Guillaume François Antoine, marquis of the Hospital

Guillaume François Antoine, marquis of the Hospital (1661 - February 2nd 1704) was a Mathématicien French. He is surely most known for the rule which bears its name: the Règle of the Hospital which makes it possible to calculate the value of a limit for a fraction where the numerator and the denominator tighten both towards zero.

He is also the author of the first book known on the differential infinitesimal calculus: Analysis of the Infinitely smalls for the Intelligence of the Curved Lines . Published in 1696, its texts comprise conferences of its professor Jean Bernoulli where Bernoulli discusses of the unspecified form “ $\ frac {0} {0} \,$ ”.

He was married with Marie-Charlotte de Romilley of Chesnelaye, also mathematician and became member of the Academy of Science in 1693.

Orthographical remark

Its name is written also Hospital . As opposed to what one could believe, the Circumflex accent is not an anachronism: if its book does not comprise a name of author, his/her friend Varignon, in the complements which it published in the book (1725), written always its name with the circumflex accent, and in the encyclopedia of Alembert-Diderot, it is “the Hospital” which one finds, without accent nor S.

See too

Mathematical in Europe at the XVIIe century

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Guillaume François Antoine, marquis of the Hospital

Orthographical remark

See too

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