Editing Marc-Antoine Parseval

{{Short description|French mathematician (1755–1836)}}
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| birth_date        = {{Birth date|1755|04|27|df=y}}
| birth_place       = [[Rosières-aux-Salines]], [[France]]
| death_date        = {{Death date and age|1836|08|16|1755|04|27|df=y}}
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| fields            = [[Mathematics]]
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| known_for         = [[Parseval's theorem]]<br>[[Parseval's identity]]
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'''Marc-Antoine Parseval''' des Chênes (27 April 1755 &ndash; 16 August 1836) was a French [[mathematician]], most famous for what is now known as [[Parseval's theorem]], which showed that the [[Fourier transform]] is [[Unitary operator|unitary]].

He was born in [[Rosières-aux-Salines]], [[France]], into an aristocratic French family, and married Ursule Guerillot in 1795, but divorced her soon after. A monarchist opposed to the [[French Revolution]], imprisoned in 1792, Parseval later fled the country for publishing poetry critical of the government of [[Napoleon I of France|Napoleon]].

Later, he was nominated to the [[French Academy of Sciences]] five times, from 1796 to 1828, but was never elected. His only mathematical publications were apparently five papers, published in 1806 as ''Mémoires présentés à l'Institut des Sciences, Lettres et Arts, par divers savants, et lus dans ses assemblées. Sciences mathématiques et physiques. (Savants étrangers.)''  This combined the following earlier monographs:

# "Mémoire sur la résolution des équations aux différences partielles linéaires du second ordre," (5 May 1798).
# "Mémoire sur les séries et sur l'intégration complète d'une équation aux différences partielles linéaires du second ordre, à coefficients constants," (5 April 1799).
# "Intégration générale et complète des équations de la propagation du son, l'air étant considéré avec ses trois dimensions," (5 July 1801).
# "Intégration générale et complète de deux équations importantes dans la mécanique des fluides," (16 August 1803).
# "Méthode générale pour sommer, par le moyen des intégrales définies, la suite donnée par le théorème de M. Lagrange, au moyen de laquelle il trouve une valeur qui satisfait à une équation algébrique ou transcendante," (7 May 1804).

It was in the second 1799, memoir in which he stated, but did not prove (claiming it to be self-evident), the theorem that now bears his name.  He further expanded it upon his 1801 memoir, and used it to solve various [[differential equation]]s. The theorem was first printed in 1800 as a part (p.&nbsp;377) of ''Traité des différences et des séries'' by [[Sylvestre Lacroix|Lacroix]].

==See also==
*[[Parseval's identity]]
*[[Parseval's theorem]]

==References==
* {{MacTutor Biography|id= Parseval}}
*{{cite web | url = http://home.pacbell.net/hubertk/Eight_Mathematical.pdf | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080906165944/http://home.pacbell.net/hubertk/Eight_Mathematical.pdf | url-status = dead | archive-date = 6 September 2008 | title = Eight Mathematical Biographies | author = Hubert Kennedy | year = 2002 | publisher = Peremptory Publications | location = San Francisco | accessdate = 25 November 2009 }}

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[[Category:1755 births]]
[[Category:1836 deaths]]
[[Category:18th-century French mathematicians]]
[[Category:19th-century French mathematicians]]