The German edition of Robins with Euler's mathematics
Leonhard Euler, working at the Berlin Academy, thought Robins' New Principles of Gunnery so important that he translated it into German with his own commentary, which was twice the length of the original text. Neue Grundsätze der Artillerie, Berlin, 1745, became the reference treatise of artillery mathematics of the second half of the 18th century: Euler applied to air resistance analysis and integral equations and gave approximate solutions to the trajectory problem with resistance, where Robins had confined himself to measurements.
A rare example in which a great pure mathematician spends years on a specific engineering problem set by the army. Both sides gained: gunners got tables with air resistance, mathematics got a working example of the applied use of differential equations.
Why this date
exact: Berlin, 1745.
What it grew from
-
The ballistic pendulum and air resistance
improved · Confidence: high
Euler put his own mathematical apparatus and appendices into the translation of Robins; the Neue Grundsätze der Artillerie of 1745 stands directly on the New Principles of Gunnery of 1742.
Link sources
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Benjamin Robins» Verified 5 Oct 2026
The New Principles of Gunnery was rated highly by Euler who translated it into German, adding his own commentary, and the translation was published in Berlin in 1745.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Benjamin Robins» Verified 5 Oct 2026
Node sources
- MacTutor History of Mathematics, «Benjamin Robins» Verified 5 Oct 2026
The New Principles of Gunnery was rated highly by Euler who translated it into German, adding his own commentary, and the translation was published in Berlin in 1745.
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.