Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac (October 91581 - February 261638) was a French mathematician, born in Bourg-en-Bresse.

He wrote the Problèmes plaisants, of which the first edition was issued in 1612, a second and enlarged edition was brought out in 1624; this contains an interesting collection of arithmetical tricks and questions, many of which are quoted in W. W. Rouse Ball's Mathematical Recreations and Essays. He also wrote Les éléments arithmétiques, which exists in manuscript; and a translation of the Arithmetic of Diophantus (1621). Bachet was the earliest writer who discussed the solution of indeterminate equations by means of continued fractions.

He was elected member of the French Academy in 1635.


The initial text of this article was taken from the public domain resource A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball (4th Edition, 1908)