Friedrich Julius Richelot (November 6, 1808 – March 31, 1875) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 mathematician

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, born in Königsberg

Königsberg

Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...

. He was a student of Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi.

He was promoted in 1831 at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Königsberg

University of Königsberg

The University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as second Protestant academy by Duke Albert of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....

 with a dissertation on the division of the circle into 257 equal parts (see references) and was a professor there.

Richelot authored numerous publications in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, among them — with his 1832 dissertation — the first known guide to the Euclidean construction of the regular 257-gon

Constructible polygon

In mathematics, a constructible polygon is a regular polygon that can be constructed with compass and straightedge. For example, a regular pentagon is constructible with compass and straightedge while a regular heptagon is not....

 with compass and straightedge.

In 1825 he joined the Corps Masovia

Corps Masovia Königsberg (Potsdam)

The Corps Masovia is the only remaining academic student corps from the Albertus University in Königsberg. In 2001 Masovia was re-established in Potsdam.-History:The corps name refers to Mazovia, the southern part of the former Prussian province East Prussia...

.

He died in Königsberg in 1875.

Thesis

• Friedrich Julius Richelot: De resolutione algebraica aequationis x²⁵⁷ = 1, sive de divisione circuli per bisectionem anguli septies repetitam in partes 257 inter se aequales commentatio coronata. In: Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. Nr. 9, 1832, S. 1–26, 146–161, 209–230, und 337–358.