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Person

Johann Samuel Koenig

Johann Samuel Koenig, a Swiss mathematician from the 18th century, is depicted with gray hair, wearing a dark coat with a white ruffled collar, set against a dark background.

Swiss mathematician (1712–1757), tutor to Émilie du Châtelet and a player in the bitter dispute over Maupertuis's principle of least action. In 1739 he calculated the angle that minimises wax in a honeycomb cell of given volume and arrived at a figure within minutes of arc of Maraldi's measurement. The agreement helped establish that bees were, in some operational sense, solving an optimisation problem.

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