Jean Victor Poncelet
(1788-1867)

Jean Victor Poncelet was a Frenchman who fought in Napoleon’s campaign against Russia and was given up for dead on the battlefield. He survived, was taken prisoner, and later returned to France to continue his work in mathematics. His major contributions to mathematics are in geometry, and in mechanics he is best known for his work on properties of materials and dynamics.

From Mechanics of Materials, 4th Ed., by J.M. Gere and S.P. Timoshenko, PWS Publishing, 1997, pp. 835-42.