A

David

Darling

Ozanam, Jacques (1640–1717)

Jacques Ozanam was a French mathematician, scientist, and writer best remembered for his book on mathematical and scientific puzzles Récréations mathématiques et physiques (four volumes, 1694), which later went through ten editions. Based on earlier works by Claude Bachet, Claude Mydorge, Leurechon, and Schwenter, it was later revised and enlarged by Jean Montucla, then translated into English by Charles Hutton (1803, 1814). Edward Riddle edited a new edition, which was published in 1844, removing some old material and adding new material so that "[T]he work might continue to be to the present generation a useful manual of scientific recreation, as its predecessors have been to the generation which has passed. Ozanam's original edition contained an early example of a problem about orthogonal Latin squares: "Arrange the 16 court cards so that each row and each column contains one of each suit and one of each value."