Rodrigues' formula
Formula for the Legendre polynomials / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the 3-dimensional rotation formula, see Rodrigues' rotation formula.
In mathematics, Rodrigues' formula (formerly called the Ivory–Jacobi formula) generates the Legendre polynomials. It was independently introduced by Olinde Rodrigues (1816), Sir James Ivory (1824) and Carl Gustav Jacobi (1827). The name "Rodrigues formula" was introduced by Heine in 1878, after Hermite pointed out in 1865 that Rodrigues was the first to discover it. The term is also used to describe similar formulas for other orthogonal polynomials. Askey (2005) describes the history of the Rodrigues formula in detail.