Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet.

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, (born Sept. 17, 1743, Ribemont, France—found dead March 29, 1794, Bourg-la-Reine), French mathematician, statesman, and revolutionary. He showed early promise as a mathematician and was a protégé of Jean Le Rond d’Alembert. In 1777 he became secretary of the Academy of Sciences. In sympathy with the French Revolution, he was elected to represent Paris in the Legislative Assembly (1791–92), where he called for a republic. His opposition to the arrest of the moderate Girondins led to his being outlawed (1792). While in hiding he wrote his famous Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, in which he advanced the idea of the continuous progress of the human race to an ultimate perfection. He was captured and subsequently found dead in prison.

Girondin Summary

Girondin, a label applied to a loose grouping of republican politicians, some of them originally from the département of the Gironde, who played a leading role in the Legislative Assembly from October 1791 to September 1792 during the French Revolution. Lawyers, intellectuals and journalists, the

Turgot, portrait, 18th century; in the Musée de Versailles

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne Summary

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne French economist who was an administrator under Louis XV and served as the comptroller general of finance (1774–76) under Louis XVI. His efforts at instituting financial reform were blocked by the privileged classes. Turgot was born into an old Norman

Voltaire Summary

Voltaire one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty. Through its critical capacity, wit, and satire, Voltaire’s work vigorously propagates an

biography Summary

Biography, form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual. One of the oldest forms of literary expression, it seeks to re-create in words the life of a human being—as understood from the historical or personal perspective of the author—by