Jacob Bernoulli was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Swiss Bernoulli family. He sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy and was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus, which he made numerous contributions to; along with his brother Johann, he was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.

Acta Eruditorum was the first scientific journal of the German-speaking lands of Europe, published from 1682 to 1782.