Changing Faces: The Mistaken Portrait of Legendre (2009) [pdf]

Legendre made many major contributions to mathematics, but perhaps the most well-known (for folks here) is the method of least squares for curve fitting.

For those interested in the science and politics of the French Revolution period and how methods like least squares were first applied, a wonderful history (in which Legendre plays a supporting role) is Ken Alder’s The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World. (“The truth belongs to everyone, but error is ours alone.”)