Gaston Darboux

Jean-Gaston Darboux (14 August 1842 to 23 February 1917) was a French mathematician who made several important contributions to geometry and mathematical analysis. He was born in Nîmes to François Darboux, a mercery businessman, and Alix Gourdoux, and his father died when he was seven; his mother insisted that her children receive a good education. He studied at the lycées of Nîmes and Montpellier before being accepted as the top qualifier at the École Normale Supérieure in 1861, and received his doctorate there in 1866 under Michel Chasles with a thesis on orthogonal surfaces. He was elected to the Royal Society and the American Philosophical Society in 1902 and received the Sylvester Medal in 1916.