RECORDS 



OF 



GENERAL SCIENCE. 



Article I. 



Biography of M. Le Comte Lagrange.^ ByM, Delambre. 



Joseph Louis Lagrange, one of the founders of the 

 Academy of Turin, Director during twenty years of the 

 Academy of Berlin, for the physico-mathematical sciences, 

 Foreign Associate of the Academy of sciences of Paris, 

 member of the Institute of France and of the board of lon- 

 gitude, Senator and Count of the Empire, Grand Officer of 

 the Legion of Honor and Grand Cross of the imperial order 

 of the re-union, was born at Turin on the 25th of January, 

 1736. His father was Joseph Louis Lagrange, Treasurer 

 of War ; his mother, Maria Theresa Gros, only daughter 

 of a wealthy physician of Cambiano. 



His great-grandfather, captain of cavalry in the service 

 of France, had gone over to that of Emmanual XL, King of 

 Sardinia. Through the latter he was fixed at Turin, by 

 marriage with a lady Conti, of an illustrious Roman family : 

 he was of Parisian extraction, and relative of one Maria 

 Louisa, tire-woman of the mother of Louis XIV., and 

 afterwards wife of Francois Gaston de Bethune.f 



These details are of no importance to the illustrious 

 Geometer, whose renown dispenses with shewing forth a 

 genealogy, but not so to France. She is eager to recal 

 him, and re-establish him under her ancient sovereignty. 

 His own name, and that of his mother also, attest a French 

 origin ; all his works are written in French ; the city 



• From Silliman's American Journal, xxx. 64. 

 t Eulogy of Lagrange by Cassali. Padua, 1813. 

 VOL. IV. B 



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