Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde

Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde was a French mathematician, musician and chemist who worked with Bézout and Lavoisier, born and dying in Paris, from 1735 to 1796, and is now principally associated with determinant theory. A violinist, he became engaged with mathematics only around 1770; his Mémoire sur la résolution des équations of 1771 reported on symmetric functions and the solution of cyclotomic polynomials and anticipated later Galois theory, and his Remarques sur des problèmes de situation of the same year studied knight's tours and presaged knot theory. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1771, and his 1772 papers on combinatorics and on the foundations of determinant theory make up all his published mathematical work. He became professor at the École Normale Supérieure and examiner at the École polytechnique, and the Vandermonde matrices and Vandermonde's identity are named after him.