De Moivre's formula
Fórmula de De Moivre
- Date
- 1707-1730 · confidence low
- Place
- London, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Abraham de Moivre
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Huguenot mathematician Abraham de Moivre, exiled in London, develops in his trigonometric work the relationship linking the power of a complex number to the multiple angle, though he never writes it in its modern form.
The relationship appears implicitly in an 1707 paper and more clearly in 1722, but de Moivre never wrote it in the (cos x + i sin x)^n = cos nx + i sin nx notation that bears his name today.
What it led to
- Calculation of roots and powers of complex numbers
- Link between trigonometry and complex numbers
- Euler's formula and complex exponential notation