1746-1818

French Mathematician, Physicist and Chemist

The most widely recognized of the many achievements attributed to Gaspard Monge, sometimes known as the comte de Péluse, was his development of descriptive geometry as a means of representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions. So valued was this technique for its military applications that the French government pledged him to secrecy. Monge also contributed to the adoption of the metric system, and his other work as a mathematician, physicist, and chemist took him into a variety of arenas, including caloric theory, acoustics, and optics.

Born on May 9, 1746, in Beaune, France, Monge was the son of Jacques and Jeanne Rousseaux Monge. The father, a knife grinder and peddler, believed in his son's ability to rise above his humble beginnings through education, and at an early age the talented youth was enrolled in the College of the Orations at Beaune...