François Nicole

{{short description|French mathematician}}

François Nicole (23 December 1683 – 18 January 1758) was a French mathematician, born in Paris and died there, who published his Traité du calcul des différences finies in 1717; it contains rules both for forming differences{{clarification|reason=differences of what?|date=January 2024}} and for effecting the summation of series. In 1706, he wrote a work on roulettes, particularly spherical epicycloids. In 1729 and 1731, he published memoirs on Newton's essay on curves of the third degree.{{citation|title=History of Mathematics, Volume 1|first=David Eugene|last=Smith|publisher=Courier Dover Publications|year=1958|isbn=9780486204291|pages=472–473|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=12qdOZ0gsWoC&pg=PA472}}.{{citation|title=The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment|first=J. B.|last=Shank|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2008|isbn=9780226749471|page=74|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BBusxgu8-AAC&pg=PA74}}.