Calculated Pressure of Aspiration

If you ask any process engineer, what the Bernoulli equation is, they will tell you that this equation can be used to calculate the flow (especially pressure and velocity) of media in pipes. This equation is in a way the core of process engineering.

But who was Bernoulli? Or even to be more precise: But who were the Bernoullis?

We all know of families, where a big majority of the members are highly talented in a certain field. The Bernoulli family was such a family. Of 14 men in three generations within this family 10 were mathematicians or physicists. Quite a lot of them were even Professors and got famous for their work. But since we are interested in the Bernoulli equation, I want to focus on “just” three of them:

Jakob and Johann, who were brothers and Daniel, who was Johann’s son. Jakob was 12 years older than Johann and was born in 1655 in Basel. He was the first to be interested in the science of math. He was pretty bright and was the one to encourage his brother Johann to follow his steps.

Johann was intrigued by the guidance and since he was also a smart and bright person himself, he lived up to the challenge. But it became quickly more than just a simple competition between two brothers, it became a deeply serious math battle. Even though they worked in very similar fields, they would never publish any paper together. The even disputed the findings of the other in public. Both were described as “self‐willed, obstinate, aggressive, vindictive, beset by feelings of inferiority, and yet firmly convinced of their own abilities” by a biographer. Unfortunately, besides of their intellectual talents this assessment does not shine a good light on the two.

Since Jakob was the senior, he got the call to get Professor at the Basel University. Of course Johann wanted to be professor as well, but he had to settle with Groningen in 1695. He had married before and now founded his own family. They had three sons, which would later all become mathematicians as well. Actually Johann tried to dissuade his sons from this career, but failed. The brightest of the three was the middle one called Daniel.

In 1705 Jakob died and for Johann it was really important to succeed him as the Professor in Basel, even though at the time other very attractive offers were made from other Universities in Europe. While now time had settled his dispute with his brother, Johann wasn’t happy without an academic enemy. So, he envied on his own son Daniel. They participated in math competitions together. One year they both won and had to share the first price. Johann was so jealous that he disowned Daniel because of this incident.

Daniel was a close friend of Leonard Euler. While the relationship with his father was toxic the one with Euler wasn’t. Together they made a lot of research together and this resulted (between other achievements) in the known equation. Daniel published it in his book “Hydrodynamica” in 1738.

His father again was really jealous of this achievement and wrote the book “Hydraulica”. He copied parts of his son’s book and predated “Hydraulica” to defame Daniel as a plagiarist.

For me the purpose in life is more than professional success. If you are only focussed on the competition, you will never real satisfaction. Johann has been eaten up by his insanely ambition and this had not just hurt himself but also his family. For all his academic brilliance, I would take him as a bad example for human behaviour.

We don’t know his full reasons, but let’s try not be drawn too deep into the pressure of aspiration. I would always chose valuable personal relationships over fame.?

PS: I just saw another pulse on the Bernoulli family here on linkedin.