ABSTRACT

Mathematics is the

FAMOUS music of reason.

Mathematics knows no
races or geographic
boundaries; for

MATHEMATICIANS IN THE
mathematics, the cultural
world is one country.
There should be no such
thing as boring
mathematics. 'Obvious' is

WORLD the most dangerous word

in mathematics.
BSE 1 MATHEMATICS
MAJOR
MATHEMATICIAN GREAT CONTRIBUTION
ALMA VILLAOS
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was a German mathematician

who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and
differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly
known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the
Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series. His
contributions to complex analysis include most notably the
introduction of Riemann surfaces, breaking new ground in a
natural, geometric treatment of complex analysis. His 1859
paper on the prime-counting function, containing the original
statement of the Riemann hypothesis, is regarded as a
foundational paper of analytic number theory. Through his
pioneering contributions to differential geometry, Riemann laid
the foundations of the mathematics of general relativity. He is
considered by many to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

Riemann held his first lectures in 1854, which founded the field of Riemannian geometry and
thereby set the stage for Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. In 1857, there was an
attempt to promote Riemann to extraordinary professor status at the University of Göttingen.
Although this attempt failed, it did result in Riemann finally being granted a regular salary. In
1859, following the death of Dirichlet (who held Gauss's chair at the University of Göttingen), he
was promoted to head the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen. He was also
the first to suggest using dimensions higher than merely three or four in order to describe
physical reality.In 1862 he married Elise Koch and they had a daughter Ida Schilling who was
born on 22 December 1862.
Diophantus of Alexandria
Diophantus of Alexandria was an
Alexandrian mathematician, who was
the author of a series of books called
Arithmetica, many of which are now
lost. His texts deal with solving
algebraic equations. Diophantine
equations ("Diophantine geometry")
and Diophantine approximations are
important areas of mathematical
research. Diophantus coined the term
παρισότης (parisotes) to refer to an approximate equality.[1] This term was rendered as
adaequalitas in Latin, and became the technique of adequality developed by Pierre de Fermat to
find maxima for functions and tangent lines to curves. Diophantus was the first Greek
mathematician who recognized fractions as numbers; thus he allowed positive rational numbers
for the coefficients and solutions. In modern use, Diophantine equations are usually algebraic
equations with integer coefficients, for which integer solutions are sought.

Little is known about the life of Diophantus. He lived in Alexandria, Egypt, during the Roman
era, probably from between AD 200 and 214 to 284 or 298. Diophantus has variously been
described by historians as either Greek,[2][3][4] or possibly Hellenized Egyptian,[5] or
Hellenized Babylonian,[6] The last two of these identifications may stem from confusion with
the 4th-century rhetorician Diophantus the Arab.[7] Much of our knowledge of the life of
Diophantus is derived from a 5th-century Greek anthology of number games and puzzles created
by Metrodorus. One of the problems (sometimes called his epitaph) states:

'Here lies Diophantus,' the wonder behold.

Through art algebraic, the stone tells how old:

'God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life,
One twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife;
And then yet one-seventh ere marriage begun;
In five years there came a bouncing new son.
Alas, the dear child of master and sage

After attaining half the measure of his father's life chill fate took him. After consoling his fate by
the science of numbers for four years, he ended his life.'
In popular culture, this puzzle was the Puzzle No.142 in Professor Layton and Pandora's Box as
one of the hardest solving puzzles in the game, which needed to be unlocked by solving other
puzzles first.
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace was a French scholar
and polymath whose work was important to the
development of engineering, mathematics, statistics,
physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized
and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-
volume Mécanique céleste (Celestial Mechanics)
(1799–1825). This work translated the geometric study
of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening
up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the Bayesian
interpretation of probability was developed mainly by
Laplace.

Laplace formulated Laplace's equation, and pioneered

the Laplace transform which appears in many branches
of mathematical physics, a field that he took a leading role
in forming. The Laplacian differential operator, widely
used in mathematics, is also named after him. He restated and developed the nebular hypothesis
of the origin of the Solar System and was one of the first scientists to suggest an idea similar to
that of a black hole.

Laplace is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Sometimes referred to as the
French Newton or Newton of France, he has been described as possessing a phenomenal natural
mathematical faculty superior to that of almost all of his contemporaries. He was Napoleon's
examiner when Napoleon attended the École Militaire in Paris in 1784. Laplace became a count
of the Empire in 1806 and was named a marquis in 1817, after the Bourbon Restoration.
Gerolamo Cardano
Gerolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath, whose interests and proficiencies ranged through
those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist,
chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and
gambler. He was one of the most influential mathematicians
of the Renaissance, and was one of the key figures in the
foundation of probability and the earliest introducer of the
binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the
Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science.

Cardano partially invented and described several mechanical

devices including the combination lock, the gimbal consisting
of three concentric rings allowing a supported compass or
gyroscope to rotate freely, and the Cardan shaft with universal
joints, which allows the transmission of rotary motion at
various angles and is used in vehicles to this day. He made
significant contributions to hypocycloids, published in De
proportionibus, in 1570. The generating circles of these
hypocycloids were later named Cardano circles or cardanic
circles and were used for the construction of the first high-speed printing presses.

Today, he is well known for his achievements in algebra. In his 1545 book Ars Magna, he made
the first systematic use of negative numbers in Europe, published with attribution the solutions of
other mathematicians for the cubic and quartic equations, and acknowledged the existence of
imaginary numbers.
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 19, 1806) was an African-American
naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author.
He was a landowner who also worked as a surveyor and
farmer. it

Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African-

American mother and a father who had formerly been
enslaved, Banneker had little or no formal education and
was largely self-taught. He became known for assisting
Major Andrew Ellicott in a survey that established the
original borders of the District of Columbia, the federal
capital district of the United States.

Banneker's knowledge of astronomy helped him author a

commercially successful series of almanacs. He
corresponded with Thomas Jefferson on the topics of
slavery and racial equality. Abolitionists and advocates of
racial equality promoted and praised Banneker's works.
Although a fire on the day of Banneker's funeral destroyed many of his papers and belongings,
one of his journals and several of his remaining artifacts are presently available for public
viewing.

