Sturm, Jacques Charles Francois
STURM, JACQUES CHARLES FRANCOIS (1803-1855), French mathematician, of German extraction, was born at Geneva on the 2gth of September 1803. Originally tutor to the son of Mme de Stael, he resolved, with his schoolfellow Colladon, to try his fortune in Paris, and obtained employment on the Bulletin unviersel. In 1829 he discovered the theorem, regarding the determination of the number of real roots of a numerical equation included between given limits, which bears his name (see EQUATION, V.), and in the following year he was appointed professor of mathematics at the College Rollin. He was chosen a member of the Academic des Sciences in 1836, became " repetiteur " in 1838, and in 1840 professor in the Ecole Polytechnique, and finally succeeded S. D. Poisson in the chair of mechanics in the Faculte des Sciences at Paris. His works, Cours d'analyse de I'ecole polylechnique (1857-1863) and Cours de mecanique de I'ecole polytechnique (1861), were published afterhis death at Paris on the 18th of December 1855.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
