Biography

Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac was born at Bourg in 1581, and died in 1638. He wrote the Problèmes plaisants, of which the first edition was issued in 1612, a second and enlarged edition was brought out in 1624; this contains an interesting collection of arithmetical tricks and questions, many of which are quoted in my Mathematical Recreations and Essays. He also wrote Les éléments arithmétiques, which exists in manuscript; and a translation of the Arithmetic of Diophantus. Bachet was the earliest writer who discussed the solution of indeterminate equations by means of continued fractions.