Bolyai, J�nos 1802-60
Hungarian mathematician

Born in Kolozsv�r, he took up a military career, but retired due to ill health in 1833. After attempting to prove Euclid's parallel postulate, that the straight line which passes through a given point and is parallel to another given line is unique, he realized that it was possible to have a consistent system of geometry in which this postulate did not hold, and so became one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry, together with Nikolai Lobachevski. His work continued that of his father Farkas (or Wolfgang, 1775-1856), but its poor reception inclined him not to publish again, and credit for his discovery was largely posthumous.