Person: Fuss, Nicolaus

Nikolai Fuss was a Swiss mathematician whose most important contribution was as amanuensis to Euler after he lost his sight.

Fuss arrived in St Petersburg in Russia in May 1773 to take up this post and he spent the rest of his life in Russia.
In 1774, the year after Fuss arrived in St Petersburg to work with Euler, he published Instruction détaillée pour porter les lunettes de toutes les différentes espèces au plus haut degré de perfection dont elles sont susceptibles tirée de la théorie dioptrique de Mr Euler le père et mise a la portée de tous les ouvriers en ce genre.
Fuss's book was not a best seller and never ran to a second edition.
Fuss's first papers were written under Euler's direction and dealt with problems in insurance.
In 1776, in addition to his other duties, Fuss became an assistant at the St Petersburg Academy and, in 1783, academician in higher mathematics.
From 1790 Fuss was professor of mathematics at the Marine Corps in Petersburg, then from 1800 to 1826 he was permanent secretary to the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg.
It was in this role that Fuss wrote to Gauss offering him a post at the Academy.
Most of Fuss's papers are solutions to problems posed by Euler on spherical geometry, trigonometry, series, differential geometry and differential equations.
Fuss also worked on geometrical problems of Apollonius and Pappus.
Fuss won other prizes from Sweden and Denmark.

Born 30 January 1755, Basel, Switzerland. Died 4 January 1826, St Petersburg, Russia.

View full biography at MacTutor

Astronomy, Origin Switzerland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive