Spiru Haret

 

Spiru C. Haret (15 February 1851 – 17 December 1912) was a Romanian Armenian mathematician, astronomer and politician.

He was born in 1851 to an old Armenian family in Jassy, capital of Moldavia, and had already published two mathematics textbooks by the time he entered the University of Bucharest in 1869. After graduation he went to the Sorbonne in Paris to write a PhD on planetary orbitals, and did major work on the n-body problem

 He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by introducing the concept of secular perturbations in relation to this.

In 1910 he published a work on Social mechanics, attempting to apply mechanical branches of mathematics to analyse a nation’s character and predict its progress, and in 1912 a study of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

As a politician, during his three terms as Minister of Education, Haret ran deep reforms, building the modern Romanian education system between 1897 and 1910. He was made a full member of the Romanian Academy in 1892.

He also founded the Astronomical observatory in Bucharest, appointing Nicolae Coculescu as its first director. The crater Haret on the Moon is named after him.

1.      Spiru Haret was known for his contribution in:

a)      Literature

b)      Physics

c)      Mechanics

2.      His origins were:

a)      Romanian and Macedonian

b)      Romanian and Armenian

c)      Romania and Croatian

3.      He wrote his PhD in:

a)      Germany

b)      England

c)      France

By Prof. Molcalut Georgeta - Florentina