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The Euler–Lagrange equation was developed in connection with their studies of the tautochrone problem. The Euler–Lagrange equation was developed in the 1750s by Euler and Lagrange in connection with their studies of the tautochrone problem. This is the problem of determining a curve on which a weighted particle will fall to a fixed point in ...
Joseph-Louis Lagrange was influenced by Euler's work to contribute significantly to the theory. After Euler saw the 1755 work of the 19-year-old Lagrange, Euler dropped his own partly geometric approach in favor of Lagrange's purely analytic approach and renamed the subject the calculus of variations in his 1756 lecture Elementa Calculi ...
The Beltrami identity, named after Eugenio Beltrami, is a special case of the Euler–Lagrange equation in the calculus of variations. The Euler–Lagrange equation serves to extremize action functionals of the form [] = [, (), ′ ()],
However, the Euler–Lagrange equations can only account for non-conservative forces if a potential can be found as shown. This may not always be possible for non-conservative forces, and Lagrange's equations do not involve any potential, only generalized forces; therefore they are more general than the Euler–Lagrange equations.
A formula to determine functional derivatives for a common class of functionals can be written as the integral of a function and its derivatives. This is a generalization of the Euler–Lagrange equation : indeed, the functional derivative was introduced in physics within the derivation of the Lagrange equation of the second kind from the ...
Euler invented the calculus of variations including its most well-known result, the Euler–Lagrange equation. Euler also pioneered the use of analytic methods to solve number theory problems. In doing so, he united two disparate branches of mathematics and introduced a new field of study, analytic number theory.
A better form of the interpolation polynomial for practical (or computational) purposes is the barycentric form of the Lagrange interpolation (see below) or Newton polynomials. Lagrange and other interpolation at equally spaced points, as in the example above, yield a polynomial oscillating above and below the true function.
Implications of symmetries in a physical situation can be found with the action principle, together with the Euler–Lagrange equations, which are derived from the action principle. An example is Noether's theorem , which states that to every continuous symmetry in a physical situation there corresponds a conservation law (and conversely).