Jules-Henri Poincaré is a brilliant scientist, whose broad profile of activity has indicated a huge contribution to many branches of physics, mathematics and mechanics. This man became the founder of qualitative methods of topology and the theory of differential equations, he created the basis of the theory of stability of motion. "Science and Hypothesis" by Henri Poincare - a work that has become a classic, studied by all students of technical universities.
Science
Long before the works of Einstein, Poincaré's articles contained formulations of the main principles of the theory of relativity. For example, the principle of relativity, the relativity of the concept of simultaneity, clock synchronization by means of light signals, the Lorentz transformation, the constancy of the speed of light, the constancy of Maxwell's equations, and many others.
Poincare Henri developed the small parameter method and applied it to the problems of celestial mechanics, he also independently studied the classical three-body problem. Even in philosophy, he managed to create a completely new direction, called conventionalism.
Childhood
The great scientist was born in the Lorraine city of Nancy in France on April 29, 1854. His father, Leon Poincaré, was still a very young practitioner, but already a well-known practitioner in the city and the surrounding area. In addition, he was engaged in laboratory research and lectured at the medical faculty of the university. His mother - Eugene - raised children. The daughter did not cause as much concern as the little Jules-Henri Poincaré: his distraction over time became legendary.
My mother was not aware that this flaw speaks of an innate quality to give oneself to deep inner thought and to be completely distracted from reality. In addition, after diphtheria, Henri Poincare acquired a new quality - to associate vowel sounds with certain colors. Occasionally, children (especially dumb ones by nature) possess this quality. Henri Poincare retained this ability for life.
Home schooling
A real scholar and a man of wide education were engaged with the baby, a born teacher - Alfons Ginselin. In addition to the rules of grammar, history, geography and biology, the boy quickly mastered all four arithmetic operations and became easily counted in his mind. The teacher did not leave tasks for him, they did not write anything, so the child’s already excellent auditory memory became aggravated and strengthened. By the way, he did not like the graphic consolidation of his discoveries; he felt a persistent disregard for the letter. It went in a minus technique.
Lyceum
Teachers at the Nancy Lyceum rejoiced that they were learning from such an inquisitive and diligent student as Poincare Henri. He received such a good home preparation that he began to study immediately in the second grade. He wrote great works, arithmetic was also easy for him, but he still did not feel much love for her.
Only a few years later, an excited teacher came to the mother of Poincaré and predicted a great mathematical future for her son. But, despite this, the boy continued his studies at the department of literature, studying Latin and ancient classics. By the age of sixteen, the great scientist’s liberal arts education was more than complete. Then events of enormous significance took place in the life of not only France, but of the whole of Europe: the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune.
University
Twice becoming a bachelor (of literature and science), Poincare Henri began to study elementary mathematics - now truly selflessly. And geometry, and algebra, and mathematical analysis - all this super-serious scientific literature was like a treat for him, he literally savored every line of the works of Rouche, Bertrand, Challe, Duhamel. He thus mastered elementary mathematics during the year.
Polytechnic School
In order to work in the state apparatus or in the army in a good technical position, Henri Poincare became a student at the Polytechnic School, where, of course, he was among the first students in almost all subjects. He did not succeed in drawing, sketching and military affairs.
In his drawings, for example, there were neither parallel nor converging where they should have been, nor even just straight lines. But in physics, chemistry and mathematics, he was so strong that he had no equal. After graduating from the Polytechnic School, the future great scientist continued his studies in Gornaya, where he had already taken seriously for real scientific research.
Mountain school
The ideas that were sought and found a way out of his thoughts during training at the Mining School, in a few years will be the foundation of a doctoral dissertation. Everything that was not related to mathematics had ceased to be interesting to him, with the exception of mineralogy alone. And not even mineralogy itself, but its section on crystallography. Because everything that Henri Poincaré knew about science at that time loosely revolved around group theory, where solid-state kinematics plus crystallography are one of the main points of application of this branch of mathematics, at that time almost abstract. So the dissertation was written. She received many praise from professors and scientists. The defense of the dissertation gave the right to teach at universities, which the great scientist took advantage of, working for some time on distribution in the mines of Vesoul. In 1979, Henri Poincaré arrived at the University of Cannes to teach mathematical analysis.
Decisive 1881
In 1881, France's most authoritative scientific journal published an article by Poincare on Fuchsian functions, which was a breakthrough in mathematical science. Over the next two years, more than twenty-five articles appeared. European mathematicians began to closely monitor each step of the new mathematical luminary.
Five more articles are devoted to Fuchsian functions, each of which was a real scientific discovery. Despite an extremely deep immersion in mathematics, in 1881, Jules-Henri Poincaré managed to fall in love, marry and move his family from Normandy to Paris to begin teaching at the university.
Paris
At the University of Moscow, young scientists conducted four major studies on differential equations, integral curves with their singular points and limit cycles, which constituted a new branch of mathematics as a science. The twenty-seven-year-old Poincare Henri, whose selected works were already included in textbooks, did not rest on his laurels, since no one has yet worked on qualitative methods of the theory of differential equations. This radically new layer of mathematical science required further study: small parameter methods with the theory of integral invariants and the theory of stable differential equations for small parameters and initial conditions.
Already in 1886, Henri Poincare became the head of the department of mathematical physics and probability theory at the University of Paris, and in 1887 he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Discoveries followed discoveries: the theory of automorphic functions, combinatorial topology, differential geometry, algebraic topology, probability theory, functional analysis and many other areas of knowledge were no longer a mystery for seven seals for Poincare Henri.
Physicist
Three-dimensional oscillations of mathematical physics with the formula of the theory of wave propagation (diffraction), heat conduction problems, potential theory, substantiation of the Dirichlet principle - this is not all that has been investigated, resolved and proved by a brilliant scientist in a very short period of time. As a child, he was fascinated by the depths of a starry night, and now the adult Poincare knew for sure that the celestial bodies give not only the light that people can see with carnal vision, but also another, refined, clarifying mind. “Science and Hypothesis” by Henri Poincaré is a work that sheds light on much of the human perception of scientific phenomena.
In 1889 he received an international award for his work on “celestial mechanics,” three-body physics, where the motto was a line from an ancient poem in Latin: Nunquam praescriptos transibunt sidera fines - “No Prescribed Boundaries Will Cross The Sun”. Further study of this area resulted in the three-volume treatise "New Methods of Celestial Mechanics", which became a classic of scientific research not only in astronomy and mechanics, but also in quantum mechanics, and in static physics. As a result, Professor Poincare Henry was invited to the Sorbonne to head the department of celestial mechanics there, and accepted this offer. Ten years of studying probability theory and mathematical physics in Paris passed like one day.
Zenith
The work of Poincare Henri "Science and Hypothesis" was published in 1902 and caused a noticeable resonance in the scientific community, since the scientist wrote primarily about perception, that there is no absolute in anything - neither in space, nor in time, people they feel exclusively relative movements, even time is felt by them differently. Only facts of a mechanical order are indicated, and those without non-Euclidean geometry cannot be regarded as scientific.
Throughout his life, Poincare received all kinds of titles, awards and prizes, the Paris Institute of Mathematics and a large crater on the back (dark) side of the moon were named after him.