by Ciprian Plăiașu
Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega was born on the 23rd of March 1754, being a simple farmer`s son in a small village East of Ljubljana, within a national minority – this was the status of the Slovenians at that time within the Habsburg Empire. Jurij was part of a large family and his parents had kept him in school for a just short period of time. He started his studies in Moravče and right from the beginning his teachers observed he had a genius for exact sciences. Yet, in 1767 he had to take his life into his own hands. His mother, left all alone, didn`t want to keep him in school anymore and Jurij, a teenager at that time, had decided to join the gymnasium at the Jesuit School. When Pope Clement XIV disbanded the school, his teacher recommended him to continue the studies at the Ljubljana High School, which he did. In 1775 he was already a navigation engineer and one of the brightest in his job. A list with the question he received at his final exam, tentamen philosophicum, was preserved and can be seen today at the Math Library in Ljubljana. The subjects cover a large area of fields: logics, algebra, metaphysics, geometry, trigonometry, geodesy, stereometry, the geometry of curves, ballistics, general and special physics.
The years spent in the Army of the Habsburg Empire
Jurij Vega realized that he was unable to go very far
with his job, so a few years later, he followed his passion for math and
decided to voluntarily join the imperial army to be able to teach at the
Artillery School in Wien. This is the point when he renounced his original name
Veha and started signing by Vega.
After his first year of teaching he was already promoted
a sub-lieutenant. He was a talented teacher and writer who had a great ability
for mathematical calculations. He soon realized that teaching math was
difficult because there were no good manuals available at that time. This is
why he started writing. His first math book was published right that year, in
1782 and was called Vorlesungen über die Mathematik (Math teachings). Up
to his death in 1802, four more volumes of this book were to be published.
Before the publishing of the second volume, Jurij Vega has also published the
first book of logarithms tables: Logarithmische, trigonometrische, und
andere zum Gebrauche der Mathematik eingerichtete Tafeln und Formeln (1783).
These logarithms books made the Slovenian mathematician famous until the
emergence of the computer.
He was calculating logarithms with cannon balls pinging
over his head
In 1787, Jurij Vega married young Josefa Swoboda, the
daughter of a Czech nobleman. He continued to be preoccupied with math, with
the publishing of various works and with the teaching of exact sciences. The
next year we find him on the battlefield during the war between the Habsburg
Empire and the Ottomans. He participated under the command of field marshal
Ernst Gideon von Laudon (1717–1790) at the Belgrade siege. The cannon lead by
Jurij Vega had an important contribution in the conquest of this fortress
His remarkable calculating ability brought him a world
record: the calculation of π with 143 decimals – 126 out of them being
accurate. Nevertheless, his record lasted more than 50 years. He continued to
publish all sorts of math works, logarithms tables and also he served the
imperial army on the battlefield. Between the years 1793 – 1797, he had
participated in several confrontations between the armies of the European
coalition and the French revolutionaries, under the command of General
Dagobert- Sigismond de Wurmser (1724–1797): Fort Louis, Mannheim, Mainz, Wiesbaden,
Kehl and Dietz. In the 1795 Mannheim battle he was responsible for introducing
a new type of cannon that had a range much bigger than that of all the other
models used back then.
In this same period of time he had also published the Thesaurus
logarithmorum completus, one of his table books that remained a reference
in the history of this subject.
1800 is one of his most difficult years. His wife died suddenly and after a few weeks his daughter Maria Theresa passed away too. Left with the two boys, the empress granted him the imperial baron title.
The strange death of a great scholar
His death was suspicious and mysterious. On the 17th of
September 1802, he was declared missing in mission. A few days later his body
was found in the Danube waters, at Nussdorf, near Wien. The official cause of
death was accidental, but there were suspicions that he either committed
suicide, or that he was murdered. The best known theory is the one implying
that he was killed by a miller man while he was negotiating the buying of a
horse. Unfortunately this presumption was not verified, yet it is said that,
one year later, the compass engraved with the letters J.V. was fond in the
mill.
The Slovenian mathematician`s particular contributions
were recognized also during his time – he was a member of the Berlin Academy,
of the Prague and Erfurt Academy, but also afterwards. For example, the
asteroid 14966, discovered in 1997, was named Jurig Vega, to honor this great
mathematician. Yet, in the era of speed and computers, when we can calculate
thousands of decimals for π, it is a shame not to remember a man who has built
his destiny in all honesty and glory, and who can represent a model of passion
and tenacity for any of us.
