Augustin-Louis Cauchy

Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Lithography of Cauchy around 1840
Born(1789-08-21)21 August 1789
Paris, France
Died23 May 1857(1857-05-23) (aged 67)
Sceaux, France
Alma materÉcole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
Known for
SpouseAloise de Bure
ChildrenMarie Françoise Alicia, Marie Mathilde
AwardsGrand Prize of L'Académie Royale des Sciences
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
  • École Centrale du Panthéon
  • École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées
  • École Polytechnique
Doctoral students
  • Francesco Faà di Bruno
  • Viktor Bunyakovsky

Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (21 August 1789 – 23 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist. He was one of the first to rigorously state and prove the key theorems of calculus (thereby creating real analysis), pioneered the field of complex analysis, and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra. Cauchy also contributed to a number of topics in mathematical physics, notably continuum mechanics.

A profound mathematician, Cauchy had a great influence over his contemporaries and successors; Hans Freudenthal stated:

More concepts and theorems have been named for Cauchy than for any other mathematician (in elasticity alone there are sixteen concepts and theorems named for Cauchy).

Cauchy was a prolific worker; he wrote approximately eight hundred research articles and five complete textbooks on a variety of topics in the fields of mathematics and mathematical physics.