Hermann, James

, a learned mathematician of the academy of Berlin, and member of the academy of sciences at Paris, was born at Basil in 1678. He was a great traveller; and for six years was professor of mathematics at Padua. He afterwards went to Russia, being iovited thither by the Czar Peter I. in 1724, as well as his compatriot Daniel Bernoulli. On his return to his native country he was appointed professor of morality and natural law at Basil, where he died in 1733, at fifty-five years of age. He wrote several mathematical and philosophical pieces, in the Memoirs of different academies, and elsewhere; but his principal work is the “Phoronomia, or two books oh the forces and motions of both solid and fluid bodies,” 1716, 4to a very learned work on the new mathematical physics. ³