Joseph-Louis Lagrange not only provided brilliant analyses which were eventually to facilitate, among other things, modern-day satellites, but reveled in and put on display the sheer beauty of mathematics. One of Lagrange's works, Mécanique Analytique, has been described as a "scientific poem".

Lagrange's image is inscribed with the "Euler-Lagrange equation", a seminal differential equation in the 'calculus of variations', which concerns itself with paths, curves, and surfaces for which a given function has a stationary value.

Lagrange's portrait shares a color palette with other pioneers of calculus, including Newton, Leibniz, and Laplace,

Lagrange's image is backed by a color plot of fields surrounding points in space, overlaid by a triangle identifying and connecting 3 critical "Lagrangian points", named after Lagrange who first showed their existence.

These 3 Lagrangian points define a position in space where the pulls of two rotating gravitational bodies (such as the Earth-Moon, or Earth-sun) combine to form a point at which a third body of comparatively negligible mass would remain stationary relative to the two bodies.

Lagrangian points have proven invaluable in positioning satellites for synchronous orbit, and more recently, other Lagrangian points first thought unstable, have become the basis for 'chaotic control'. This is a relatively new technique being explored for space flight, similar to gravity assist, which may enable practical interplanetary missions -- flown with much smaller amounts of fuel.