From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics’ (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball.
Leonhard Euler was born at Bâle on April 15, 1707, and died
at St. Petersburg on September 7, 1783. he was the son of a Lutheran
minister who had settled at Bâle, and was educated in his native town
under the direction of John Bernoulli, with whose sons Daniel and
Nicholas he formed a lifelong friendship. When, in 1725, the younger
Bernoullis went to Russia, on the invitation of the empress, they
procured a place there for Euler, which in 1733 he exchanged for the
chair of mathematics, then vacated by Daniel Bernoulli. The severity of
the climate affected his eyesight, and in 1735 he lost the use of one
eye completely. In 1741 he moved to Berlin at the request, or rather
command, of Frederick the Great; here he stayed till 1766, when he
returned to Russia, and was succeeded at Berlin by Lagrange. Within two
or three years of his going back to St. Petersburg he became blind; but
in spite of this, and although his house, together with many of his
papers, were burnt in 1771, he recast and improved most of his earlier
works. He died of apoplexy in 1783. He was married twice.
I think we may sum up Euler’s work by saying that he created a good
deal of analysis, and revised almost all the branches of pure
mathematics which were then known, filling up the details, adding
proofs, and arranging the whole in a consistent form. Such work is very
important, and it is fortunate for science when it fall into hands as
competent as those of Euler.