Monge

Gaspard Monge

Born: 9 May 1746 in Beaune, Bourgogne, France
Died: 28 July 1818 in Paris, France

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Monge may be considered the father of differential geometry.

Monge was Conte de Péluse and is sometimes known by this name.

Monge taught at the École Royale de Genie at Mézières. His plan of a fortress (1763), drawn by geometric construction from limited observations, impressed the authorities so much he was made a professor (1768).

Monge moved to Paris in 1780 and was appointed to École Normale in 1794. The next year he became director of the École Polytechnique. Among his colleagues and student in Paris were Carnot and Poncelet. In 1816 Monge was expelled from the French Academy losing his position to Cauchy. He never recovered from the shock and died soon after.

He developed a general method of applying geometry to problems of construction. Monge's Geometrie descriptive (1799) was the result of his lectures in this area at École Polytechnique. He also introduced two planes of projection at right angles to each other for graphical description of solid objects. He generalised these techniques into a system called Geometrie descriptive , which is now known as orthographic projection, the graphical method used in modern mechanical drawing.

Monge served on the committee that established the metric system and he also accompanied Napoleon to Egypt to set up educational facilities there.

He is considered the father of differential geometry because of his work Application de l'analyse à la géométrie where he introduced the concept of lines of curvature of a surface in 3-space.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Monge's part in the history of mathematics

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. R Taton, Gaspard Monge (1950).
  4. R Taton, L'Oeuvre scientifique de Monge (1951).
  5. P V Aubry, Monge, le savant ami de Napoléon Bonaparte, 1746-1818 (1954).
  6. J L Coolidge, A History of Geometrical Methods (1940).
  7. G Kasdorf, Monge, in H Wussing and W Arnold, Biographien bedeutender Mathematiker (Berlin, 1983). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996