André-Louis Cholesky (15 October 1875, in Montguyon – 31 August 1918, in Bagneux) was a French military officer, geodesist, and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. Cholesky was born in Montguyon,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. His paternal family was descendant from the Cholewski family who emigrated from

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

during the

Great Emigration The Great Emigration () was the emigration of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians, particularly from the political and cultural élites, from 1831 to 1870, after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and of other uprisings such as ...

. He attended the Lycée in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

and entered the

École Polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...

, where

Camille Jordan Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan (; 5 January 1838 – 22 January 1922) was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his influential ''Cours d'analyse''. Biography Jordan was born in Lyon and educated at ...

and

Henri Becquerel Antoine Henri Becquerel ( ; ; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French nuclear physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie for his discovery of radioactivity. Biography Family and education Becq ...

taught. He worked in

geodesy Geodesy or geodetics is the science of measuring and representing the Figure of the Earth, geometry, Gravity of Earth, gravity, and Earth's rotation, spatial orientation of the Earth in Relative change, temporally varying Three-dimensional spac ...

and

cartography Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

, and was involved in the

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the land, terrestrial Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional or Three-dimensional space#In Euclidean geometry, three-dimensional positions of Point (geom ...

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

and

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

before

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. He is primarily remembered for the development of a form of

matrix decomposition In the mathematical discipline of linear algebra, a matrix decomposition or matrix factorization is a factorization of a matrix into a product of matrices. There are many different matrix decompositions; each finds use among a particular class of ...

known as the ''

Cholesky decomposition In linear algebra, the Cholesky decomposition or Cholesky factorization (pronounced ) is a decomposition of a Hermitian, positive-definite matrix into the product of a lower triangular matrix and its conjugate transpose, which is useful for eff ...

'' which he used in his surveying work. He served in the French military as an artillery officer and was killed in battle a few months before the end of

; his discovery was published posthumously by his fellow officer Commandant Benoît in the ''

Bulletin Géodésique The ''Journal of Geodesy'' is an academic journal about geodesy published by Springer on behalf of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG). It is the merger and continuation of ''Bulletin Géodésique'' and ''manuscripta geodaetica'' (both ...

''.

References

External links

* ''Bulletin de la SABIX''
n°39
2005, André-Louis Cholesky

* Claude Brezinski, Dominique Tournès, ''André-Louis Cholesky, Mathematician, Topographer and Army Officer'', Birkhaeuser, 2014.

obituary * ''Sur la résolution numérique des systèmes d'équations linéaires'', Cholesky 1910 manuscript, online and analyzed o
BibNum
or English, click 'A télécharger'/small> 1875 births 1918 deaths 19th-century French mathematicians 20th-century French mathematicians École Polytechnique alumni French military personnel killed in World War I French geodesists French topographers {{France-mathematician-stub

References

Further reading

External links