Legendre, Adrien Marie, << luh ZHAHN druh, a dree AN ma REE >> (1752-1833), a French mathematician, influenced the teaching of geometry in America. He wrote Elements of Geometry (1794), which was published in the United States in 1819. It made considerable use of numbers and of algebra, unlike the traditional geometry book. He also helped set up the metric system, and worked on the theory of numbers, elliptic functions, differential equations, and trigonometric tables. Legendre was born in Paris on Sept. 18, 1752. He died on Jan. 9 or 10, 1833.
