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 6 years was professor of mathematics at Padua. He afterwards went to Russia, being invited thither by the Czar 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 55 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 on the Forces and Motions of both Solid and Fluid bodies; 4to, 1716: a very learned work on the new mathematical physics.