New insight into optimization and variational problems in the 17th century

Abstract

First, a synopsis of the major changes of natural science, mathematics and philosophy within the 17th century shall highlight the birth of the new age of science and technology. Based on Fermat's principle of the shortest light‐way and Galilei's first attempt of an approximative solution of the so‐called Brachistochrone problem using a quarter of the circle, Johann Bernoulli published a competition for this problem in 1696, and six solutions were submitted by the most famous scientists of the time and published in 1697, even though the variational calculus was only published in 1744 by Euler for the first time. Especially the analytical solution of Jakob Bernoulli contains already the main idea of Euler's variational calculus, i.e. to vary only one function value at a time using a finite difference method and proceeding to the infinitesimal limit. Also Leibniz' geometric solution is very remarkable, realizing a direct discrete variational method geometrically which was invented numerically much later in the 19th century by Ritz and Galerkin and generalized to the finite element method by introducing test and trial functions in finite subspaces. A new finite element solution of the non‐linear Brachistochrone problem concludes the paper. It is important to recognize that besides the roots of variational calculus also the first formulations of conservation laws in mechanics and their applications originated in the 17th century.