How reliable are the scientists’ images? – 03/28/2023 – Marcelo Viana

Ten years ago, I was explaining to Anita, my daughter, who the characters represented in a museum’s stained glass window were when she –then three years old– proudly exclaimed: “I studied this one at my school; he came out of the bathtub!”. She was referring to the famous scene —witness unknown—of the Greek mathematician and scientist Archimedes, jumping out of the bath and shouting “Eureka!”

In fact, the representation in the stained glass window referred to the philosopher Plato, but the child was not wrong. We have no idea what any of them looked like, as no images exist from anyone who knew them in life. Anita only identified a generic image of “classical Greek thinker” (which, incidentally, made her doting father very proud).

It is even more surprising that there are no reliable images of scientists much closer to us in time. And the case of the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–1833) is particularly odd.

Legendre is one of the four great Ls that France graced the world with in the 18th and 19th centuries, along with Lagrange, Laplace and Leverrier. He did fundamental work in number theory, analysis, celestial mechanics, and various applications of mathematics. There are several concepts with his name: Legendre transform, Legendre symbol, Legendre relation, among others.

In my courses, I often cover Legendre’s differential equation. And Legendre polynomials are used extensively in numerical calculus, in addition to playing a crucial role in solving the quantum mechanical equations for the hydrogen atom (Bohr-Sommerfeld model).

For these contributions, Legendre is one of the 72 scientists who, as a tribute, had their names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. Furthermore, in 1811 he was knighted by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the rulers in history who most prioritized merit and science (with a special penchant for mathematics).

Despite his enormous scientific prestige, very little is known about Legendre’s life. In particular, we have no reliable image of him. This is likely to be exactly what he wanted: in his panegyric, Siméon-Denis Poisson stated that “our esteemed colleague has often expressed the wish that when we speak of him we do so only in relation to his scientific works, which are, in fact, , all your life”.

What’s strange is that images supposedly of Adrien-Marie abound on the internet, but are actually of someone else. Worse, they are from someone whose actions had a very negative impact on the mathematician’s life. The error was only discovered in 2009. I’ll tell you next week.

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