Bidbo Chunio

From Almeopedia

Bidbo Chunio [ˈbɪd bɔ ˈtʃju ni ɔ] was a flaidish scientist, best known for discovering calculus.

The flaids do not normally have surnames; Chunio was his given name, and the only name that appears on his publications. Bidbo 'studious' was a nickname he acquired at school; it's properly lowercased: bidbo Chunio. In Verdurian he is known as Čunio Bidbo; in Kebreni as Bidbo Cunio.

He was born in 3285 in a small village near Festnap, of a line of poor fisherfolk. Like most flaids, he attended school, where his teacher Sellick noticed his aptitude for mathematics. At the age of 13 his parents took him back to help with the fishing; he was said to be useless at this, and refused ever after to set foot on a boat-- which of course isolated him to Flora. Sellick finally prevailed on his parents to let him finish his education in Festnap. A friend of Sellick's was an optician, and for some years employed Chunio to grind lenses. Chunio made both telescopes and microscopes for himself, and learned Verdurian, Caďinor, and Kebreni in order to read scientific literature.

He studied in Syxesteer, where he became interested in debates over the speed of light. He agreed with the prevailing opinion that it was infinite, based on simple tests of lights seemingly instantly reaching over many kilometers. But when he heard of the astronomer Linchunys Nollerio's puzzling observations of the moons of Hírumor-- their period seemed to vary depending on location of Almea relative to Hírumor-- he applied the concept of a finite speed of light. In his first published paper (3317), he calculated this as 990,000 caimicar per piya.

Over the next years he studied many problems, from the nature of light (he inclined to the new wave theory), to the behavior of pendulums, to the behavior of gases-- he was fascinated by the Ismaîn invention of the air pump, and in 3345 made the first statement that gas pressure and volume vary in inverse proportion.

Unlike most flaids, he was serious and taciturn, and had a wide competitive streak. Bidbo was only his polite nickname; behind his back he was called luckit 'human-like'. He frequently broke off relations with collaborators and held grudges for years. He fell in love with Sellick's daughter; when she rejected him in the 3320s he betrayed no sign of his emotions, but never pursued another romance.

He became interested in the problem of finding tangents to a curve, and in 3342 published a method based on finding the hypotenuse of a small triangle formed by considering two "adjacent points" on the curve, an idea equivalent to using infinitesimals. He was annoyed to discover the same method in a book on celestial mechanics published the previous year by a young Érenati scientist, Äron Nošcerey. This began a twenty-year rivalry between the two: the fierce, driven flaid and the careless, charming, brilliant human.

If we assign the discovery of calculus to Chunio (specifically, the statement of the fundamental theorem in his Korbitys ʔujer, 3345) and the theory of gravity to Nošcerey (who published its basic formula in 3359), it is mostly in recognition of the focus of their work. Each was deeply involved in the other's fields, and corrected the other's errors. In Chunio's case, this was done with the maximum of contemptuous disregard; but he eagerly opened any package that contained a new work of his rivals, and barely rested till he had read it, making copious notes in the margins. Chunio is credited with pointing out that gravity explained not only the orbits of the planets, but the fall of bodies on Almea.

Along the way he published on many other topics, including the first full treatment of probability theory, and the formulas governing collisions.

He died in 3364; Nošcerey generously dedicated his final work on gravity (3366) to him. There is a statue of Chunio in Festnap, bent over books, his glower caught as if the sculptor had, unforgivably, interrupted his studies.