Banneker became a folk-hero after his death, leading to many accounts of his life being
exaggerated or embellished. The names of parks, schools and streets commemorate him and his
works, as do other tributes
Rene Descartes
(1596-1650)

French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician

Descartes’ Mathematics
To speak of René Descartes’
contributions to the history of
mathematics is to speak of his La
Géométrie (1637), a short tract included
with the anonymously
published Discourse on Method. In La
Géométrie, Descartes details a
groundbreaking program for
geometrical problem-solving—what he
refers to as a “geometrical calculus”
(calcul géométrique)—that rests on a
distinctive approach to the relationship
between algebra and geometry.
Specifically, Descartes offers
innovative algebraic techniques for
analyzing geometrical problems, a
novel way of understanding the
connection between a curve’s
construction and its algebraic equation,
and an algebraic classification of curves that is based on the degree of the equations used to
represent these curves.
The problem-solving techniques and mathematical results that Descartes presents in La
Géométrie were
both novel and
incredibly MARK JOSHUA REGIO
influential on the
practice of early modern mathematics. However, we can also locate in La Géométrie a
philosophical significance: The blending of algebra and geometry and the peculiar approach to
the “geometrical” status of curves which characterize Descartes’ mathematical program stand as
notable contributions to the on-going philosophical debates that surrounded early modern
mathematical practice. By drawing on the context in which Descartes’ mathematical researches
took place, and examining the main questions and issues that shaped Descartes’ early
mathematical researches, both the historical and philosophical significance of Books One and
Two of La Géométrie
When Descartes’ mathematical researches commenced in the early seventeenth century,
mathematicians were wrestling with questions concerning the appropriate methods for
geometrical proof and, in particular, the criteria for identifying curves that met the exact and
rigorous standards of geometry and that could thus be used in geometrical problem-solving.
These issues were given an added sense of urgency for practicing mathematicians when, in 1588,
Commandino’s Latin translation of Pappus’s Collection (early fourth century CE) was published.
In theCollection Pappus appeals to the ancient practice of geometry as he offers normative
claims about how geometrical problems ought to be solved. Early modern readers gave special
attention to Pappus’s proposals concerning (1) how a mathematician should construct the curves
used in geometrical proof, and (2) how a geometer should apply the methods of analysis and
synthesis in geometrical problem-solving

Fibonacci
(1170-1240)
Italian Mathematician
Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci (1170–
1240 or 1250) was an Italian
number theorist. He introduced the
world to such wide-ranging
mathematical concepts as what is
now known as the Arabic
numbering system, the concept of
square roots, number sequencing,
and even math word problems.

Fast Facts: Leonardo Pisano

Fibonacci

 Known For: Noted Italian

mathematician and number
theorist; developed
Fibonacci Numbers and
the Fibonacci Sequence
 Also Known As: Leonard of
Pisa
 Born: 1170 in Pisa, Italy
 Father: Guglielmo
  Died: Between 1240 and 1250, most likely in Pisa
 Education: Educated in North Africa; studied mathematics in Bugia, Algeria
 Published Works: Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculation), 1202 and 1228; Practica
Geometriae (The Practice of Geometry), 1220; Liber Quadratorum (The Book of Square
Numbers), 1225
 Awards and Honors: The Republic of Pisa honored Fibonacci in 1240 for advising the
city and its citizens on accounting issues.
 Notable Quote: “If by chance I have omitted anything more or less proper or necessary, I
beg forgiveness, since there is no one who is without fault and circumspect in all
matters.”
Early Years and Education

Fibonacci was born in Italy but obtained his education in North Africa. Very little is known
about him or his family and there are no photographs or drawings of him. Much of the
information about Fibonacci has been gathered by his autobiographical notes, which he included
in his books.

Mathematical Contributions

Fibonacci is considered to be one of the most talented mathematicians of the Middle Ages. Few
people realize that it was Fibonacci that gave the world the decimal number system (Hindu-
Arabic numbering system), which replaced the Roman numeral system. When he was studying
mathematics, he used the Hindu-Arabic (0-9) symbols instead of Roman symbols, which didn't
have zeros and lacked place value.

In fact, when using the Roman numeral system, an abacus was usually required. There is no
doubt that Fibonacci saw the superiority of using Hindu-Arabic system over the Roman
Numerals

Liber Abaci

Fibonacci showed the world how to use what is now our current numbering system in his book
"Liber Abaci," which he published in 1202. The title translates as "The Book of Calculation."
The following problem was written in his book:

"A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded on all sides by a wall. How many pairs
of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair
begets a new pair, which from the second month on becomes productive?

It was this problem that led Fibonacci to the introduction of the Fibonacci Numbers and the
Fibonacci Sequence, which is what he remains famous for to this day.

The sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55... This sequence shows that each number is the
sum of the two preceding numbers. It is a sequence that is seen and used in many different areas
of mathematics and science today. The sequence is an example of a recursive sequence.
The Fibonacci Sequence defines the curvature of naturally occurring spirals, such as snail shells
and even the pattern of seeds in flowering plants. The Fibonacci Sequence was actually given the
name by a French mathematician Edouard Lucas in the 1870s.

Death and Legacy

In addition to "Liber Abaci," Fibonacci authored several other books on mathematical topics
ranging from geometry to squaring numbers (multiplying numbers by themselves). The city of
Pisa (technically a republic at that time) honored Fibonacci and granted him a salary in 1240 for
his help in advising Pisa and its citizens on accounting issues. Fibonacci died between 1240 and
1250 in Pisa.

Fibonacci is famous for his contributions to number theory.

 In his book, "Liber Abaci," he introduced the Hindu-Arabic place-valued decimal system
and the use of Arabic numerals into Europe.
 He introduced the bar that is used for fractions today; previous to this, the numerator had
quotations around it.
 The square root notation is also a Fibonacci method.

It has been said that the Fibonacci Numbers are nature's numbering system and that they apply to
the growth of living things, including cells, petals on a flower, wheat, honeycomb, pine cones,
and much more.

Leonhard Euler
(1707-1783)
Swiss mathematician, physicist,
astronomer, geographer, logician and
engineer
Leonhard Euler, (born April 15,
1707, Basel, Switzerland—died
September 18, 1783, St. Petersburg,
Russia), Swiss mathematician and
physicist, one of the founders of
pure mathematics. He not only made
decisive and formative contributions to
the subjects
of geometry, calculus, mechanics,
and number theory but also developed
methods for solving problems in
observational astronomy and demonstrated useful applications of mathematics in technology and
public affairs.

