Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

"...Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert (16 November 1717 – 29 October 1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's formula for obtaining solutions to the wave equation is named after him. The wave equation is sometimes referred to as d'Alembert's equation...."

"...Born in Paris, d'Alembert was the illegitimate child of the writer Claudine Guérin de Tencin and the chevalier Louis-Camus Destouches, an artillery officer. Destouches was abroad at the time of d'Alembert's birth, and a couple of days after birth his mother left him on the steps of the Saint-Jean-le-Rond de Paris church. According to custom, he was named after the patron saint of the church. D'Alembert was placed in an orphanage for found children, but his father found him and placed him with the wife of a glazier, Madame Rousseau, with whom he lived for nearly 50 years. Destouches secretly paid for the education of Jean le Rond, but did not want his paternity officially recognized...."

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_le_Rond_d%27Alembert

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