Gabriel Lamé (1795 - 1870)

"French mathematicians considered him to practical, and French scientists too theoretical."

Matthew S. Hoehler

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Gabriel Lamé was the consummate engineer/mathematician. His adventurous life of science and politics led him from France to Russia, and back again. During his career he made contributions to the fields of mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, and applied mechanics. He is best known for the introduction of curvilinear coordinates and their application in pure and applied mathematics.

Gabriel Lamé was born on July 22, 1795 in Tours, France. At age eighteen he entered the prestigious École Polytechnique. In 1816, during the celebration of Lamé’s graduation, a student riot broke out leading to the temporary closure of the school. Because Lamé had been one the demonstrators, he decided to pursue his graduate studies at the École des Mines.

Immediately upon graduation from the École des Mines in 1820, Lamé and his classmate, and long-time friend, Benoit-Pierre-Emile Clapeyron were offered positions by the Russian government to help organize the newly formed Institute of Ways of Communication in St. Petersburg. Lamé taught at the institute between 1820 and 1831. During this time Lamé consulted on the construction of myriad engineering structures and collaborated on a textbook. After the July Revolution of 1830 in France, Lamé’s teaching position in Russia became rather tenuous. In reaction to the French uprising, the Russian government fought to suppress revolutionary ideas. Because of their well-known liberal tendencies, Lamé and Clapeyron decided to return to France.

After a brief stint working in an engineering firm with Clapeyron in Paris, Lamé was offered a position as the academic chair of Physics at the École Polytechnique. While there Lamé continued to consult on engineering projects earning a reputation as an extremely capable engineer. In 1836, Lamé was appointed chief engineer of mines and helped plan and build the first two railroads from Paris to Versailles and to St.-Germain. Between 1843 and 1862 Lamé received several appointments to prestigious positions in French academia. He resigned all of these positions, however, when he went deaf in 1862. Lamé retired to a quite academic life in Paris where he lived until his death in 1870.

While Lamé made contributions to fields including number theory, physics, thermodynamics, and applied mechanics, his greatest contribution was the introduction of curvilinear coordinates and their use in pure and applied mathematics. Lamé used his new coordinate system to transform Laplace’s equation in ellipsoidal coordinates to a form where the variables were separable, and thus he was able to solve the resulting form of the generalized Laplace equation. Lamé also applied the curvilinear coordinates to various problems of a physical nature involving ellipsoids. One application was to double refraction in the theory of propagation of light in crystals.

Like many mathematicians Lamé was drawn to number theory. His investigations of curves which are symmetric with respect to a triangle, ultimately led him to look for a solution to Fermat’s last theorem. While Lamé was never able to prove Fermat’s theorem, he did show the impossibility of a solution for the equation .

The Lamé constants, which are widely used for applications in the mechanics of solids, were not defined by Lamé. The constants were named after Lamé’s death in recognition of his contributions to the field of mechanics.

Gauss was said to have considered Lamé the foremost French mathematician of his generation. Lamé’s aptitude for pure and applied science was recognized during his own life as evidenced by the esteemed positions he held in both academia and the field of civil engineering. Lamé has been immortalized in French society, along with Laplace, Pascal, l’Hopital and others, as he now holds a position on the map of Paris as the Rue Gabriel Lamé.