author
Emile Barbier
A 19th-century French astronomer and mathematician, he is best remembered for Barbier's theorem, a neat result about curves of constant width. His life joined careful scientific work with a gift for elegant geometry.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Saint-Hilaire-Cottes, France, in 1839, Joseph-Émile Barbier showed unusual mathematical ability from an early age. He studied at the Collège de Saint-Omer and the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris before entering the École Normale Supérieure, a path that led him into both mathematics and astronomy.
Barbier worked with the Paris Observatory and later taught in higher education, but his name has lasted above all through Barbier's theorem, an elegant geometric result linking the perimeter of any curve of constant width to its width. That theorem helped secure his place in mathematical history, even though much of his work was published in scattered memoirs rather than in a single famous book.
He died in 1889, still relatively young, yet his work continues to appear in the study of geometry and the history of mathematics. For listeners interested in classic scientific minds, he offers a glimpse of the rich overlap between 19th-century astronomy, teaching, and pure mathematical thought.