From:       "John Conway" <conway@math.Princeton.EDU>
Subject:    Re:  Dirichlet
Date:       Thu, 15 Dec 94 21:08:38 EST

Gustave Lejeune-Dirichlet  was of French ancestry.   

   Other mathematicians whose nationalities don't quite correspond
to their names:-

   de Moivre   (of Huguenot descent, but lived in London)

   Lagrange    (born in Turin, though of French descent,
                was called "the Italian" by his French colleagues)

   Delaunay    (this is the French transliteration of the name of
                Boris Nikolaevitch Delone, who got his surname from
                an Irish ancestor called Deloney, who was among the
                mercenaries left in Russia after the Napoleonic
                invasion of 1812).

    Quite a number of the ancient "Greek" mathematicians lived in
Magna Graecia, which included the south of Italy, and the island of
Sicily.

     John Conway