Jurij Vega

Born: 23 Mars 1754 in Zagorica, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Died: 28 September 1802 in Vienna, Austria

    The parents of Jurij Vega (the German version of his name was Georg Freiherr von Vega)were poor farmers, his father dying when Jurij was 6 years old. He attended school in Ljubljana until the age of 19 when he became a navigational engineer. He entered military service in 1780 as professor of mathematics at the Artillery School in Vienna. He was a talented teacher and writer, with a great skill as a calculator.

    Vega wrote on artillery but he is best remembered for his tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. The calculations were done with the help of soldiers who were given a gold ducat for every mistake they found. His first book of logarithms appeared in 1783. The tables Thesaurus logarithmorm completus appeared in 1794 and the 90^th edition appeared in 1924.

    Vega wrote a four volume textbook Vorlesungen über die Mathematik (1782, 1784, 1788, 1800). This book also contains trigonometric tables.

    Vega calculated p to 140 places, a record which stood for over 50 years. This appears in a paper which he published in 1789.

    In September 1802 Jurij Vega was reported missing. A search was unsuccessful until his body was found in the Danube near Vienna. The official cause of death was an accident but many suspect that he was murdered.

    Beside the coin, there are also from Slovenia, a bank note and a stamp in his honour.

You can find more about Juri here.

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