Jean Eticnne Montucla, a French mathematician, born in Lyons, Sept. 5, 1725, died in Versailles, Dec. 18, 1799. After studying at the Jesuits' college of Lyons and the law school of Toulouse, he went to Paris, where he became connected with the Gazette de France. In 1761 he was appointed intendant-secretary at Grenoble, and in 1764 he accompanied the chevalier Turgot as first secretary and astronomer of his colonizing expedition to Cayenne. On returning to France, he became commissioner of the royal buildings, and afterward royal censor. The former office he held for 25 years, till the revolution deprived him of it. He received a pension of 2,400 francs only a few months before his death. He was a member of the institute from its foundation, and in 1755 became a member of the academy of Berlin. He published anonymously Histoire des rechercJies sur la quadrature du cercle (1754; now ed., 1831), and was the author of numerous other works, the principal of which was Histoire des mathematiques (2 vols., Paris, 1758; completed by Lalande, 1802).