Stanislav Vydra (13 November 1741 in

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– 2 December 1804 in

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) was a

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priest, writer, and mathematician.

Life

Vydra entered the Jesuit

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of Hradec Králové in 1757. After two years in Brno, he studied philosophy and mathematics from 1762 to 1764 at

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. His teachers included

Joseph Stepling Joseph Stepling (29 June 1716 – 11 July 1778) was a Bohemian Society of Jesus, Jesuit priest, astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. Stepling founded the Clementinum Observatory in Prague in 1751 fitted with the best instruments available in t ...

and Jan Tesánek. In 1765, he went as a teacher to

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and became Stepling's assistant a year later. He ministered as parish priest in Vilémov from 1771 to 1772. In 1772, Vydra was appointed professor of mathematics in

in Prague. Here he taught until 1773. From 1789 to 1799, he was appointed to the mathematics faculty and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts. He became the rector of the university in 1800. He went blind in 1803 and died one year later. He is buried in Prague at the

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in Prague.

Teachings

Stanislav Vydra taught elementary mathematics, a compulsory subject for the students at the philosophical faculty since 1752. He published “Elementa calcvli differentialis et integralis” in 1783, which became a well-known calculus textbook in Prague. After his death, his pupil and successor Josef Ladislav Jandera published his book Pocátkowé Arytmetyky, which was the first text book of elementary mathematics in

Selected works

*Historia Matheseos in Bohemia et Moravia cultae, 1778 *Elementa Calcvli Differentialis, et Integralis, 1783 *Počátkowé Arytmetyky, 1806

References

*Between elementary mathematics and national wiedergeburt – 274 sides, Broschur *George Schuppener, Karel Macek: Stanislav Vydra (1741–1804),

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publishing house (2004) {{DEFAULTSORT:Vydra, Stanislav 1741 births 1804 deaths Czech Jesuits Czech male writers Czech mathematicians People from Hradec Králové Academic staff of Charles University