"In 1823, non-Euclidean geometry was discovered simultaneously, in one of those inexplicable coincidences, by a Hungarian mathematician, Janos (or Johann) Bolyai, aged twenty-one, and a Russian mathematician, Nikolai Lobachevsky, aged thirty. And, ironically, in that same year, the great French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre came up with what he was sure was a proof of Euclid's fifth postulate, very much along the lines of Saccheri. Incidentally, Bolyai's father, Farkas (or Wolfgang) Bolyai, a close friend of the great Gauss, invested much effort in trying to prove Euclid's fifth postulate."
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János Bolyai
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