François-Joseph Servois

François-Joseph Servois (born in 1767 or 1768, died 1847) was a French priest, military officer and mathematician, born in Mont-de-Laval in the Doubs. He studied at several religious schools in Mont-de-Laval and Besançon with the aim of becoming a priest and was ordained at Besançon, but he left the priesthood in 1793 to join the French Army and entered the artillery school at Châlons-sur-Marne in 1794. He began to devote himself seriously to mathematics in his leisure time as an officer, and on the recommendation of Adrien-Marie Legendre he was appointed in July 1801 as a professor at the artillery school in Besançon. He later taught at several artillery schools across France. His most notable contribution is his 1814 publication Essai sur un nouveau mode d'exposition des principes du calcul différentiel, in which he first introduced the mathematical terms commutative and distributive. He died in Mont-de-Laval in 1847.