ABRAHAM DE MOIVRE

DASSIER, Jacques-Antoine: England, 1741, Bronze, 55 mm
Obv: Bust    ABRAHAMUS DE MOIVRE.
Rev: Ornamental device    UTRIUSQUE SOCIETATIS REGALIS. LOND. ET BEROL. SODALIS. M.DCC.XLI. (Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Berlin, 1741)
Signed:  I.A. DASSIER.
From Jacques-Antoine Dassier's London Series of medals depicting celebrated contemporary men.
Ref: M.I. ii, 565/197; Eimer 83/563; Thompson 48/02;  Weiss BW037

Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754), an English mathematician of French Huguenot extraction, was a pioneer in the development of analytic trigonometry and in the theory of probability. Upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was jailed as a Protestant. When released, he went to England where he became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. He is best known for a theorem, bearing his name for the solution of certain trigonometric functions.

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