"Improper" Integral

1. Dec 6, 2014

sbcdave

Does anyone know who coined the term "Improper" Integral, and why they chose the word improper? I couldn't find anything on the etymology of it via searching here or searching google, duckduckgo, and yahoo. Thanks for any info or direction to info.

2. Dec 6, 2014

Staff: Mentor

Don't know who coined it, but they chose "improper" I suppose because it wasn't a proper integral; i.e., one where the integrand was defined on the closed interval represented in the limits of integration.

3. Dec 6, 2014

Staff: Mentor

If I had to guess I'd say Lebesque. His name comes up when you search it more than Cauchy or Riemann. However, like a lot of math the coiner is some later mathematical descendent who rediscovers and popularizes the work and coins some key ideas in the process.

4. Dec 6, 2014

sbcdave

So true. Like Gauss' law. Which Newton discovered, in principle, 100 years before Gauss, and someone else probably discovered before Newton.

Thank for the replies.