Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (Russian: ??????? ???????? ???????????; IPA: [n?ik?

'l
aj ?'van?v??t? l?b?'t??fsk??j] ( listen); 1 December [O.S. 20 November] 1792
24
February [O.S. 12 February] 1856) was a Russian mathematician and geometer, know
n primarily for his work on hyperbolic geometry, otherwise known as Lobachevskia
n geometry.
William Kingdon Clifford called Lobachevsky the "Copernicus of Geometry" due to
the revolutionary character of his work.
Nikolai Lobachevsky was born either in or near the city of Nizhny Novgorod in th
e Russian Empire (now in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia) in 1792 to parents of P
olish origin Ivan Maksimovich Lobachevsky and Praskovia Alexandrovna Lobachevska
ya.[9][10][11] He was one of three children. His father, a clerk in a land surve
ying office, died when he was seven, and his mother moved to Kazan. Lobachevsky
attended Kazan Gymnasium from 1802, graduating in 1807 and then received a schol
arship to Kazan University,[9][10] which was founded just three years earlier in
1804.
At Kazan University, Lobachevsky was influenced by professor Johann Christian Ma
rtin Bartels, a former teacher and friend of German mathematician Carl Friedrich
Gauss.[9] Lobachevsky received a Master's degree in physics and mathematics in
1811. In 1814, he became a lecturer at Kazan University, in 1816 he was promoted
to associate professor, and in 1822, at the age of 30, he became a full profess
or,[9][10] teaching mathematics, physics, and astronomy.[10] He served in many a
dministrative positions and became the rector of Kazan University[9] in 1827. In
1832, he married Varvara Alexeyevna Moiseyeva. They had a large number of child
ren (eighteen according to his son's memoirs, while only seven apparently surviv
ed into adulthood). He was dismissed from the university in 1846, ostensibly due
to his deteriorating health: by the early 1850s, he was nearly blind and unable
to walk. He died in poverty in 1856.
He was an atheist.