Poincaré — The Last Universalist

Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) is the last mathematician to have a serious claim to mastery of all of mathematics. He founded algebraic topology and chaos theory, made fundamental contributions to celestial mechanics and relativity, and won France's greatest mathematical prizes. Studying the stability of the solar system, he discovered that even three bodies interacting gravitationally can behave chaotically — unpredictable in the long run. He was also a gifted communicator who wrote popular books on the nature of mathematics and scientific discovery.