Frenicle de bessy biography of william

French mathematician (d. 1674)

Bernard Frénicle de Bessy (c. 1604 – 1674), was a French mathematician born in Paris, who wrote numerous mathematical papers, mainly in number theory and combinatorics.

Frenicle de bessy biography of william

He is best remembered for Des quarrez ou tables magiques, a treatise on magic squares published posthumously in 1693, in which he described all 880 essentially different normal magic squares of order 4. The Frénicle standard form, a standard representation of magic squares, is named after him.

He solved many problems created by Fermat and also discovered the cube property of the number 1729 (Ramanujan number), later referred to as a taxicab number. He is also remembered for his treatise Traité des triangles rectangles en nombres published (posthumously) in 1676^[1] and reprinted in 1729.^[2]

Bessy was a member of many of the scientific circles of his day, including the French Academy of Sciences, and corresponded with many prominent