Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) was born in Nancy, studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines, and worked briefly as a mining engineer before turning to mathematics. From 1881 he taught at the University of Paris, where he held chairs in mathematical physics, probability and celestial mechanics. His work on the three-body problem won the prize of King Oscar II of Sweden in 1889, and his papers on Analysis Situs (1895 onward) helped found topology; he also contributed to the mathematics of electrodynamics and relativity of motion. He wrote three widely read books on the philosophy of science, Science and Hypothesis (1902), The Value of Science (1905) and Science and Method (1908), and was elected to the Académie française in 1908. He died in Paris in 1912.
Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse, Paris, 1902) is the first of Henri Poincaré's three books on the foundations of science, written by one of the leading mathematicians of his age for a general educated public. It asks how much of science is fact, how much is reasoning, and how much is choice.
