Overview

The creation of France's Ecole Polytechnique in 1794 was one of the brighter consequences of the chaos of the early days of the French Revolution, and the effect of the Ecole Polytechnique on mathematics is brighter still. With its mathematical curriculum shaped at its inception by French mathematician and administrator Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), among others, the school was originally intended as a training-ground for civil engineers. In addition to engineering, though, the Ecole Polytechnique under the guidance of Monge and other distinguished mathematicians and teachers became a hotbed of mathematical (and, later in its history, revolutionary) activity, as students and professors formalized the teaching of mathematics. That process of formalization—along with the lectures, textbooks, exercises, and syllabi that accompanied it—reinvigorated...