Esprit Jouffret

{{Short description|French artillery officer, insurance actuary and mathematician}}

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Esprit Jouffret (15 March 1837 – 6 November 1904) was a French artillery officer,{{cite book |last=Jouffret |first=Esprit |title=Cours d'artillerie: Les projectiles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YqvmBPs5pHQC |access-date=2008-07-22 |year=1881|publisher=École d'application de l'artillerie et du génie |location=Fontainebleau, France |language=fr }} insurance actuary and mathematician, author of Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions (Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions, 1903),{{cite book |last=Jouffret |first=Esprit |title=Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions et introduction à la géométrie à n dimensions |url=http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cul.math/docviewer?did=04810001 |access-date=2008-07-22 |year=1903 |publisher=Gauthier-Villars |location=Paris |language=fr |oclc=1445172 }} a popularization of Henri Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis in which Jouffret described hypercubes and other complex polyhedra in four dimensions and projected them onto the two-dimensional page.

Maurice Princet brought Traite to artist Pablo Picasso's attention. Picasso's sketchbooks for his 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon illustrate Jouffret's influence on the artist's work.{{cite book |last=Miller |title=Einstein, Picasso |pages=106–117 }}