Eminent French mathematician, born at La Flèche in 1653. He was absolutely dumb until he was seven years of age; and even then his organs of speech were not evolved so fully as to permit him to speak without great deliberation. Mathematics were the only studies he had any relish for, and these he cultivated with extraordinary success; so that he commenced teacher at twenty years of age, and was so soon in vogue, that he had Prince Eugene for his scholar. He became mathematical professor in the royal college in 1686; and ten years after was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences. He died in 1716; and his writings, which consist rather of detached papers than of connected treatises, are all inserted in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences. He was twice married; and by the last wife had a son, who, like himself, was dumb for the first seven years of his life.
