BEST COLUMN. AN HISTORICAL PROBLEM OF LEONHARD EULER

摘要

This communication deals with an historical problem, which raises back to the age of Renaissance, when the scholars used to study the architecture of ancient palaces and temples. In particular, Leonardo da Vinci had asked what would be, for a given volume of a given material, the maximal height of a cylindrical column which would not bend or fall under the action of its own weight, and posibly the action of a load which it would support at its top.