Bachet

Claude Gaspar Bachet de Méziriac

Born: 9 Oct 1581 in Bourg-en-Bresse, France
Died: 26 Feb 1638 in Bourg-en-Bresse, France

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For most of his life Bachet lived in comparative leisure on his estate at Bourg-en-Bresse. He was a writer of books (1612 and 1624) on mathematical puzzles and tricks which formed the basis for almost all later books on mathematical recreations.

Bachet discovered a method of constructing magic squares. He also worked on number theory. He is most famous for his Latin translation of Diophantus's Greek text Arithmetica (1621) in which Fermat wrote his famous Last Theorem marginal note.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Bachet's 'recreational' mathematics

Other Web sites:

Rice University, USA

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. W W R Ball and H S M Coxeter, Mathematical recreations and essays (London, 1942).
  3. C G Collet and J Itard, Un mathematician humaniste: Claude-Gaspar Bachet de Meziriac, 1581-1638, Revue d'histoire des sciences 1 (1947), 26-50. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996