Excerpt from The Foundations of Science
Sir George Darwin, worthy son of an immortal father, said, referring to what Poineare was to him and to his work: "He must be regarded as the presiding genius or, shall I say, my patron saint?"
Henri Poineare was born April 29, 1854, at Nancy, where his father was a physician highly respected. His schooling was broken into by the war of 1870-71, to get news of which he learned to read the German newspapers. He outclassed the other boys of his age in all subjects and in 1873 passed highest into the Bcole Polytechnique, where, like John Bolyai at Maros Vasarhely, he followed the courses in mathematics without taking a note and without the syllabus. He proceeded in 1875 to the School of Mines, and was Nomme, March 26, 1879.But he won his doctorate in the University of Paris, August 1, 1879, and was appointed to teach in the Faculte des Sciences de Caen, December 1, 1879, whence he was quickly called to the University of Paris, teaching there from October 21, 1881, until his death, July 17, 1912.So it is an error to say he started as an engineer. At the early age of thirty-two he became a member of l'Academie des Sciences, and, March 5, 1908, was chosen Membre de l'Academie Frangaise. July 1, 1909, the number of his writings was 436.
His earliest publication was in 1878, and was not important. Afterward came an essay submitted in competition for the Grand Prix offered in 1880, but it did not win. Suddenly there came a change, a striking fire, a bursting forth, in February, 1881, and Poineare tells us the very minute it happened. Mounting an omnibus, "at the moment when I put my foot upon the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my previous thoughts seeming to foreshadow it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry." Thereby was opened a perspective new and immense.
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