Adrien-Marie Legendre

Although Legendre was born in the south of France, he spent the greater part of his life in Paris. He attended the Collège Mazarin in that city and, in 1775, he was made professor of mathematics at the Ecole Militaire where Laplace was also teaching. Legendre kept this position until 1780 when he resigned the position to give more time to his researches. In 1782 he won a prize offered by the Berlin Academy with an essay on the path of a projectile. In 1787 he was a member of a commission which connected the Royal Observatory in Greenwich with the Paris Observatory geodetically. Legendre later was a member of the commission which made up the metric system. In 1795, he was made professor at the Ecole Normale. Unlike Laplace, Legendre had little recognition. Laplace was always unfriendly to him and at length Legendre lost his pension as a member of the Academie and he died in poverty.