Gaspard Monge

Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse, was a French mathematician born in Beaune in 1746 and dying in 1818, commonly presented as the inventor of descriptive geometry, the mathematical basis of technical drawing, and as the father of differential geometry. The son of a merchant, he was not allowed admission to the officer school at Mézières itself but was given a job there as a draftsman, and in January 1769 he took the place of Bossut as instructor. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1780. During the French Revolution he served as Minister of the Marine and helped found the École Polytechnique with Lamblardie and Lazare Carnot, where he was professor of descriptive geometry.