Euler’s mathematical ability earned him the esteem of Johann Bernoulli, one of the first
mathematicians in Europe at that time, and of his sons Daniel and Nicolas. In 1727 he moved to
St. Petersburg, where he became an associate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and in
1733 succeeded Daniel Bernoullito the chair of mathematics. By means of his numerous books
and memoirs that he submitted to the academy, Euler carried integralcalculus to a higher degree
of perfection, developed the theory of trigonometric and logarithmic functions,
reduced analyticaloperations to a greater simplicity, and threw new light on nearly all parts of
pure mathematics. Overtaxing himself, Euler in 1735 lost the sight of one eye. Then, invited
by Frederick the Great in 1741, he became a member of the Berlin Academy, where for 25 years
he produced a steady stream of publications, many of which he contributed to the St. Petersburg
Academy, which granted him a pension. In 1748, in his Introductio in analysin infinitorum, he
developed the concept of function in mathematical analysis, through which variables are related
to each other and in which he advanced the use of infinitesimals and infinite quantities. He did
for modern analytic geometry and trigonometry what the Elements of Euclid had done for
ancient geometry, and the resulting tendency to render mathematics and physics in arithmetical
terms has continued ever since. He is known for familiar results in elementary geometry—for
example, the Euler line through the orthocentre (the intersection of the altitudes in a triangle), the
circumcentre (the centre of the circumscribed circle of a triangle), and the barycentre (the “centre
of gravity,” or centroid) of a triangle. He was responsible for treating trigonometric functions—
i.e., the relationship of an angle to two sides of a triangle—as numerical ratios rather than as
lengths of geometric lines and for relating them, through the so-called Euler identity (e iθ = cos θ
+ i sin θ), with complex numbers (e.g., 3 + 2Square root of√−1). He discovered the
imaginary logarithmsof negative numbers and showed that each complex number has an infinite
number of logarithms.
Euler’s textbooks in calculus, Institutiones calculi differentialis in 1755 and Institutiones calculi
integralis in 1768–70, have served as prototypes to the present because they contain formulas of
differentiation and numerous methods of indefinite integration, many of which he invented
himself, for determining the work done by a force and for solving geometric problems, and he
made advances in the theory of linear differential equations, which are useful in solving
problems in physics. Thus, he enriched mathematics with substantial new concepts and
techniques. He introduced many current notations, such as Σ for the sum; the symbol e for the
base of natural logarithms; a, b and c for the sides of a triangle and A, B, and C for the opposite
angles; the letter f and parentheses for a function; and i for Square root of√−1. He also
popularized the use of the symbol π (devised by British mathematician William Jones) for the
ratio of circumference to diameter in a circle.
After Frederick the Great became less cordial toward him, Euler in 1766 accepted the invitation
of Catherine II to return to Russia. Soon after his arrival at St. Petersburg, a cataract formed in
his remaining good eye, and he spent the last years of his life in total blindness. Despite this
tragedy, his productivity continued undiminished, sustained by an uncommon memory and a
remarkable facility in mental computations. His interests were broad, and his Lettres à une
princesse d’Allemagne in 1768–72 were an admirably clear exposition of the basic principles of
mechanics, optics, acoustics, and physical astronomy. Not a classroom teacher, Euler
nevertheless had a more pervasive pedagogical influence than any modern mathematician. He
had few disciples, but he helped to establish mathematical education in Russia.
Euler devoted considerable attention to developing a more perfect theory of lunar motion, which
was particularly troublesome, since it involved the so-called three-body problem—the
interactions of Sun, Moon, and Earth. (The problem is still unsolved.) His partial solution,
published in 1753, assisted the British Admiralty in calculating lunar tables, of importance then
in attempting to determine longitude at sea. One of the feats of his blind years was to perform all
the elaborate calculations in his head for his second theory of lunar motion in 1772. Throughout
his life Euler was much absorbed by problems dealing with the theory of numbers, which treats
of the properties and relationships of integers, or whole numbers (0, ±1, ±2, etc.); in this, his
greatest discovery, in 1783, was the law of quadratic reciprocity, which has become an essential
part of modern number theory.
In his effort to replace syntheticmethods by analytic ones, Euler was succeeded by Joseph-Louis
Lagrange. But, where Euler had delighted in special concrete cases, Lagrange sought for abstract
generality, and, while Euler incautiously manipulated divergent series, Lagrange attempted to
establish infinite processes upon a sound basis. Thus it is that Euler and Lagrange together are
regarded as the greatest mathematicians of the 18th century, but Euler has never been excelled
either in productivity or in the skillful and imaginative use of algorithmic devices (i.e.,
computational procedures) for solving probl

Daniel Bernoulli
(1700-1782)
Swiss Mathematician

Daniel Bernoulli, (born Feb. 8 [Jan. 29,

Old Style], 1700, Groningen, Neth.—
died March 17, 1782, Basel, Switz.),
the most distinguished of the second
generation of the Bernoulli family of
Swiss mathematicians. He investigated
not only mathematicsbut also such
fields as medicine, biology,
physiology, mechanics, physics, astronomy, and oceanography. Bernoulli’s theorem(q.v.), which
he derived, is named after him.

Daniel Bernoulli was the second son of Johann Bernoulli, who first taught him mathematics.
After studying philosophy, logic, and medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and
Basel, he received an M.D. degree (1721). In 1723–24 he wrote Exercitationes quaedam
Mathematicae on differential equations and the physics of flowing water, which won him a
position at the influential Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia. Bernoulli lectured
there until 1732 in medicine, mechanics, and physics, and he researched the properties of
vibrating and rotating bodies and contributed to probability theory. In that same year he returned
to the University of Basel to accept the post in anatomy and botany. By then he was widely
esteemed by scholars and also admired by the public throughout Europe. Daniel’s reputation was
established in 1738 with Hydrodynamica, in which he considered the properties of basic
importance in fluid flow, particularly pressure, density, and velocity, and set forth their
fundamental relationship. He put forward what is called Bernoulli’s principle, which states that
the pressure in a fluid decreases as its velocity increases. He also established the basis for
the kinetic theory of gases and heat by demonstrating that the impact of molecules on a surface
would explain pressure and that, assuming the constant, random motion of molecules, pressure
and motion increase with temperature. About 1738 his father published Hydraulica; this attempt
by Johann to obtain priority for himself was another instance of his antagonism toward his son.
Between 1725 and 1749 Daniel won 10 prizes from the Paris Academy of Sciences for work on
astronomy, gravity, tides, magnetism, ocean currents, and the behaviour of ships at sea. He also
made substantial contributions in probability. He shared the 1735 prize for work on planetary
orbits with his father, who, it is said, threw him out of the house for thus obtaining a prize he felt
should be his alone. Daniel’s prizewinning papers reflected his success on the research frontiers
of science and his ability to set forth clearly before an interested public the scientific problems of
the day. In 1732 he accepted a post in botany and anatomy at Basel; in 1743, one in physiology;
and in 1750, one in physics.
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī,
(780-850)
Muslim Mathematician and Astronomer
al-Khwārizmī, in full Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, (born c. 780 —died c. 850), Muslim
mathematician and astronomer whose major
works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and
the concepts of algebra into
European mathematics. Latinized versions of
his name and of his most famous book title live
on in the terms algorithm and algebra.

