Russian mathematician who, in 1829, published a paper which founded non-Euclidean geometry by showing that a consistent geometry could be built up in which Euclid's fifth postulate did not hold. He published several books: New Foundations of Geometry (1835-38), Geometrical Investigations on the Theory of Parallels (1840), and Pangeometry (1855). At the same time as Lobachevsky, Janos Bolyai was obtaining similar results. And as it turned out, Gauss had anticipated many of these results but withheld them from publication.

Additional biographies: MacTutor (St. Andrews)