Jean robert argand biography of michael

◀▲▶History / 18th-century / Person: Argand, Jean Robert

Jean-Robert Argand was an amateur Swiss mathematician best known as one of the first to give a geometrical description of the Complex numbers.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• They refer to a real person, but it is unlikely that this person is the author of the 'Argand diagram'.
• The following information about Jean Robert Argand has, probably incorrectly, become a standard part of the biography of the man who invented the 'Argand diagram'.
• Jean-Robert Argand was an accountant and bookkeeper in Paris who was only an amateur mathematician.
• Before Hoüel published Volume 4 in 1874 he decided to try to find biographical information about Argand.
• He knew that Ami Argand (1750-1803), who had invented instruments and lived in Paris for a while, had been born in Geneva.
• This must have made Hoüel guess that the inventor of the Argand diagram might have been born in Geneva so Jean-Robert Argand biography.