Joseph Louis Lagrange was a famous mathematician and astronomer, born in Italy towards the beginning of the eighteenth century. His great- grandfather was French, who settled in Turin after marrying an Italian woman. As a result, Italy considers him to be an Italian while France claims that he was French. As a young man, Lagrange was sent to the University of Turin to study law but by a quirk of fate, he came across a paper by Edmond Halley, the English astronomer-cum-mathematician and became engrossed in it. Subsequently, he began to study mathematics on his own. His fist paper was published at the age of eighteen and by nineteen he became assistant professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Turin. Later he was invited to Berlin Academy, where he served for twenty years. Thereafter, he joined Académie des Sciences, Paris, on the invitation of Louis XVI and remained there till the end of his career. He was honored by both the aristocracy and the revolutionary governments that took over the reign after the French Revolution. He was made a Senator by Napoleon.