Al-Khwārizmī lived in Baghdad, where he

worked at the “House of Wisdom” (Dār al-
Ḥikma) under the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn. The
House of Wisdom acquired and translated
scientific and philosophic treatises,
particularly Greek, as well as publishing
original research. Al-Khwārizmī’s work
on elementary algebra, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar
fī ḥisāb al-jabr waʾl-muqābala (“The
Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing”), was translated into Latin in
the 12th century, from which the title and term algebra derives. Algebra is a compilation of rules,
together with demonstrations, for finding solutions of linear and quadratic equations based on
intuitive geometric arguments, rather than the abstract notation now associated with the subject.
Its systematic, demonstrative approach distinguishes it from earlier treatments of the subject. It
also contains sections on calculating areas and volumes of geometric figures and on the use of
algebra to solve inheritance problems according to proportions prescribed by Islamic law.
Elements within the work can be traced from Babylonian mathematics of the early 2nd
millennium BCE through Hellenistic, Hebrew, and Hindu treatises . In the 12th century a second
work by al-Khwārizmī introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals (see numerals and numeral systems ) and
their arithmetic to the West. It is preserved only in a Latin translation,  Algoritmi de numero
Indorum (“Al-Khwārizmī Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning”). From the name of the author,
rendered in Latin as Algoritmi, originated the term algorithm.

A third major book was his Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ (“The Image of the Earth”; translated as Geography), which
presented the coordinates of localities in the known world based, ultimately, on those in
the Geographyof Ptolemy (flourished 127–145 CE) but with improved values for the length of
the Mediterranean Sea and the location of cities in Asia and Africa. He also assisted in the
construction of a world map for al-Maʾmūn and participated in a project to determine the circumference
of the Earth, which had long been known to be spherical, by measuring the length of a degree of a
meridian through the plain of Sinjār in Iraq.
Finally, al-Khwārizmī also compiled a set of astronomical tables (Zīj), based on a variety of Hindu and
Greek sources. This work included a table of sines, evidently for a circle of radius 150 units. Like
his treatiseson algebra and Hindu-Arabic numerals, this astronomical work (or an Andalusian revision
thereof) was translated into Latin.
ELLA MAE TORRES
BERTRANT ARTHUR WILLIAM RUSSELL
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge ”
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl
Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a
British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and
public intellectual. He had a considerable influence
on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics,
artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer
science and various areas of analytic philosophy,
especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy
of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
He was one of the early 20th century’s most
prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic
philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob
Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his
student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell
with Moore led the British “revolt against
idealism”. Together with his former teacher A. N.
Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a
milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole of
mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell’s article “On Denoting” has been considered a
“paradigm of philosophy”.
Russell was a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. He
occasionally advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the atomic
monopoly had passed and he decided he would “welcome with enthusiasm” world government.
He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, Russell concluded that the war
against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was a necessary “lesser of two evils” and also criticized
Stalinist totalitarianism, condemned the United States’ war on Vietnam and was an outspoken
proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
“in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals
and freedom of thought”. He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932), Sylvester
Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963).
Godfrey Harold Hardy
“I hate teaching [but] I love lecturing”
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1
December 1947) was an English mathematician,
known for his achievements in number theory and
mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for
the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of
population genetics.
G. H. Hardy is usually known by those outside the
field of mathematics for his 1940 essay A
Mathematician’s Apology, often considered one of
the best insights into the mind of a working
mathematician written for the layperson.

Starting in 1914, Hardy was the mentor of the

Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, a
relationship that has become celebrated. Hardy
almost immediately recognised Ramanujan’s extraordinary albeit untutored brilliance, and Hardy
and Ramanujan became close collaborators. In an interview by Paul Erdős, when Hardy was
asked what his greatest contribution to mathematics was, Hardy unhesitatingly replied that it was
the discovery of Ramanujan. In a lecture on Ramanujan, Hardy said that “my association with
him is the one romantic incident in my life”.
LUCA PACIOLI
“Books should be closed each year, especially in
partnership because frequent accounting makes for long
friendship”

Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (sometimes

Paccioli or Paciolo; c. 1447 – 19 June 1517)
was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan
friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci,
and an early contributor to the field now
known as accounting. He is referred to as the
father of accounting and bookkeeping and he
was the first person to publish a work on the
double-entry system of book-keeping on the
continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo
after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro,
Tuscany.Several of his works were
plagiarised from Piero della Francesca, in
what has been called “probably the first full-blown case of plagiarism in the history of
mathematics”.Luca Pacioli was born between 1446 and 1448 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro
where he received an abbaco education. This was education in the vernacular (i.e., the local
tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants. His father was
Bartolomeo Pacioli; however, Luca Pacioli was said to have lived with the Befolci family as a
child in his birth town Sansepolcro. He moved to Venice around 1464, where he continued his
own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. It was during this period
that he wrote his first book, a treatise on arithmetic for the boys he was tutoring. Between 1472
and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. Thus, he could be referred to as Fra (‘Friar’) Luca. In
1475, he started teaching in Perugia as a private teacher before becoming first chair in
mathematics in 1477. During this time, he wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for
his students. He continued to work as a private tutor of mathematics and was instructed to stop
teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book, Summa de arithmetica,
geometria, Proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an
invitation from Duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan. There he met, taught mathematics to,
collaborated, and lived with Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to
flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove out their patron. Their paths
appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died at about the age of 70 on 19 June
1517, most likely in Sansepolcro, where it is thought that he had spent much of his final years.
Pacioli published several works on mathematics, including:
•Tractatus mathematicus ad discipulos perusinos (Ms. Vatican Library, Lat. 3129), a nearly 600-
page textbook dedicated to his students at the University of Perugia where Pacioli taught from
1477 to 1480. The manuscript was written between December 1477 and 29 April 1478. It
contains 16 sections on merchant arithmetic, such as barter, exchange, profit, mixing metals, and
algebra, though 25 pages from the chapter on algebra are missing. A modern transcription was
published by Calzoni and Cavazzoni (1996) along with a partial translation of the chapter on
partitioning problems.
•Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Venice 1494), a textbook for
use in the schools of Northern Italy. It was a synthesis of the mathematical knowledge of his time
and contained the first printed work on algebra written in the vernacular (i.e., the spoken
language of the day). It is also notable for including one of the first published descriptions of the
bookkeeping method that Venetian merchants used during the Italian Renaissance, known as the
double-entry accounting system. The system he published included most of the accounting cycle
as we know it today. He described the use of journals and ledgers and warned that a person
should not go to sleep at night until the debits equalled the credits. His ledger had accounts for
assets (including receivables and inventories), liabilities, capital, income, and expenses – the
account categories that are reported on an organization’s balance sheet and income statement,
respectively. He demonstrated year-end closing entries and proposed that a trial balance be used
to prove a balanced ledger. Additionally, his treatise touches on a wide range of related topics
from accounting ethics to cost accounting. He introduced the Rule of 72, using an approximation
of 100*ln 2 more than 100 years before Napier and Briggs.[9] Its exercises were largely copied
without credit from Piero della Francesca’s earlier book, Trattato d’abaco.
•De viribus quantitatis (Ms. Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1496–1508), a treatise on
mathematics and magic. Written between 1496 and 1508, it contains the first reference to card
tricks as well as guidance on how to juggle, eat fire, and make coins dance. It is the first work to
note that Leonardo was left-handed. De viribus quantitatis is divided into three sections:
Mathematical problems, puzzles, and tricks, along with a collection of proverbs and verses. The
book has been described as the “Foundation of modern magic and numerical puzzles,” but it was
never published and sat in the archives of the University of Bologna, where it was seen by only a
small number of scholars during the Middle Ages. The book was rediscovered after David
Singmaster, a mathematician, came across a reference to it in a 19 th-century manuscript. An
English translation was published for the first time in 2007.
•Geometry (1509), a Latin translation of Euclid’s Elements.
•Divina proportione (written in Milan in 1496–1498, published in Venice in 1509). Two versions
of the original manuscript are extant, one in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the other in the
Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva. The subject was mathematical and artistic
proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. It
incorporates without credit a translation of the entire book De quinque corporibus regularibus by
Piero della Francesca. Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations of the regular solids in Divina
proportione while he lived with and took mathematics lessons from Pacioli.
Hero of Alexandria
“ The horizontal world I had thought I occupied was tilting, dumping me somewhere else, somewhere new”

Hero of Alexandria (/ˈhɪəroʊ/; Greek: Ἥρων[ ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς,

Heron ho Alexandreus, also known as Heron of Alexandria
/ˈhɛrən/; fl. 60 AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer
who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt.
He is often considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity
and his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific
tradition.
Hero published a well-recognized description of a steam-
powered device called an aeolipile (sometimes called a “Hero
engine”). Among his most famous inventions was a windwheel,
constituting the earliest instance of wind harnessing on land. He
is said to have been a follower of the atomists. In his work
Mechanics, he described pantographs. Some of his ideas were
derived from the works of Ctesibius. In mathematics he is
mostly remembered for Heron’s formula, a way to calculate the
area of a triangle using only the lengths of its sides. Much of Hero’s original writings and
designs have been lost, but some of his works were preserved including in manuscripts from the
Eastern Roman Empire and to a lesser extent, in Latin or Arabic translations.
Hero described a method (now known as Heron’s method), for iteratively computing the square
root of a number. Today, however, his name is most closely associated with Heron’s formula for
finding the area of a triangle from its side lengths. He also devised a method for calculating cube
roots. He also designed a shortest path algorithm, that is, given two points A and B on one side
of a line, find C a point on the straight line that minimizes AC+BC.
In solid geometry, the Heronian mean may be used in finding the volume of a frustum of a
pyramid or cone.
Évariste Galois
“Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the
author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing
difficulties”

Évariste Galois (/ɡælˈwɑː/; French: [evaʁist ɡalwa]; 25

October 1811 – 31 May 1832) was a French
mathematician and political activist. While still in his
teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient
condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals,
thereby solving a problem that had been open for 350
years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory
and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra.
He was a staunch republican and was heavily involved in
the political turmoil that surrounded the French
Revolution of 1830. As a result of his political activism,
he was arrested repeatedly, serving one jail sentence of
several months. For reasons that remain obscure, shortly
after his release from prison he fought in a duel and died
of the wounds he suffered.
While many mathematicians before Galois gave consideration to what are now known as groups,
it was Galois who was the first to use the word group (in French groupe) in a sense close to the
technical sense that is understood today, making him among the founders of the branch of
algebra known as group theory. He developed the concept that is today known as a normal
subgroup. He called the decomposition of a group into its left and right cosets a proper
decomposition if the left and right cosets coincide, which is what today is known as a normal
subgroup. He also introduced the concept of a finite field (also known as a Galois field in his
honor) in essentially the same form as it is understood today. In his last letter to Chevalier and
attached manuscripts, the second of three, he made basic studies of linear groups over finite
fields:
•He constructed the general linear group over a prime field, GL(ν, p) and computed its order, in
studying the Galois group of the general equation of degree pν.
•He constructed the projective special linear group PSL(2,p). Galois constructed them as
fractional linear transforms, and observed that they were simple except if p was 2 or 3. These
were the second family of finite simple groups, after the alternating groups.

•He noted the exceptional fact that PSL(2,p) is simple and acts on p points if and only if p is 5,
7, or 11.
Main article: Galois theory
Galois’s most significant contribution to mathematics is his development of Galois theory. He
realized that the algebraic solution to a polynomial equation is related to the structure of a group
of permutations associated with the roots of the polynomial, the Galois group of the polynomial.
He found that an equation could be solved in radicals if one can find a series of subgroups of its
Galois group, each one normal in its successor with abelian quotient, that is, its Galois group is
solvable. This proved to be a fertile approach, which later mathematicians adapted to many other
fields of mathematics besides the theory of equations to which Galois originally applied it.
Analysis
Galois also made some contributions to the theory of Abelian integrals and continued fractions.
As written in his last letter, Galois passed from the study of elliptic functions to consideration of
the integrals of the most general algebraic differentials, today called Abelian integrals. He
classified these integrals into three categories.
JIMUEL MAÑOZA
ISAAC NEWTON
 

Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March

1726/27)[a] was an English mathematician, physicist,
astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his
time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of
the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most
influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the
philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687,
established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal
contributions to optics, and shares credit with German
mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing
infinitesimal calculus.

