Jean Moufot

Jean Moufot (born March 13, 1784 - died April 4, 1842) was a French mathematician and philosopher.

Moufot was born in Normandy (France) in 1784 as the son of a fisherman. He was a lonely child that read a lot and liked to spend his time near the sea. He started studying at the École Polytechnique in Paris in 1803. He attended some courses but never graduated. Instead he focused on philosophy.

Moufot approached mathematics in a philosophical way, probably influenced by the work of René Descartes. He was intrigued by Euclid's work, and especially by the apparent simplicity of the first four postulates. It fascinated him that a complete science could be based on such ostensibly obvious theorems. Inspired by Euclid he would state his famous two axioms.

The most notorious of Euclid's five postulates is the 'parallel postulate', which appears to be far more complicated than the other postulates. Like many other mathematicians Moufot attempted to prove it as a theorem from the other four. He eventually came to the conclusion that a consistent 'non-Euclidean' geometry was possible when the 'parallel postulate' was disregarded. Unfortunately he never published any of his work on this subject. About thirty years later people like the Russian Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, the Hungarian Janos Bolyai and Karl Friedrich Gauss published their work, and they got the honour for their achievements in the discovery and development of non-Euclidean geometry.

Moufot married in 1805, but his wife died giving birth to a daughter several years later. His daughter grew up with her grandparents in Normandy. He died in Paris on April 4, 1842. In the 19th century a book about his life ('The fascinating world of J.F. Moufot') was published by an anonymous author.