Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an Italian mathematician and astronomer who made major contributions to mathematics and physics. His most important work, Mécanique Analytique (“Analytical Mechanics”) liberated the science of mechanics from geometry by expressing the laws of motion in a form that could be manipulated algebraically without recourse to diagrams. Lagrange is also credited with the invention of the calculus of variations, the employment of which led to some of his most important mathematical discoveries.