Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues (6 October 1795 – 17 December 1851), more commonly known as Olinde Rodrigues, was a French banker, mathematician, and social reformer. In mathematics Rodrigues is remembered for Rodrigues' rotation formula for vectors, the Rodrigues formula for the Legendre polynomials, and the Euler–Rodrigues parameters.

Biography

Rodrigues was born into a well-to-do Sephardi Jewish family in Bordeaux. His family was of Portuguese-Jewish descent. He was awarded a doctorate in mathematics on 28 June 1815 by the University of Paris. His dissertation contains the result now called Rodrigues' formula.

After graduation, Rodrigues became a banker. A close associate of the Comte de Saint-Simon, Rodrigues continued, after Saint-Simon's death in 1825, to champion the older man's socialist ideals, a school of thought that came to be known as Saint-Simonianism. During this period, Rodrigues published writings on politics, social reform, and banking.

Rodrigues' 1840 paper developed new results on transformation groups. It uses three numbers to parameterize the entries of a rotation matrix using only rational functions. When converted to four parameters, this representation is equivalent to a unit quaternion, and describes the axis and angle of a rotation. In addition, he applied spherical trigonometry to relate changes in rotation axis and angle due to the composition of two rotations. This formula is a precursor to the quaternion product of William Rowan Hamilton. In 1846, Arthur Cayley acknowledged Euler's and Rodrigues' priority describing orthogonal transformations.

Rodrigues is credited as originating the idea of the artist as an avant-garde.

Publications

  • , Paris, 1815
  • , Correspondance Sur l'École Impériale Polytechnique, vol. 3, pp. 361–385, 1815
  • Théorie de la caisse hypothécaire, ou Examen du sort des emprunteurs, des porteurs d'obligations et des actionnaires de cet établissement, 1820
  • Appel : religion saint-simonienne, 1831
  • L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel: Dialogue, 1825
  • Réunion générale de la famille : séances des 19 et 21 novembre, 1831
  • Son premier écrit / Saint-Simon, 1832
  • Le disciple de Saint-Simon aux Saint-Simoniens et au public, 1832
  • Aux saint-simoniens, 13 février 1832 : bases de la loi morale proposées à l'acceptation des femmes, 1832
  • Olinde Rodrigues à M. Michel Chevalier, rédacteur du "Globe" : religion saint-simonienne, 1832
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 3, pp. 547–548, 1838
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 3, p. 549, 1838
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 3, pp. 550–551, 1838
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 4, pp. 236–240, 1839
  • De l'organisation des banques à propos du projet de loi sur la Banque de France, 1840
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 5, pp. 380–440, 1840
  • Les Peuples et les diplomates. La Paix ou la guerre, 1840
  • Œuvres de Saint-Simon, 1841
  • Poésies sociales des ouvriers, réunies et publiées par Olinde Rodrigues, 1841
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 8, pp. 217–224, 1843
  • , Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, vol. 8, pp. 225–234, 1843
  • Théorie des banques, 1848
  • De l'Organisation du suffrage universel, proposition d'un nouveau mode électoral par Olinde Rodrigues, 1848
  • Organisation du travail, association du travail et du capital, 1848
  • Organisation du travail, bases de l'organisation des banques, 1848

See also

External links

Bibliography