Born a illegitimate child in Paris of a writer and an artillery officer, I was abandoned by my mother on the steps of a church a few days after my birth.

In the University, I studied philosophy, law, medicine, physics, the arts, and mathematics.

In mathematics, I am well-known for falsely arguing that whenever a flipped coin lands TAILS, the probability of the coin landing HEADS on the next flip is increased.

Working with Denis Diderot, we compiled and edited the Encyclopédie, a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts.

I was a contemporary and correspondent of Euler, though never a mathematician of his stature.

One of the first to try to prove that all polynomials could be factored into linear and quadratic factors, I failed in my attempts; Gauss now is recognized for this feat via his Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.