×

Biography of Georges Pfeffermann:

Georges Pfeffermann was born German, in Frankfurt, on July 1, 1838. But since he was 21, September 1859, he has lived and will always live in France. He is a simple bank employee in Paris; between 1859 and 1866 at Vernes & Cie, then from 1866 in another banking house.
He plays chess, we find his name in Le Monde Illustré of August 19, 1865: he is among the people who solved a chess problem which had been submitted by the newspaper. He will solve another problem in December. When the war of 1870 broke out, he obtained a residence permit to stay in Paris. But worried because of his German origin, he left Paris and was hired by Jacques Errera Oppenheim, a banker in Brussels, who sent him to Lille at the end of 1870 to take care of the issuance of the Loan of the Department of the North 1870, then to Amiens for the issue of the City of Amiens Loan May 1871. He resumed his job in Paris in June 1871, then from 1878 was hired by the private banker P. M. Oppenheim.
He married in Paris in 1888 to a Frenchwoman named Gabrielle Lachambre, born June 9, 1843 in Florac, Lozère. She is the adult daughter of a knight of the Legion of Honor and military medalist. But by marrying a foreigner, she automatically loses French nationality, it was the law at the time!
In 1890, they both applied for French nationality, which they obtained in 1891. For his naturalization file, he provided a letter from his Parisian employer P. M. Oppenheim, but also a letter from André Catel-Beghin, former mayor of Lille. Thanks to this same file, we know that he then earns 8000F/year, and that they have no children.
Mainly between 1890 and 1896, he published numerous articles on magic squares, including the famous first 8x8 bimagic square in 1890, then the first 9x9 bimagic square in 1891. In 1894, he appeared on the list of the first members of the Société des Sciences Récréatives, with his address 11 rue Taitbout Paris. This address is also where he works, with the banker P. M. Oppenheim. This Society of Recreational Sciences, which will unfortunately be short-lived, has as its president Jules Arnous de Rivière, the famous chess player. Among the list of around 70 members, we note several celebrities or mathematicians: Prince Roland Bonaparte, Henri de Bornier (of the Académie Française), C-A Laisant, Henri Brocard, the publishers Delagrave and Gauthier-Villard, Alexandre Falguière, Camille Jordan, ... And we also note the main magic square specialists of the time: Arnoux, Coccoz, Huber, Portier, Tarry, and therefore our Georges Pfeffermann.
He had several addresses in Paris: therefore 11 rue Taitbout seen above, and 81 avenue de Clichy. As well as 77 avenue de Clichy.
On April 6, 1907, Aristide Briand, then Minister of Public Education, Fine Arts and Religious Affairs, made him an Academy Officer (Palmes Académies) on the occasion of the congress of learned societies, on the proposal of the Works Committee Historical and Scientific. This appointment was announced in the Official Journal of April 7, 1907, where Pfeffermann was specified as "mathematician in Saint-Alban (Lozère)". The current full name of this commune is Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole. After Paris, and before Issoire, he probably lived in Lozère, his wife's department of origin.
From January 1909 until his death, he was in charge of the "Entertainment" section in the weekly Le Moniteur d'Issoire, where he signed under the name Pangloss.
Here is an example of his column, where he publishes a bimagic star by Achille Rilly. *
On March 24, 1914, four months before the start of the First World War, he died at the age of 76 at his home, boulevard Triozon-Bayle in Issoire (Puy-de-Dôme), where he was then living with his wife. An obituary was published in Le Moniteur d'Issoire the next day (see below). His wife died only a month later, on May 9, 1914, in St-Alban. Their furniture was sold at public auction on April 1, 1916 by Maître R. Tollin, notary in Issoire.

/ by Christian Boyer, 2013-2017. * www.multimagie.com
/ translated with google language translator 2023-10-01, by M. Hermansson.