Abstract
François Viète was born in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1540. After an education at the Franciscan school of Fontenay, he enrolled at the university of Poitiers in 1558 to study civil and canonical law. It took him just one year to obtain a baccalaureate and a licence degree, after which he embarked on a successful career as a lawyer in his hometown. In 1564, he became a secretary to Jean and Antoinette de Partenay, a position he combined with tutoring their daughter Catherine (1554-1631) in mathematics. Catherine would later marry Charles de Quellenec. After a quarrel with her son-in-law, Antoinette moved to La Rochelle, a stronghold of the Huguenot movement, and Viète followed her. It was here that he came into contact with figures from highly influential Huguenot circles, including Henry of Navarre, the later King Henry IV, and his niece Françoise de Rohan, to whom he became a legal counsellor.
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Meskens, A. (2010). Fair stood the wind for France. In: Travelling Mathematics - The Fate of Diophantos' Arithmetic. Science Networks. Historical Studies, vol 41. Springer, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0346-0643-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0346-0643-1_8
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