1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sturm, Jacques Charles François

STURM, JACQUES CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1803–1855), French mathematician, of German extraction, was born at Geneva on the 29th of September 1803. Originally tutor to the son of Mme de Staël, he resolved, with his schoolfellow Colladon, to try his fortune in Paris, and obtained employment on the Bulletin universel. In 1829 he discovered the theorem, regarding the determination of the number of real roots of a numerical equation included between given limits, which bears his name (see Equation, V.), and in the following year he was appointed professor of mathematics at the Collège Rollin. He was chosen a member of the Académie des Sciences in 1836, became " répétiteur " in 1838, and in 1840 professor in the École Polytechnique, and finally succeeded S. D. Poisson in the chair of mechanics in the Faculté des Sciences at Paris. His works, Cours d'analyse de I'école polytechnique (1857–1863) and Cours de mécanique de l'école polytechnique (1861), were published after his death at Paris on the 18th of December 1855.