Pierre Wantzel

Pierre Laurent Wantzel (5 June 1814 – 21 May 1848) was a French mathematician who made important discoveries about what can and cannot be done with just a compass and straightedge. In 1837, he proved that two famous ancient puzzles—doubling the cube and trisecting the angle—are impossible to solve with those simple tools. He also figured out which regular polygons are constructible, showing that it depends on the number of sides being a power of two times certain special primes called Fermat primes.

These problems had puzzled people for thousands of years, especially the ancient Greeks, but Wantzel’s work was not appreciated at the time. It was almost forgotten until many years later when other mathematicians began to recognize its importance. Wantzel also discovered something about equations in 1843, showing that some solutions require complex numbers even though the answers seem simple.

Unfortunately, Wantzel’s life was short. He died at the age of 33, likely because of his habit of using too much caffeine, opium, and working too hard without rest (occupational burnout). Even though his contributions were not always recognized during his lifetime, today he is remembered for solving problems that had challenged mathematicians for centuries.