1792-1856

Russian Mathematician

The Russian mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky, along with the Hungarian Janos Bolyai (1802-1860), is considered to be the founder of non-Euclidean geometry. Neither man's contribution was fully recognized until after their deaths, despite Lobachevsky's perseverance in publishing in French and German as well as Russian. Non-Euclidean geometry was later to become an essential building block for Albert Einstein's (1879-1955) theory of general relativity.

Lobachevsky was born on December 1, 1792, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, into very limited economic means. His father was a lowranking government official, and died when young Nikolai was only seven years old. The family then moved to Kazan, at the edge of Siberia. Lobachevsky received a public scholarship to the university in Kazan at the age of 14, intending to study medicine. Under the influence of a skilled mathematics teacher, Johann Bartels, who had taught the eminent Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-...