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Georges-Louis
Leclerc, Comte
de Buffon
1707-1788
Buffon’s Life
-eldest of five children
-born into a wealthy family, mother was well-educated
-Georges-louis Leclerc was his name until 1725
-his mother inherited a large sum of money when Georges
was ten years old that allowed his father, benjamin, to
become lord of Buffon and Montbard
-Georges attended Jesuit College of Godrans in Dijon
-brothers joined the church but Georges’s father wanted
him to study law
-didn’t do well in school, but did show talent for
mathematics
Buffon’s Life Continued
-At age 20, he began calling
himself Georges-louis Leclerc
de Buffon and also discovered
the binomial theorem
-one of the most powerful
figures in the court of King
Louis XV
-July 1739: appointed as
keeper of the royal botanical
garden (Jardin du Roi)
-expanded gardens to current
64 acres
Histoire Naturelle
-encyclopedia account
of natural world
-wanted to have 50
volumes but only 36
completed before death
Modern Scientific Mind
-Buffon believed that things happened through natural
phenomena
-Rejected Newton’s idea that planets’ motions were
direct consequence of god’s intervention
-Instead believed that the creation of the planets
involved a collision of a comet with the sun
-Model doesn’t work, but at least his model followed the
law of mechanics
-Believed that life came about on earth through the
appearance of organic matter
-“first to create an autonomous science, free of any
theological influence”
Buffon vs. Linnaeus
Linnaeus and most contemporaries had biblical
understanding of nature, thought species survived
unchanged from god’s creation in garden of eden
Buffon thought it was ridiculous to imagine god being
“very busy with the way a beetle’s wings should fold”, he
believed species were groups of animals that were
breeding together and changing over time
Linnaeus was inventing classification while Buffon
was more interested in habitat and behavior,
predicting sciences like ecology and ethology (200 years
in future)
Buffon Linnaeus Rivalry
Buffon enjoyed pointing out flaws in Linnaeus’s
classifications, like putting both humans and two-toed
sloths in the anthropomorpha order
Linnaeus named a weed genus Buffonia
Work with Probability
Origin of “stochastic”
probability
-“Stochastic”: a variety of
techniques that are based on a
common feature: using random
numbers to make predictions
possible
Famous needle experiment:
-repeatedly tossed a needle at
random onto a board ruled with
parallel straight lines
- derived probability that the
needle would intersect a line
Probability
Buffon made the leap from probabilities calculated by
counting (discrete sample spaces) to probability involving
measuring
First person to use geometry and newly invented tools of
calculus to study probability
Age of the Earth
Believed that earth originated as a fireball, solidifying as it
cooled down
Experiment: estimating the age of the earth
Different size balls of molten iron, watched how long they
took to cool down
Numbers he came up with: 10 million years-75,000 years
(final estimate)
Opened eyes of educated people to vast span of geologic
time
Beginning of the end of the idea that everything was created
just 6,000 years ago, to the garden of Eden
Buffon Criticized
-not greatly admired during his lifetime
-criticized by Voltaire and others
-snubs from mathematicians, chemists, astronomers,
naturalists
-public admired him, however
-he reacted with dignity, didn’t get into disputes
-Darwin later praised him as the first person to treat
evolutionary ideas “in a scientific spirit”
-opened the door for evolutionary thinking
-he was mostly forgotten except for…
A statue of Georges-louis Leclerc, Comte de
Buffon in the Jardin du Roi
Summary
• Buffon had a modern scientific mind and
was very forward thinking
• He and Linnaeus were rivals
• He wrote 36 volumes of Histoire
Naturelle
• He did a lot of work with probability and
determining the age of the earth
• He was criticized in his time and largely
forgotten
References
•
•
Conniff, Richard. "Forgotten, Yes. But Happy Birthday Anyway." The New York Times
30 Dec. 2007: 5. Academic Search Premier. 14 Sept. 2008
<http://researchport.umd.edu:80/v/7u897ehvvq1318dyih2ycrjd6r1ak6eemiugprq3myld1
8a1le-18500?func=quick-3&shortformat=002&set_number=024093&set_entry=000002&format=999>.
•
"Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon." University of California Museum of
Paleontology. 15 Sept. 2008
<http://http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/buffon2.html>.
•
Gianpietro Malescio. "Predicting with Unpredictability." Nature 434 (2005): 1073.
Academic Search Premier. 14 Sept. 2008
<http://researchport.umd.edu:80/v/agi534uanjsjdv2u1nnmve1vfnbkd2uuxsakvvahf4limh
ftcq-27681?func=quick-3&shortformat=002&set_number=024181&set_entry=000001&format=999>.
•
O'Connor, JJ, and EF Robertson. "Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon." The
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. University of St. Andrews Scotland. 13
Sept. 2008 <http://http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/biographies/buffon.html>.
•
Turner, Paul. "Coin on a Chessboard." Australian Mathematics Teacher 62 (2006): 12.
Academic Search Premier. 14 Sept. 2008
<http://researchport.umd.edu:80/v/agi534uanjsjdv2u1nnmve1vfnbkd2uuxsakvvahf4limh
ftcq-04701?func=quick-3&short
format=002&set_number=024220&set_entry=000002&format=999>.