Jules Henri Poincaré has been described as the last great universalist--"the last man," E. T. Bell wrote in Men of Mathematics, "to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province." He made contributions to number theory, theory of functions, differential equations, topology, and the foundations of mathematics. In addition, Poincaré was very much interested in astronomy, and some of his best known research is his work on the three-body problem, which concerns the way planets act on each other in space. He worked in the area of mathematical physics and anticipated some fundamental ideas in the theory of relativity. He also participated in the debate about the nature of mathematical thought, and he wrote popular books on the general principles of his field.

Poincaré was born in Nancy, France, on April 29, 1854. The Poincaré family had made Nancy their home for many...