Gabriel Lamé

From Free net encyclopedia

Gabriel Lamé (July 22, 1795, Tours, France - May 1, 1870, Paris, France) was a French mathematician. He was well known for his notation and study of classes of ellipse-like curves, now known as Lamé curves:

<math> \left|\,{x\over a}\,\right|^n + \left|\,{y\over b}\,\right|^n =1 </math>

where n is any positive real number.

He is also known for his running time analysis of the Euclidean algorithm. Using Fibonacci numbers, he proved that when finding the gcd of integers a and b, the algorithm runs in no more than 5k steps, where k is the number of (decimal) digits of b. He also proved a special case of Fermat's last theorem. He actually thought that he found a complete proof for the theorem, but his proof was flawed.

The Lamé functions are part of the theory of ellipsoidal harmonics.