Daniel bernoulli (1700-1782) Swiss mathematician, son of Johann Bernoulli, who showed that as the velocity of a fluid increases, the pressure decreases, a statement known as the Bernoulli principle. He won the annual prize of the French Academy ten times for work on vibrating strings, ocean tides, and the kinetic theory of gases. For one of these victories, he was ejected from his jealous father's house, as his father had also submitted an entry for the prize. His kinetic theory proposed that the properties of a gas could be explained by the motions of its particles. He was the first person to encounter the functions today known as Bessel functions. With his brother Nicholas Bernoulli, he discussed the Saint Petersburg paradox.