Commander Cholesky died at the front in the Aisne on 31 August 1918, aged 42. Born in 1875 in Charente-Inférieure to a family of Polish origin, he entered the École polytechnique (X1895) and pursued a career as an artillery officer, specializing in the topographic and geodetic surveys that the artillery—known as the "scientific" branch of the military—required to understand the terrain and draw up maps.
Below is the opening of Cholesky's manuscript;
it is dated 1910, though the discovery probably came earlier.
Surveying, topography and geodesy
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