Paul Mansion


Paul Mansion was a Belgian mathematician, editor of the journal Mathesis.

Life and work

Mansion was the ninth of the ten brothers. His father died when he was only a baby and he was brought up by his mother and his older brothers. He studied at Huy school and high school. In 1862 he entered in the École Normale des Sciences, attached to the University of Ghent, where he graduated in 1865. From this time till 1867 he taught mathematics in the artillery academy in Ghent, while he was working in his doctoral thesis. He was awarded PhD in 1867.
In 1867, after the death of his professor Mathias Schaar, he was appointed to the chair of calculus at the university of Ghent. He remained there until he was appointed to the chair of probability in 1892. Also, from 1884, he taught the history of mathematics.
In 1874, with Eugene Catalan, he founded the journal Nouvelle Correspondence Mathèmatique, and in 1880, with Joseph Neuberg, he founded the journal Mathesis.
The works of Mansion, deal mainly with non-Euclidean geometry, history of mathematics, and differential equations. He published 349 works in very different journals.