   

What Else Did Sir Isaac Newton Discover?

Besides his work on universal gravitation (gravity), Newton developed the three laws of motion which
form the basic principles of modern physics. His discovery of calculus led the way to more powerful
methods of solving mathematical problems. His work in optics included the study of white light and the
discovery of the color spectrum. It was his experiments with light that first made him famous.

How Did Newton Discover the Color Spectrum?

Newton performed an experiment using a glass prism. For the experiment he placed a glass prism in front
of a beam of light projected through a tiny hole in a window shade. You can perform a virtual version of
the experiment below. You just need to place the mouse cursor over the prism to darken the room and
reveal the color spectrum.

Did an apple really fall on Isaac Newton’s head?

Legend has it that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head
by a falling piece of fruit, a 17th-century “aha moment” that prompted him to suddenly come up with his
law of gravity. In reality, things didn’t go down quite like that. Newton, the son of a farmer, was born in
1642 near Grantham, England, and entered Cambridge University in 1661.

Four years later, following an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the school temporarily closed, forcing
Newton to move back to his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. It was during this period at
Woolsthorpe (Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667) that he was in the orchard there and witnessed an
apple drop from a tree. There’s no evidence to suggest the fruit actually landed on his head, but Newton’s
observation caused him to ponder why apples always fall straight to the ground (rather than sideways or
upward) and helped inspired him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. In 1687, Newton
first published this principle, which states that every body in the universe is attracted to every other body
with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the
square of the distance between them, in his landmark work the “Principia,” which also features his three
laws of motion.

 THALES OF MILETUS
 

Thales of Miletus (/ˈθeɪliːz/ THAY-leez; Greek: Θαλῆς; c. 

624/623  – c. 548/545 BC) was a Greek mathematician,
astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from
Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven
Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded
him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, and he
is otherwise historically recognized as the first individual
known to have entertained and engaged in scientific
philosophy.He is often referred to as the Father of Science

Thales of Miletus is considered to be the first philosopher

by Aristotle and others. Bertrand Russell identifies Thales
as the starting point of Western philosophy. The followers
of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, also hailed from Miletus, Ionia. They were the
founders of the Milesian School (also known as the Ionian School) of thought.

Most of what is known about Thales comes from the writings of Herodotos. Thales was an
engineer, astronomer, financier, and politician. He was the first named Sage (wise man) of the
Seven Sages of Greece. After a career in politics, Thales turned to the study of natural
phenomena and introduced the study of nature to the Greeks. Aristotle wrote that Thales was the
founder of natural philosophy.

Although none of Thales’ original proofs survives, the English mathematician Thomas Heath
(1861–1940) proposed what is now known as Thales’ rectangle as a proof of (5) that would have
been consistent with what was known in Thales’ era.

Beginning with ∠ACB inscribed in the semicircle with diameter AB, draw the line from C
through the corresponding circle’s centre O such that it intersects the circle at D. Then complete
the quadrilateral by drawing the lines AD and BD. First, note that the lines AO, BO, CO, and DO
are equal because each is a radius, r, of the circle. Next, note that the vertical angles formed by
the intersection of lines AB and CD form two sets of equal angles, as indicated by the tick marks.
Applying a theorem known to Thales, the side-angle-side (SAS) theorem—two triangles are
congruent if two sides and the included angle are equal—yields two sets of congruent triangles:
△AOD ≅ △BOC and △DOB ≅ △COA. Since the triangles are congruent, their corresponding
parts are equal: ∠ADO = ∠BCO, ∠DAO = ∠CBO, ∠BDO = ∠ACO, and so forth. Since all of
these triangles are isosceles, their base angles are equal, which means that there are two sets of
four angles that are equal, as indicated by the tick marks. Finally, since each angle of the
quadrilateral has the same composition, the four quadrilateral angles must be equal—a result that
is only possible for a rectangle. Therefore, ∠ACB = 90°. 

Thales of Miletus flourished about 600 BC and is credited with many of the earliest known
geometric proofs. In particular, he has been credited with proving the following five theorems:
(1) a circle is bisected by any diameter; (2) the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal; (3)
the opposite (“vertical”) angles formed by the intersection of two lines are equal; (4) two
triangles are congruent (of equal shape and size) if two angles and a side are equal; and (5) any angle
inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle (90°).

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who made important

contributions by systemizing deductive logic and wrote
on physical subjects. His philosophy had a long-lasting
influence on the development of all Western
philosophical theories.

Aristotle was not primarily a mathematician but made

important contributions by systematising deductive logic.
He wrote on physical subjects: some parts of his
Analytica posteriora show an unusual grasp of the
mathematical method. Primarily, however, he is
important in the development of all knowledge for, as the
authors of write.

Aristotle, more than any other thinker, determined the

orientation and the content of Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical
and scientific system that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for both
medieval Christian and Islamic scholastic thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western
culture was Aristotelian. And, even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow,
Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking.

Aristotle was born in Stagirus, or Stagira, or Stageirus, on the Chalcidic peninsula of northern
Greece. His father was Nicomachus, a medical doctor, while his mother was named Phaestis.
Nicomachus was certainly living in Chalcidice when Aristotle was born and he had probably
been born in that region. Aristotle's mother, Phaestis, came from Chalcis in Euboea and her
family owned property there.

There is little doubt that Nicomachus would have intended Aristotle to become a doctor, for the
tradition was that medical skills were kept secret and handed down from father to son. It was not
a society where people visited a doctor but rather it was the doctors who travelled round the
country tending to the sick. Although we know nothing of Aristotle's early years it is highly
likely that he would have accompanied his father in his travels. We do know that Nicomachus
found the conditions in Chalcidice less satisfactory than in the neighbouring state of Macedonia
and he began to work there with so much success that he was soon appointed as the personal
physician to Amyntas III, king of Macedonia.

There is no record to indicate whether Aristotle lived with his father in Pella, the capital of
Macedonia, while Nicomachus attended to king Amyntas at the court there. However, Aristotle
was certainly friendly with Philip, king Amyntas's son, some years later and it seems reasonable
to assume that the two, who were almost exactly the same age, had become friendly in Pella as
young children.

When Aristotle was about ten years old his father died. This certainly meant that Aristotle could
not now follow in his father's profession of doctor and, since his mother seems also to have died
young, Aristotle was brought up by a guardian, Proxenus of Atarneus, who was his uncle (or
possibly a family friend as is suggested by some authors). Proxenus taught Aristotle Greek,
rhetoric, and poetry which complemented the biological teachings that Nicomachus had given
Aristotle as part of training his son in medicine. Since in latter life Aristotle wrote fine Greek
prose, this too must have been part of his early education. 

