Bernhard Placidus Johann Nepomuk Bolzano was a Czechoslovakian theologian, philosopher, and mathematician who wrote and published pioneering works on infinite set series and the infinitesimal.

Born in Prague, Bohemia in 1781, Bolzano entered the University of Prague at the age of 15 to study philosophy and mathematics. Four years later, he began theological studies at University, while simultaneously working on a doctoral thesis in geometry. In 1804, Bolzano was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, and received his doctorate in mathematics and an appointment to the chair of philosophy and religion at the University of Prague.

Over the next thirteen years, Bolzano published a number of mathematical works and papers. Rein analytischer Beweis (Pure Analytical Proof) published in 1817, contained a non-geometric, arithmetic proof of the location theorem in algebra. One of Bolzano's contemporaries, the French mathematician Augustin Cauchy, published a similar work several years later that received wider circulation and considerably more...