Leonhard Euler

300th anniversary of a great Swiss scholar

Leonhard Euler, one of Switzerland's outstanding scholars, was born in Basel on 15 April 1707 and went on to have a spectacular European career as a mathematician and scientist. Now Swiss Post is issuing a special stamp to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his birth.
Euler began studying at Basel University at the tender age of 13 where, also aided by private tutoring from the leading mathematician Johann Bernoulli. Leonhard Euler made such tremendous progress that in 1727, he was offered a position with the newly established Academy of Science in St. Petersburg. In 1741, Leonhard Euler moved to the Prussian Academy in Berlin, which had been revived by Friedrich II, only to return in 1766 to St. Petersburg where he died on 18 September 1783.

Author of numerous articles and textbooks

Euler was an incredibly prolific researcher and teacher, and not even losing his sight in 1771 stemmed his productive flow. The catalogue of his works comprises over 800 contributions to research, most of which were published in the journals of Europe's major academies. Although he never taught on a regular basis, he wrote numerous standard textbooks on algebra and infinitesimal calculus, mechanics, ballistics and acoustics, astronomy, theory of music and shipbuilding. In his "Lettres à une Princesse d'Allemagne", he summed up the scientific outlook of his period in terms that could be understood by the layperson.
Leonhard Euler is one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His work reveals a unique combination of broad based interests and inspired insight, tenacious pursuit of his ideas and a critical understanding of the achievements of his predecessors and contemporaries. Though Euler is mainly known as the leading mathematician of his age, his work also includes groundbreaking treatises on physics, astronomy and engineering. In addition, he conducted an extensive correspondence which provides important insight into the development of his ideas and into the eighteenth century's entire "république des lettres".

Portrait on the stamp

In 1753, the artist Emanuel Handmann (1718-1781) created the pastel on which the Leonhard Euler special stamp is based in Berlin. The pastel shows the great scientist in a remarkably spontaneous mood, dressed in a silk housecoat.

Euler's discoveries

The image of a polyhedral body at which Euler seems to be looking and the equation "e - k + f = 2" (in English, V[entices] - E[dges] + F[aces] = 2) recall one of his best-known discoveries in elementary mathematics, Euler's polyhedral formula (in our example, V = 12, E = 19 and F = 9). In a letter to his friend Christian Goldbach dated 14 November 1750, Euler first refers to the fact that the relationship between the number of edges, vertices and faces of a body is always the same. Several years later, he published and proved this relationship in the journal of the St Petersburg Academy. This was one of the first general statements about those characteristics of geometrical shapes, which are independent of relative proportions so do not vary, even when deformed. Leonhard Leonhard Euler thus founded a new branch of mathematics known as combinatorial topology.
Like several of Euler's discoveries, the polyhedron formula is one of the bestknown mathematical theorems ever. This small indication of what the impressive mind of the man in the portrait produced is intended as a contribution to perpetuating the memory of this great scholar born 300 years ago in Basel.

Postage stamps in detail

Issue: Switzerland, 6 March 2007
Design: Angelo Boog, Wallisellen
Printing: 5-color offset by Cantor Security Printing, La Loupe, France
Stamp size: 33x28 mm, Sheet: 194x 145 mm (4 rows of 5 stamps)
Perforation: 13.25:13.75

More information

PostBus Switzerland