The greatest French mathematician, Augustin-Louise Cauchy was born in Paris on August 21, 1789. His father did legal work for the Paris police and his mother came from a well-to-do Partisian family. In 1794 the family fled to their country house at Arcueil to escape the terror of the French Revolution. Arcueil was the place where Berthollet and Laplace had their estate so Cauchy had the benefit to meet them and also many famous scientists who came to visit them. Lagrange was one of them who were impressed by his ability. Lagrange advised Cauchy to enrol at the liberal Ecole Centrale du Pantheon to study the humanities. At the age of 16, Cauchy entered the Ecole Polytechnique to become a civil engineer. By 1810 Cauchy became a qualified junior engineer, and he left Paris to work on the construction of a naval base at Cherbourg, the Port Napoleon under Count Mole. Meanwhile he remained at Cherbourg for almost 3 years and gained experience as an engineer, he researched mathematics and made some discoveries which attracted the attention of learned society in Paris.
In 1812 Cauchy had completed a study on symmetric functions including the germ of the fundamental ideas that eventually blossomed into group theory. He submitted his study on the calculation of definite integrals in 1814, which made him famous. In 1815 Cauchy published his memoir which shows that he made good use of Gauss’s method then generalise results in number theory. He also developed the theory of determinants. After several previous attempts, he was elected a member of Paris Academy in 1816 and soon Cauchy was appointed associate professor of analysis at the Ecole Polytechnique, before long he was promoted to full professor in analysis and mechanics. His discoveries placed him in the front rank of mathematicians of the period. Often in his lectures he introduced new ideas and more rigorous methods. Cauchy devised definitions of convergence of series and continuity of functions based on the concept of limit, and he gave a definition of the derivative of a function using the same idea. He had a sure instinct for what was true. The most important discoveries conducted by Cauchy in the fields of both pure and applied mathematics are without doubt his fundamental theorems in complex analysis. In addition to his professional work, Cauchy devoted himself to an organisation of ‘young Catholics of good families’ aiming at detesting faithlessness, irreligion and secularism. He dislikes liberalism in all its forms. In deep political turmoil Cauchy left for Switzerland on what began as sick leave but ended up an eight-year self-imposed exile. He lost his position in Paris but was appointed professor of mathematical physics in Turin. In 1833 he moved to Prague where he taught the juvenile Duke of Bordeaux, later returned to Paris. Cauchy was far from popular due to his self-absorbed and self-righteous mind. Had it not been for his intolerant political opinon he might have achieved more. His health, never robust, began to deteriorate and after accepting doctor’s advice, Cauchy left Paris for Sceaux on May 12, 1857 but died 11days later. In his life time Cauchy published a huge amount of mathematical work but vast of his collection was destroyed just before the Second World War.
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