Portrait of Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912), French mathematician. Poincare is said to be the last of the universal mathematicians, as he managed leading work in all branches of the subject. He gained his doctorate in 1879, working on celestial mechanics at Paris. He made major contributions to the 'three-body' problem, calculating the mutual gravitational effects of three orbiting bodies. He also worked on the theory of tides and rotating fluid spheres. Toward the end of his life he devoted his studies to mathematical creativity, and became a keen follower of Einstein.