 abraham de moivre (26 may 1667 in vitry-le-franÃ§ois, champagne, france â 27 november 1754 in london, england; ) was a french mathematician known for de moivre's formula, one of those that link complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. he was a friend of isaac newton, edmond halley, and james stirling. among his fellow huguenot exiles in england, he was a colleague of the editor and translator pierre des maizeaux. de moivre wrote a book on probability theory, the doctrine of chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. de moivre first discovered binet's formula, the closed-form expression for fibonacci numbers linking the nth power of the golden ratio Ï to the nth fibonacci number. ==life== ===early years=== abraham de moivre was born in vitry in champagne on may 26, 1667. his father, daniel de moivre, was a surgeon who, though middle class, believed in the value of education. though abraham de moivre's parents were protestant, he first attended christian brothers' catholic school in vitry, which was unusually tolerant given religious tensions in france at the time. when he was eleven, his parents sent him to the protestant academy at sedan, where he spent four years studying greek under jacques du rondel. the protestant academy of sedan had been founded in 1579 at the initiative of franÃ§oise de bourbon, the widow of henri-robert de la marck. in 1682 the protestant academy at sedan was suppressed, and de moivre enrolled to study logic at saumur for two years. although mathematics was not part of his course work, de moivre read several works on mathematics on his own including elements de mathematiques by father prestet and a short treatise on games of chance, de ratiociniis in ludo aleae, by christiaan huygens. in 1684, de moivre moved to paris to study physics, and for the first time had formal mathematics training with private 
1667_births 1754_deaths 17th-century_French_mathematicians 17th-century_French_people 18th-century_French_mathematicians 18th-century_French_people Fellows_of_the_Royal_Society French_statisticians Huguenots People_from_Vitry-le-FranASSois Probability_theorists