VII. Jean Bernoulli (1744-1807), grandson of the first Jean Bernoulli, and son of the second of that name, was born at Basel on the 4th of November 1744. He studied at Basel and at Neuchâtel, and when thirteen years of age took the degree of doctor in philosophy. At nineteen he was appointed astronomer royal of Berlin. Some years after, he visited Germany, France and England, and subsequently Italy, Russia and Poland. On his return to Berlin he was appointed director of the mathematical department of the academy. Here he died on the 13th of July 1807. His writings consist of travels and astronomical, geographical and mathematical works. In 1774 he published a French translation of Leonhard Euler’s Elements of Algebra. He contributed several papers to the Academy of Berlin.
VIII. Jacques Bernoulli (1759-1789), younger brother of the preceding, and the second of this name, was born at Basel on the 17th of October 1759. Having finished his literary studies, he was, according to custom, sent to Neuchâtel to learn French. On his return he graduated in law. This study, however, did not check his hereditary taste for geometry. The early lessons which he had received from his father were continued by his uncle Daniel, and such was his progress that at the age of twenty-one he was called to undertake the duties of the chair of experimental physics, which his uncle’s advanced years rendered him unable to discharge. He afterwards accepted the situation of secretary to count de Brenner, which afforded him an opportunity of seeing Germany and Italy. In Italy he formed a friendship with Lorgna, professor of mathematics at Verona, and one of the founders of the Società Italiana for the encouragement of the sciences. He was also made corresponding member of the royal society of Turin; and, while residing at Venice, he was, through the friendly representation of Nicolaus von Fuss, admitted into the academy of St Petersburg. In 1788 he was named one of its mathematical professors.
He was tragically drowned while bathing in the Neva in July 1789, a few months after his marriage with a daughter of Albert Euler, son of Leonhard Euler.
Several of his papers are contained in the first six volumes of Nova Acta Acad. Scien. Imper. Petropol., in the Acta Helvetica, in the Memoirs of the Academies of Berlin and Turin, and in his brother John’s publications. He also published separately some juridical and physical theses, and a German translation of Mémoires du philosophe de Merian. See generally M. Cantor, Geschichte der Mathematik; J.C. Poggendorff, Biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch (1863-1904).
BERNSTEIN, AARON (1812-1884), Jewish scientist, author and reformer. In the middle of the 19th century Bernstein took an active share in the movement for synagogue reform in Germany. He was the author of two delightful Ghetto stories, Vögele der Maggid and Mendel Gibbor, being one of the originators of this genre of modern fiction. He was also a publicist, and his History of Revolution and Reaction in Germany (3 vols., 1883-1884) was a collection of important political essays.
BERNSTORFF, ANDREAS PETER, Count von (1735-1797), Danish statesman, was born at Hanover on the 28th of August 1735. His career was determined by his uncle, Johann Hartwig Ernst Bernstorff, who early discerned the talents of his nephew and induced him to study in the German and Swiss universities and travel for some years in Italy, France, England and Holland, to prepare himself for a statesman’s career. During these Wanderjahre he made the acquaintance of the poets Gellert and Jacobi, the learned Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, the duc de Choiseul, and Gottfried Achenwall, the statistician. At his uncle’s desire he rejected the Hanoverian for the Danish service, and in 1759 took his seat in the German chancery at Copenhagen. In 1767, at the same time as his uncle, he was created a count, and in 1769 was made a privy-councillor. He is described at this period as intellectual, upright and absolutely trustworthy, but obstinate and self-opinionated to the highest degree, arguing with antiquaries about coins, with equerries about horses, and with foreigners about their own countries, always certain that he was right and they wrong, whatever the discussion might be. He shared the disgrace of his uncle when Struensee came into power, but re-entered the Danish service after Struensee’s fall at the end of 1772, working at first in the financial and economical departments, and taking an especial interest in agriculture. The improvements he introduced in the tenures of his peasantry anticipated in some respects the agricultural reforms of the next generation.
In April 1773 Bernstorff was transferred to the position for which he was especially fitted, the ministry of foreign affairs, with which he combined the presidency of the German chancery (for Schleswig-Holstein). His predecessor, Adolf Siegfried Osten, had been dismissed because he was not persona grata at St Petersburg, and Bernstorff’s first official act was to conclude the negotiations which had long been pending with the grand-duke Paul as duke of Holstein-Gottorp. The result was the exchange-treaty of the 1st of June (May 21 O.S.) 1773, confirming the previous treaty of 1767 (see [Bernstorff, J.H.E.]). This was followed by the treaty of alliance between Denmark and Russia of the 12th of August 1773, which was partly a mutually defensive league, and partly an engagement between the two states to upset the new constitution recently established in Sweden by Gustavus III., when the right moment for doing so should arrive. For this mischievous and immoral alliance, which bound Denmark to the wheels of the Russian empress’s chariot and sought to interfere in the internal affairs of a neighbouring state, Bernstorff was scarcely responsible, for the preliminaries had been definitely settled in his uncle’s time and he merely concluded them. But there can be no doubt that he regarded this anti-Swedish policy as the correct one for Denmark, especially with a monarch like Gustavus III. on the Swedish throne. It is also pretty certain that the anti-Swedish alliance was Russia’s price for compounding the Gottorp difficulty.