* September 18, 1752, Paris, France,
+ January 10, 1833, Paris
French mathematician whose distinguished work on elliptic integrals provided basic
analytic tools
for mathematical physics.
In [Legendre 1794]: "
In his "Eléments" Legendre greatly
rearranged and simplified many of the
propositions from Euclid's
"Elements" to create a more effective textbook. Legendre's work
replaced Euclid's "Elements" as a textbook in most of Europe and, in succeeding translations,
in
the United States and became the prototype of later geometry texts. In "Eléments" Legendre
gave
a simple proof that π is irrational, as well as the first proof that π^2 is irrational, and
conjectured
that π is not the root of any algebraic equation of finite degree with rational coefficients."[hom][Legendre 1794]: Legendre Adrien-Marie: Eléments de géometrie.
