Foundling, geometer, philosophe: Jean le Rond d’Alembert was left on the steps of a Paris church and rose to co-edit the Encyclopédie and give mechanics the principle that bears his name. Joseph Bertrand’s D’Alembert covers the mathematics, the salons, the friendship and quarrels with Rousseau and Voltaire, and the long partnership with Julie de Lespinasse.
Bertrand, secretary of the Académie des sciences, writes with wit worthy of his subject. Download the free EPUB, in French, for the Enlightenment’s great geometer-philosophe entire.