Lobachevski, Nikolai Ivanovich 1792-1856
Russian mathematician

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, he became professor at the University of Kazan in 1814, where he spent the rest of his life. From the 1820s he developed a theory of non-Euclidean geometry in which Euclid's parallel postulate (that there is only one straight line which passes through a given point and is parallel to another given line) did not hold. A similar theory was discovered almost simultaneously and independently by J�nos Bolyai. Despite publication in various languages, his theory was too novel and its presentation too obscure to find acceptance in his lifetime. He also wrote on algebra and the theory of functions.

Bibliography: F Veniamin, N Lobachevsky and His Contributions to Science (1957)