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The calculus of variations began with the work of Isaac Newton, such as with Newton's minimal resistance problem, which he formulated and solved in 1685, and later published in his Principia in 1687, [2] which was the first problem in the field to be formulated and correctly solved, [2] and was also one of the most difficult problems tackled by variational methods prior to the twentieth century.
In mathematics, the direct method in the calculus of variations is a general method for constructing a proof of the existence of a minimizer for a given functional, [1] introduced by Stanisław Zaremba and David Hilbert around 1900. The method relies on methods of functional analysis and topology. As well as being used to prove the existence of ...
For example, the problem of determining the shape of a hanging chain suspended at both ends—a catenary—can be solved using variational calculus, and in this case, the variational principle is the following: The solution is a function that minimizes the gravitational potential energy of the chain.
Malliavin calculus is also called the stochastic calculus of variations. P. Malliavin first initiated the calculus on infinite dimensional space. Then, the significant contributors such as S. Kusuoka, D. Stroock, J-M. Bismut, Shinzo Watanabe, I. Shigekawa, and so on finally completed the foundations.
In mathematics, specifically in the calculus of variations, a variation δf of a function f can be concentrated on an arbitrarily small interval, but not a single point. Accordingly, the necessary condition of extremum ( functional derivative equal zero) appears in a weak formulation (variational form) integrated with an arbitrary function δf .
The result was derived using ideas from the classical calculus of variations. [6] After a slight perturbation of the optimal control, one considers the first-order term of a Taylor expansion with respect to the perturbation; sending the perturbation to zero leads to a variational inequality from which the maximum principle follows. [7]
After obtaining the B.Sc. in 1897, he began graduate studies at Chicago in mathematical astronomy (his first publication was in that field), switching in 1898 to mathematics. He discovered his life's work, the calculus of variations, via the lecture notes of Weierstrass's 1879 course, and Bolza's teaching.
The usage of the word functional as a noun goes back to the calculus of variations, implying a function whose argument is a function. The term was first used in Hadamard's 1910 book on that subject. However, the general concept of a functional had previously been introduced in 1887 by the Italian mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra.