Nicolaus II Bernoulli

Nicolaus II Bernoulli (1695 to 1726) was a Swiss mathematician from the Bernoulli family, born in Basel, the son of Johann Bernoulli and older brother of Daniel Bernoulli, whom he taught mathematics. He studied mathematics and law at the University of Basel from the age of 13, took a master's degree in philosophy in 1711 and a doctorate in law in 1715, and worked mostly on curves, differential equations and probability, with contributions to fluid dynamics. In 1719 he took the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua as successor to Giovanni Poleni, assisted his father in the priority disputes between Newton and Leibniz and between Johann Bernoulli and Brook Taylor, and in 1720 posed the problem of reciprocal orthogonal trajectories as a challenge to the English Newtonians. From 1723 he was a law professor at the Berner Oberen Schule, and in 1725 he and Daniel were invited to the newly founded St Petersburg Academy, where he died of a fever eight months after his appointment.