Eugène Charles Catalan (May 30, 1814 - February 14, 1894) was a Belgian mathematician. May 30 is the 150th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (151st in leap years). ... 1814 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1894 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... A mathematician is a person whose area of study and research is mathematics. ...

Biography

He was born in Brugge, Belgium but learned mathematics at École Polytechnique, Paris, where he met Joseph Liouville. In 1834, he was expelled from his university, so he went to Châlons-sur-Marne, where he received a post after graduating. In 1838, he came back to the École Polytechnique, with the help of Liouville, to teach descriptive geometry. Though, as he was strong-left politically active, he had an animated career. He died in Liège, Belgium where he had received a chair. This article is about the city in Belgium. ... The cadets of Polytechnique rushed to the defense of Paris against the foreign armies in 1814. ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Joseph Liouville (born March 24, 1809, died September 8, 1882) was a French mathematician. ... 1834 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Châlons-en-Champagne is a city and commune in France. ... 1838 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Liège ( Dutch: Luik, German: Lüttich) is a major city located in the Belgian province of Liège, of which it is the capital. ...

Work

He worked on continued fractions, descriptive geometry, number theory and combinatorics. He gave his name to a unique surface (periodic minimal surface in the space ) that he discovered in 1855. Before that, he had stated the famous Catalan's conjecture, which was published in 1844 and was eventually proved in 2002, by the Swiss mathematician Preda Mihăilescu. He introduced the Catalan numbers to solve a combinatorial problem. In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression such as where a0 is some integer and all the other numbers an are positive integers. ... Gaspard Monge is the father of descriptive geometry. ... Traditionally, number theory is that branch of pure mathematics concerned with the properties of integers. ... Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics that studies finite collections of objects that satisfy specified criteria, and is in particular concerned with counting the objects in those collections (enumerative combinatorics) and with deciding whether certain optimal objects exist (extremal combinatorics). ... 1855 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Catalans conjecture is a simple conjecture in number theory that was proposed by the mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan. ... 1844 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Preda Mihăilescu (1955 —) is a Romanian mathematician who received his education at the ETH Zürich and later did research at the University of Paderborn, Germany. ... The Catalan numbers, named after the Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan (1814—1894), form a sequence of natural numbers that occur in various counting problems in combinatorics. ... Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics that studies finite collections of objects that satisfy specified criteria, and is in particular concerned with counting the objects in those collections (enumerative combinatorics) and with deciding whether certain optimal objects exist (extremal combinatorics). ...

See also

• Catalan solid

A rhombic dodecahedron In mathematics, a Catalan solid, or Archimedean dual, is a dual polyhedron to an Archimedean solid. ...

External links

• [1] (http://villemin.gerard.free.fr/Esprit/Catalan.htm)
• MacTutor biography of Catalan (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Catalan.html)