De Moivre was born in Vitry-le-François, Champagne. The social status of his family is unclear, but De Moivre's father, a surgeon, was able to send him to the Protestant academy at Sedan (1678-82). De Moivre studied logic at Saumur (1682-84), attended the Collège de Harcourt in Paris (1684), and studied privately with Jacque Ozanam (1684-85). It does not appear that De Moivre received a college degree.
De Moivre was a Calvinist, and he left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and spent the remainder of his life in England.
Throughout his life he remained poor. It is reported that he was a regular customer of Slaughter's Coffee House, St. Martin's Lane at Cranbourn Street, where he earned a little money from playing chess. He died in London and was buried at St Martin's-in-the-Fields, although his body was later moved.
H. J. R. Murray. History of Chess. Oxford University Press, 1913, p 846.
External links
Abraham de Moivre (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/De_Moivre.html)(at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive (http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/index.html))
de Moivre, Abraham (http://euler.ciens.ucv.ve/English/mathematics/demoivre.html)
Moivre [De Moivre, Demoivre], Abraham De (http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/moivre.html)
DeMoivre's parents were Protestants but he first attended the Catholic school of the Christian Brothers in Vitry which was a tolerant school, particularly so given the religious tensions in France at this time.
DeMoivre had hoped for a chair of mathematics, but foreigners were at a disadvantage in England so although he now was free from religious discrimination, he still suffered discrimination as a Frenchman in England.
Despite deMoivre's scientific eminence his main income was as a private tutor of mathematics and he died in poverty.
Moivre, the son of provincial surgeon, was born in Vitry-le-François in France and raised as a Huguenot (French Protestant) in an ever growing atmosphere of Roman Catholic intolerance.
DeMoivre was the son of a surgeon.
When deMoivre was elected to the Royal Society in 1712, it was at the proposal of Jean Bernoulli, with whom deMoivre had been in extensive correspondence since 1704.
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