View source for Gaspard Monge

'''Gaspard Monge''' (1746–1818) was a French mathematician who posed the problem of optimal transport in 1781: given two distributions of mass, find the most efficient way to move one into the other. His formulation — seeking a deterministic transport map that minimizes total cost — became known as the '''Monge problem'''. Though the problem remained unsolved in full generality for over a century and a half, Monge's question established the conceptual framework that [[Leonid Kantorovich]] would later reformulate using [[linear programming]]. Today, Monge's original formulation is recognized as the deterministic limit of the Kantorovich relaxation, and the two perspectives together form the foundation of [[optimal transport]] theory.

[[Category:Mathematics]]
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Geometry]]