Edouard Lucas
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François Édouard Anatole Lucas (April 4, 1842 in Amiens - October 3, 1891) was a French mathematician who was educated at the École Normale Supérieure. He worked in the Paris observatory and later became a professor of mathematics in Paris. In the meantime he served in the army.
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Lucas died in unusual circumstances. At the banquet of the annual congress of the Association française pour l'avancement des science a waiter dropped some crockery and a piece of broken plate cut Lucas on the cheek. He died a few days later of a sever skin inflammation probably caused by septicemia.
Lucas is known for his study of the Fibonacci sequence. The related Lucas sequence is named after him. He gave a formula for finding the nth term of the Fibonacci sequence.
He devised methods for testing the primality of numbers. He proved in 1876 that 2127-1 was prime; this would remain the largest known Mersenne prime for three-quarters of a century. Later Derrick Henry Lehmer refined his work and obtained the Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne numbers.
He worked on the development of the umbral calculus.
Lucas was also interested in recreational mathematics; the baguenaudier puzzle was invented by him. He also invented the tower of Hanoi puzzle, which he marketed under the nickname N. Claus de Siam, an anagram of Lucas d'Amiens.
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eo:Edouard LUCAS fr:Édouard Lucas pl:Edouard Lucas zh:爱德华·卢卡斯