pound (14 kilogram) mortars cast, with conically drilled bases and a greater charge, for a firing range up to 3000 metres (3300 yards). The old 60 lb (27 kg) mortars had a range of only 1800 m (2000 yd).
In September 1802 Jurij Vega was reported missing. After a few days' search his body was found. The police report concluded that it was an accident. However, the true cause of his death remains a mystery, but it's believed that he died on
1802-09-26 in
Nußdorf on the
Danube, near the
Austrian capital,
Vienna. There are suggestions that he'd been murdered by the local miller for unknown reasons; one of Jurij's tools (compass) was found in the mill one year after his disappearance and it had "J V" initials on it.
Mathematical accomplishments
Vega published a series of books of
logarithm tables. The first one appeared in 1783. Much later, in 1797 it was followed by a second volume that contained a collection of integrals and other useful formulae. His
Handbook, which was originally published in 1793, was later translated into several languages and appeared in over 100 issues. His major work was
Zakladnica vseh logaritmov (
Thesaurus Logarithmorum Completus or
Treasury of all Logarithms) that was first published 1794 in
Leipzig. An engineer, Franc Allmer, honourable senator of the Technical university of
Graz, has found Vega's logarithmic tables with 10
decimal places in the Museum of Carl Friedrich Gauss in
Göttingen.
Gauss used this work frequently and he's written in it several calculations. Gauss has also found some of Vega's errors in the calculations in the range of numbers, of which there are more than a million. A copy of Vega's Thesaurus belonging to the private collection of the British mathematician and computing pioneer
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is preserved at the
Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
Over the years Vega wrote a four volume textbook
Vorlesungen über die Mathematik (
Lectures about Mathematics).
Volume I appeared in 1782 when he was 28 years old,
Volume II in 1784,
Volume III in 1788 and
Volume IV in 1800. His textbooks also contain interesting tables: for instance, in
Volume II one can find
closed form expressions for sines of multiples of 3 degrees, written in a form easy to work with.
Vega wrote at least six scientific papers. On
August 20,
1789 Vega achieved a world record when he calculated
pi to 140 places, of which the first 126 were correct.
(External Link
) This calculation he proposed to the
Russian Academy of Sciences in
Saint Petersburg (Санкт Петербург) in the booklet
V. razprava (The fifth discussion), where he'd found with his calculating method an error on the 113th place from the estimation of Thomas Fantet de Lagny (1660–1734) from 1719 of 127 places. Vega retained his record 52 years until 1841 and his method is mentioned still today. His article wasn't published by the Academy until six years later, in 1795. Vega had improved
John Machin's formula from 1706:
»
He had developed the second term in the series only once.
Although he worked in the subjects of ballistics, physics and
astronomy, his major contributions are to the mathematics of the second half of the 18th century.
In 1781 Vega tried to push further his idea in the Austrian
Habsburg monarchy about the usage of the decimal
metric system of units. His idea wasn't accepted, but it was introduced later under the emperor
Franz Josef I in 1871.
Jurij Vega was a member of the Academy of Practical Sciences in Mainz, the Physical and Mathematical Society of
Erfurt, the Bohemian Scientific Society in
Prague, and the Prussian Academy of Sciences in
Berlin. He was also an associate member of the British Scientific Society in
Göttingen. He was awarded the Order of
Maria Theresa on
May 11,
1796. In 1800 Jurij Vega obtained a title of hereditary baron including the right to his own coat of arms.
Post of Slovenia has issued a stamp honouring Jurij Vega and the National Bank of Slovenia has issued a 50
tolar banknote in his honour.
Further Information
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