Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues (1795–1851), more commonly known as
Olinde Rodrigues, was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
banker,
mathematicianMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
, and
social reformerA reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society rather than rapid or fundamental changes. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements.Reformists' ideas are often...
.
Rodrigues was born into a well-to-do
Portuguese JewishThe history of the Jews in Portugal is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities who have originated in the Iberian Peninsula .-Before Portugal:...
family in
Bordeauxis a port city on the Garonne River in southwest France, with one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area at a 2008 estimate. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
. Rodrigues was awarded a
doctorateA doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries represents the highest level of formal study or research in a given field. In some countries it also refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to practice in a specific profession . The best-known example...
in mathematics on 28 June 1815 by the University of Paris. His dissertation contains the result now called
Rodrigues' formulaThe Rodrigues' formula is either of the following:*In geometry, short for Rodrigues' rotation formula.*A formula for producing a series of expressions by repeated differentiation of some other functions. A typical application is in producing a series of orthogonal polynomials. In particular,...
.
After graduation, Rodrigues became a banker. A close associate of the
Comte de Saint-SimonNote: This article is almost entirely based on, and includes large transcripts from, Thomas Kirkup, 'History of Socialism', London, 1892.Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French utopian socialist thinker.-Early years:Saint-Simon was born...
, after the latter's death in 1825, he continued to champion his
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
ideals (
Saint-SimonianismSaint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the nineteenth century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon....
).
Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues (1795–1851), more commonly known as
Olinde Rodrigues, was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
banker,
mathematicianMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
, and
social reformerA reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society rather than rapid or fundamental changes. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements.Reformists' ideas are often...
.
Rodrigues was born into a well-to-do
Portuguese JewishThe history of the Jews in Portugal is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities who have originated in the Iberian Peninsula .-Before Portugal:...
family in
Bordeauxis a port city on the Garonne River in southwest France, with one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area at a 2008 estimate. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
. Rodrigues was awarded a
doctorateA doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries represents the highest level of formal study or research in a given field. In some countries it also refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to practice in a specific profession . The best-known example...
in mathematics on 28 June 1815 by the University of Paris. His dissertation contains the result now called
Rodrigues' formulaThe Rodrigues' formula is either of the following:*In geometry, short for Rodrigues' rotation formula.*A formula for producing a series of expressions by repeated differentiation of some other functions. A typical application is in producing a series of orthogonal polynomials. In particular,...
.
After graduation, Rodrigues became a banker. A close associate of the
Comte de Saint-SimonNote: This article is almost entirely based on, and includes large transcripts from, Thomas Kirkup, 'History of Socialism', London, 1892.Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French utopian socialist thinker.-Early years:Saint-Simon was born...
, after the latter's death in 1825, he continued to champion his
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
ideals (
Saint-SimonianismSaint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the nineteenth century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon....
). Rodrigues published writings on politics, social reform, and banking.
In 1840, he published a result on transformation groups. However, his work on mathematics was largely ignored, and has only relatively recently been rediscovered. He died in Paris.
Rodrigues is remembered for two formulae: one about rotation of vectors (see
Rodrigues' rotation formulaIn three-dimensional rotation theory, Rodrigues' rotation formula is a vector formula for a rotation in space, given its axis and angle of rotation...
) and the other about series of
orthogonal polynomialsIn mathematics, an orthogonal polynomial sequence is an infinite sequence of real polynomialsof one variable x, in which each pn has degree n, and such that any two different polynomials in the sequence are orthogonal to each other under a particular version of the L2 inner...
. The former is known as "the Rodrigues formula" thanks to the advocacy of
Eduard HeineHeinrich Eduard Heine was a German mathematician.Heine was born in Berlin, and became known for results on special functions and in real analysis. In particular, he authored an important treatise on spherical harmonics and Legendre functions . He also investigated basic hypergeometric series...
, who argued that, because
Charles HermiteCharles Hermite was a French mathematician who did research on number theory, quadratic forms, invariant theory, orthogonal polynomials, elliptic functions, and algebra....
"had shown that Rodrigues had priority in discovering the formula, then it should be known as the Rodrigues formula."