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Poncelet was born at Metz in 1788, attended the lycee there, and then from 1807 to 1810, enrolled at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he studied under Monge. In 1812, following a stint as a student at the military academy at Metz, he entered the army as a lieutenant of engineers, and served in Napoleon's fateful Russian campaign. Left for dead on the battlefield of Krasnoi during the French retreat from Moscow, Poncelet was taken prisoner of war and, after a forced march of |
nearly five months, was
placed in
confinement at Saratoff on the Volga River. There,
with no books at
hand, he planned his great
Traite des proprietes projectives des figures, which,
subsequent to his release and return to Metz late in 1814, he put into form and
published in Paris in 1822.
Poncelet's later life was devoted to military duties
interspersed with writing on mechanics, hydraulics, infinite seried, and geometry.
He published a treatise ib aookued necgabucs (1826), an interesting memoir
on water mills (also 1826), a report on the English machinery and tools displayed
at the London International Exhibition of 1851, a two-volume expansion
of his earlier work of 1822 (1862, 1865), and numerous geometry articles in the
pages of Crelle's Journal. Of rugged health all his long life, Poncelet was
always conscientious, efficient, and dependable in his military assignments,
and he retained his creative ablilties in mathematics almost to the time of his
death. He died in Paris in 1867 at the age of seventy-nine.
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