Chasles, Michel

Chasles, Michel 

Born Nov. 15, 1793, in Epernon; died Dec. 18, 1880, in Paris. French mathematician and historian of mathematics. Member of the Académíe des Sciences (1851; corresponding member, 1839).

Chasles became a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1841 and at the University of Paris in 1846. His most important works deal with geometry. He contributed to the development of projective geometry with, for example, his textbook Treatise on Higher Geometry (1852). Chasles’s works on the history of mathematics, particularly his Historical Survey of the Origin and Development of Geometric Methods (1837; Russian translation, vols. 1–2, 1883), helped establish the relations between individual studies and clarified the historical relationship of scientific ideas in the field.

REFERENCE

Klein, F. Lektsii o razvitii matematiki v XlX stoletii, part 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1937. (Translated from German.)