Louis Puissant

Louis Puissant was a French topographical engineer, geodesist and mathematician, born on 22 September 1769. He trained as a land surveyor, decided he needed more mathematics to do the work well and studied geometry, and from 1792 served as an engineer-geographer with the French army. A professor at the École Centrale d'Agen from 1796, he directed geodesic triangulations on Elba and in Lombardy and was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1828. He wrote on geodesy, the shape of the Earth and spherical trigonometry, and is best remembered for inventing a new map projection for a new map of France. He died in Paris on 10 January 1843.