Mathematician and physicist — Johann Samuel König (Büdingen 1712 – Zuilenstein, Netherlands, 1757) was a German mathematician and physicist, a pupil of the Bernoullis at Basel and influenced by the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff. He worked as a tutor and teacher in the Netherlands and Germany, working on analytical mechanics and the debate over vis viva (kinetic energy). His name is linked to König’s theorem, which decomposes the kinetic energy of a system of particles into the motion of the centre of mass plus motion relative to it. He was also the protagonist of a famous and bitter controversy with Maupertuis, president of the Berlin Academy, over the authorship of the principle of least action.
Trivia
König claimed that the principle of least action had already been formulated by Leibniz in a letter; unable to produce the original, he was overwhelmed by the ensuing dispute, which also drew in Voltaire and Euler, without the matter ever being fully clarified.
Theories and contributions
- König’s theorem — The kinetic energy of a system is the sum of that of the centre of mass and that relative to it: .
- Debate on the principle of least action — Contributed to the eighteenth-century discussion on vis viva and on the Leibnizian origin of the principle of least action.
Featured in chapters
Linked atoms
3 linked atoms.