Aristotle provides several examples of such triads of terms in mathematics, e.g., two right
angles-angles about a point-triangle, or right angle-half two right angles-angle in a semicircle.

In 367 BC Aristotle, at the age of seventeen, became a student at Plato's Academy in Athens. At
the time that Aristotle joined the Academy it had been operating for twenty years. Plato was not
in Athens, but rather he was on his first visit to Syracuse. We should not think of Plato's
Academy as a non-political organisation only interested in abstract ideas. The Academy was
highly involved in the politics of the time, in fact Plato's visit to Sicily was for political reasons,
and the politics of the Academy and of the whole region would play a major role in influencing
the course of Aristotle's life.

When Aristotle arrived in Athens, the Academy was being run by Eudoxus of Cnidos in Plato's
absence. Speusippus, Plato's nephew, was also teaching at the Academy as was Xenocrates of
Chalcedon. After being a student, Aristotle soon became a teacher at the Academy and he was to
remain there for twenty years. We know little regarding what Aristotle taught at the Academy. In
[10] Diogenes Laertius, writing in the second century AD, says that Aristotle taught rhetoric and
dialectic. Certainly Aristotle wrote on rhetoric at this time, issuing Gryllus which attacked the
views on rhetoric of Isocrates, who ran another major educational establishment in Athens. All
Aristotle's writings of this time strongly support Plato's views and those of the Academy.

Towards the end of Aristotle's twenty years at the Academy his position became difficult due to
the political events of the time. Amyntas, the king of Macedonia, died around 369 BC, a couple
of years before Aristotle went to Athens to join the Academy. Two of Amyntas's sons, Alexander
II and Perdiccas III, each reigned Macedonia for a time but the kingdom suffered from both
internal disputes and external wars. In 359 BC Amyntas's third son, Philip II came to the throne
when Perdiccas was killed fighting off an Illyrian invasion. Philip used skilful tactics, both
military and political, to allow Macedonia a period of internal peace in which they expanded by
victories over the surrounding areas.

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der

Stadt, a small town in Swabia, Germany. After his father
Heinrich Kepler’s death during a war, Kepler’s herbalist
mother, Katharina Guldenmann supported him and herself by
running her father’s inn.

Kepler had crippled hands and his eyesight had got affected
adversely by small pox at an early age. Despite his physical
impairments, he wasn’t devoid of intelligence. His extraordinary
skill with numbers allowed him to solve difficult mathematical
problems at a very young age.

Kepler received his early education at the Protestant Seminary of

Maulbronn. He then attended the University of Tübingen in 1589 and studied courses like
Theology, Philosophy, Greek, Hebrew, but excelled majorly in Mathematics. After completing
his degree, he accepted the position of lecturer for Mathematics and Astronomy, offered to him
by a Protestant School in Austria in 1594.

Kepler had developed a great interest in planets and their orbits. In 1595, he proposed a theory
regarding distances between the planets and the sun and explained it in his book Mysterium
Cosmographicum, also known as Cosmographic Mystery. According to this theory, there were
certain geometrical figures which he called ‘the perfect solid’ that had identical sides and
determined the orbits for all planets around the sun. What Kepler needed the most after this, was
statistical/mathematical/physical data to prove his theory. Luckily, Tycho Brahe, the Imperial
Mathematician and an observatory to Rudolph II, identified his talent and hired him as his
assistant in 1609. 

The position of Imperial Mathematian, after the death of Tycho in 1601, was handed down to
Kepler as his successor. He offered his services till 1612 and made a lot discoveries and
publications. He discovered three laws of planetary motion; two of which were discovered
through his work on Mar’s orbit with Tycho. These laws were published in 1809 in his book,
Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) and summarizes as follows;

1. First Law deals with the orbits of planets and explains how each planet move around the
Sun in its elliptical orbit.

2. Second Law highlights the proportionality between time and area of the orbits.

Some of the other publications of Kepler during these eleven years include;

· Astronomia pars Optica or The Optical Part of Astronomy (1604)

· De Stella Nova or Concerning the New Star (1606)

· Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo or Conversation with the Sidereal Messenger (1610),

· Narratio de Observatis Quatuor Jovis Satellitibus or Narration about Four Satellites of

Jupiter Observed

· Dioptrice (1611).

In 1612, Kepler was made the District Mathematician of Linz, Austria for fourteen years until
1626. Many of Johannes Kepler’s famous publications are found from this time period. These
include;

· De Vero Anno quo Aeternus Dei Filius Humanam Naturam in Utero Benedictae Virginis
Mariae Assumpsit (Concerning the True Year in which the Son of God assumed a Human
Nature in the Uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary”). (1614)

· Harmonice Mundi or Harmony of the World (1618)

· Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (“Epitome of Copernican Astronomy”), (1619)

Throughout his scientific journey, Kepler made prominent contributions on various topics
including behavior of light in telescope, vision, solar system, music etc. by combining the fields
of physics, astrology, astronomy, theology and philosophy.

In 1618, The Thirty Years War struck many countries of the Central Europe including Austria.
Due to the country’s devastating state during war and persecution, he left Linz in 1626 along
with his family and went to Prague. In 1627, Kepler got the Tabulae Rudolphine, or the
Rudolphine Tables published which included the observations made, data collected by Tycho
and calculations done by Kepler.

The last few years of his life were of great struggles for earning back a respectable and paid
position. He finally died on November 15, 1630 in Regensburg. Johannes left immense scientific
work for future scientists to work upon and bring forth new discoveries.

Archimedes of Syracuse

Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of

his age. His contributions in geometry revolutionised

the subject and his methods anticipated the integral
calculus. He was a practical man who invented a wide
variety of machines including pulleys and the
Archimidean screw pumping device.

Archimedes' father was Phidias, an astronomer. We

know nothing else about Phidias other than this one
fact and we only know this since Archimedes gives us
this information in one of his works, The
Sandreckoner. A friend of Archimedes called
Heracleides wrote a biography of him but sadly this work is lost. How our knowledge of
Archimedes would be transformed if this lost work were ever found, or even extracts found in
the writing of others.

Archimedes was a native of Syracuse, Sicily. It is reported by some authors that he visited Egypt
and there invented a device now known as Archimedes' screw. This is a pump, still used in many
parts of the world. It is highly likely that, when he was a young man, Archimedes studied with
the successors of Euclid in Alexandria. Certainly he was completely familiar with the
mathematics developed there, but what makes this conjecture much more certain, he knew
personally the mathematicians working there and he sent his results to Alexandria with personal
messages. He regarded Conon of Samos, one of the mathematicians at Alexandria, both very
highly for his abilities as a mathematician and he also regarded him as a close friend.

