t that was present in this group, Roberval was the only one who went on to become a professional mathematician. In 1632, Roberval was made professor of philosophy at the College Gervais in Paris. Then in 1634, he was given the Ramus chair of mathematics in the College Royale. This basically meant he was in head of the math department at the college. One of Roberval's greatest accomplishments was being elected to the Academie Royal des Sciences in 1666. He was one of the founding members of the Academie. During his life, Roberval worked on many topics. He was a supporter of the geometry of infinitesimals, which he said was created by Archimedes. Roberval was unaware of the work that Cavalieri had done. Roberval wrote a book about finding areas called Traite des Indivisibles. The Academie published this with a collection of works. Roberval wrote treatises on algebra and analytic geometry. He is known as the father of kinematic geometry because of his work with the "composition of movements". This is most useful in finding tangents. Probably the most famous invention of Roberval's would be the Roberval balance, which is used almost everywhere today. He also helped Italy with the barometric experiments, and worked with Pascal on the vacuum apparatus and experiments. Unfortunately, during his life Roberval did not achieve much notoriety because his work took place at the same time as Fermat and Pascal. Roberval also worked on curves. Among his most famous are: the Cycloid, the Limacon of Pascal, the Cissoid of Diocles, and the Folium of Descartes. Cycloid: The cycloid is the locus of a point at distance h from the center of a circle radius a that rolls along a straight line. If h * a it is a curtate cycloid while if h * a it is a prolate cycloid. This curve has a = h. Limacon of Pascal: This curve was discovered by Etienne Pascal, the father of Blaise Pascal. However, it was named by Roberval in 1650 when he used it as an example of his meth...
