Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is the first mathematician to publicly publish a system of non-Euclidean geometry. Although Karl Friedrich Gauss preceded him in the late 18th century and János Bolyai had devised a similar (though less analytical) conclusions around the same time, Lobachevsky showed that Euclid's Fifth postulate(also known as the Parallel postulate) could not be proved on the basis of the other postulates, and in turn created a new way of looking at geometry and geometric problems. Most of Lobachevsky's contemporaries scoffed at his conclusions, and he only became credited with his discoveries after his death. In fact, Lobachevsky sought credibility by publishing in different languages, but only a few of his colleagues supported his findings, including Gauss. Lobachevsky also did relevant research in other areas, including infinite series theory, integral calculus, probability, and the approximation of roots of algebraic equations.

Lobachevsky was born on...