Joseph Liouville

Joseph Liouville (1809 to 1882) was a French mathematician born in Saint-Omer who worked in number theory, complex analysis and mathematical physics. He studied at the École Polytechnique, became a professor there in 1838 and later lectured at the Collège de France and held a chair at the Faculté des Sciences. In 1835 he established the existence of non-elementary integrals, and in 1844 he gave the first proof that transcendental numbers exist, with an explicit example. In 1836 he founded the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées and in 1846 published the work of Évariste Galois in it, which helped bring Galois theory to wide attention. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839.