deaths
February 26, 1638
Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician and linguist (born 1581)
Claude Gaspar Bachet de Méziriac
Claude Gaspar Bachet Sieur de Méziriac was a French mathematician and poet born in Bourg-en-Bresse, at that time belonging to Duchy of Savoy. He wrote Problèmes plaisans et délectables qui se font par les nombres, Les éléments arithmétiques, and a Latin translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus. He also discovered means of solving indeterminate equations using continued fractions, a method of constructing magic squares, and a proof of Bézout's identity.