Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician, born in Beaune in 1746, died July 28, 1818. He became assistant to Bossut, and also to the abbe Nollet at Mezieres, whom he succeeded in the chair of natural philosophy. He made mimorons experiments in physics and chemistry, and investigations into the principles of geometry which led to the foundation of anew and important department of that science, to which he gave the name of descriptive geometry. In 1780 he was made a mem her of the academy of sciences, and soon after assistant professor of hydrodynamics in Paris. During the revolution he was for a short time minister of marine. Through his exertions the normal and polytechnic schools were established, and he taught in both. He accompanied the army into Italy and Egypt, and on his return was made president of the Egyptian commission, head of the polytechnic school, and member of the senate with the title of count of Pelusium; but on the fall of Napoleon he was deprived of all his honors. He was the first who applied the differential calculus to the general theory of surfaces.

His best known work is the Ge-ometrie descriptive (1799; 4th ed., 1819).