Who Is Leonhard Euler?

Google is dedicating its graphic today to Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician and physicist.

His name is pronounced like: "LEE-oh-nard  OY-ler,"  but if you want to hear it the real way click here.

A posting on the United States Naval Academy's website calls Euler "...arguably the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century."

Born April 15, 1707, he was plagued by vision problems throughout his adult life.  He eventually went blind but continued to impress those around him by doing complicated calculations in his head.

Euler is thought to be the only mathematician to have two numbers named after him, in calculus "Euler's Number," equal to about 2.71828 and the "Euler-Mascheroni Constant," equal to 0.57721.  He also helped to develop the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation which is still used in engineering.