Dear future mathematicians, I was born on August 21st, 1789, in Paris, France, approximately one month after the start of the French Revolution. I am the oldest of the four sons and two daughters of Louis Francois Cauchy, a senior French government officer and Marie-Madeleine Desestre. My father was a student at Paris University, and he studied the classics. He then became a barrister and later advanced to higher administrative positions. For example, he became the first secretary to the Senate. Alexandre Laurent Cauchy and Eugene Francois Cauchy were two of my brothers. One of my sisters, Therese Cauchy, died very young while the other, Adedle Cauchy, married our cousin G. de Neuburg. At the beginning of the Reign of Terror, my father lost his job, so my family moved from Paris to the village of Arcueil, where I attended school as a child. Here, I met the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace and the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet. Life was hard for my family in Arcueil. I ...