Mathematician
Jacob Bernoulli
The reluctant theologian who proved, mathematically, why flipping enough coins tells you the truth — then had his own tombstone carved wrong
Working largely in private against his family's wishes, Jacob Bernoulli proved what he called his 'golden theorem' -- now the law of large numbers -- giving probability theory a rigorous foundation for the first time. This bio also covers his bitter, public feud with his own brother Johann over calculus priority, his other foundational work on infinite series and the Bernoulli numbers, and the posthumous publication of his masterwork Ars Conjectandi in 1713, eight years after his death, alongside the famous mistake stonemasons made carving his tombstone's logarithmic spiral.