Pierre laurent wantzel biography of mahatma

French mathematician (1814–1848)

Pierre Laurent Wantzel (5 June 1814 in Paris – 21 May 1848 in Paris) was a French mathematician who proved that several ancient geometric problems were impossible to solve using only compass and straightedge.^[1]

In a paper from 1837,^[2] Wantzel proved that the problems of

1. doubling the cube, and
2. trisecting the angle

are impossible to solve if one uses only a compass and straightedge.

In the same paper he also solved the problem of determining which regular polygons are constructible:

1. a regular polygon is constructible if and only if the number of its sides is the product of a power of two and any number of distinc