In the preface to On spirals Archimedes relates an amusing story regarding his friends in
Alexandria. He tells us that he was in the habit of sending them statements of his latest theorems,
but without giving proofs. Apparently some of the mathematicians there had claimed the results
as their own so Archimedes says that on the last occasion when he sent them theorems he
included two which were false. So that those who claim to discover everything, but produce no
proofs of the same, may be confuted as having pretended to discover the impossible.

Other than in the prefaces to his works, information about Archimedes comes to us from a
number of sources such as in stories from Plutarch, Livy, and others. Plutarch tells us that
Archimedes was related to King Hieron II of Syracuse (see for example:

Archimedes ... in writing to King Hiero, whose friend and near relation he was....

Again evidence of at least his friendship with the family of King Hieron II comes from the fact
that The Sandreckoner was dedicated to Gelon, the son of King Hieron.

There are, in fact, quite a number of references to Archimedes in the writings of the time for he
had gained a reputation in his own time which few other mathematicians of this period achieved.
The reason for this was not a widespread interest in new mathematical ideas but rather that
Archimedes had invented many machines which were used as engines of war. These were
particularly effective in the defence of Syracuse when it was attacked by the Romans under the
command of Marcellus.

He invented a system for expressing large numbers. In mechanics Archimedes discovered

fundamental theorems concerning the centre of gravity of plane figures and solids. His most
famous theorem gives theweight of a body immersed in a liquid, called Archimedes' principle.
JOHN JOSHUA HERNANDEZ
Hypatia,
the daughter of the great mathematician and philosopher,
Theon of Alexandria, was born in 350 AD. She was a
philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who lived
in Alexandria. She was trained under the guidance of
her father and became head of the Platonist school in
400 AD. She believed in the spiritual aspect of
mathematics and thought that numbers are the spiritual
language of the universe. She divided mathematics into four branches, geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy, and music.

Hypatia was gifted in every way. She was beautiful, and her intellect was astonishing. That
intellect was nurtured by the best minds in the land. And she was steered toward independence.
"Reserve your right to think," her father said, "for even to think wrongly is better than not to
think at all."
Hypatia became a brilliant public speaker and scholar, and she followed her father on the
library's faculty. There she wrote on mathematics and astronomy. She did work on algebraic
equations and conic sections. She invented the astrolabe for ship navigation and devices for
measuring the density of fluids. She was linked with several men, but she never married. She
was too much the strong-minded public figure for that.
The story of Hypatia's death at the age of 45 is not a nice one, but I'm obliged to tell it.
Alexandria was divided between Christians and non-Christians. Political power was also divided
-- between Bishop Cyril and Hypatia's close friend Orestes, who was the prefect of Alexandria.
Cyril was later canonized for his opposition to certain heresies. But he was no Mother Teresa. He
was power-hungry and locked in combat with Orestes.
Hypatia was a neoplatonist -- a rationalist -- part of a breed that'd survived since Classical
Greece. Cyril was quite the opposite -- conservative and dogmatic, with the kind of dark side
that's intermittently stained Christianity right down to the present day. In AD 415 Cyril's thugs
carried out a political reprisal against Orestes, and Hypatia made the perfect target. They created
a riot, and in the middle of it they waylaid Hypatia on the way to the Library. They hauled her
from her chariot, tortured her horribly, and finally burned what was left alive.
It's a terrible story -- a really terrible story. But it takes a last curious twist. Most of what we
know about Hypatia comes to us out of letters written to her by one of her adoring students,
Synesius of Cyrene. Synesius was an eminent philosopher, and he later went on to become a
Christian bishop.
Historians seldom concur in praising anyone. It's too much fun to point out human limitations.
Hypatia is a rare exception. It appears that she really was one of the great intellects, and one of
the great people, of the ancient world.

Claudius Ptolemy,

is of course a mixture of the Greek Egyptian 'Ptolemy' and

the Roman 'Claudius'. This would indicate that he was
descended from a Greek family living in Egypt and that he
was a citizen of Rome, which would be as a result of a
Roman emperor giving that 'reward' to one of Ptolemy's
ancestors. We know very little of Ptolemy's life. He made
astronomical observations from Alexandria in Egypt during
the years AD 127-41. In fact, the first observation which
we can date exactly was made by Ptolemy on 26 March
127 while the last was made on 2 February 141. It was
claimed by Theodore Meliteniotes in around 1360 that Ptolemy was born in Hermiou (which is
in Upper Egypt rather than Lower Egypt where Alexandria is situated) but since this claim first
appears more than one thousand years after Ptolemy lived, it must be treated as relatively
unlikely to be true. In fact, there is no evidence that Ptolemy was ever anywhere other than
Alexandria. In particular he introduces trigonometrical methods based on the chord
function. Ptolemy devised new geometrical proofs and theorems. He obtained, using chords
of a circle and an inscribed 360-gon, the approximation pi = 3 + 17/120 = 3.14166.
George Boole,

born November 2, 1815, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England—

died December 8, 1864, Ballintemple, County Cork, Ireland),
English mathematician who helped establish modern
symbolic logic and whose algebra of logic, now called
Boolean algebra, is basic to the design of digital computer
circuits. George Boole approached logic in a new way
reducing it to a simple algebra, incorporating logic into
mathematics. He also worked on differential equations,
the calculus of finite differences and general methods in
probability. Let us now look at Boole's most important
work. In 1854 he published An investigation into the
Laws of Thought, on Which are founded the Mathematical
Theories of Logic and Probabilities. Boole approached logic
in a new way reducing it to a simple algebra, incorporating
logic into mathematics. He pointed out the analogy between
algebraic symbols and those that represent logical forms. It began the algebra of logic
called Boolean algebra which now finds application in computer construction, switching circuits
etc. Boole himself understood the importance of the work. He wrote in a letter
to Thomson dated 2 January 1851 (see for example [7]):-
I am now about to set seriously to work upon preparing for the press an account of my theory of
Logic and Probabilities which in its present state I look upon as the most valuable if not the only
valuable contribution that I have made or am likely to make to Science and the thing by which I
would desire if at all to be remembered hereafter ...
Boole also worked on differential equations, the influential Treatise on Differential
Equations appeared in 1859, the calculus of finite differences, Treatise on the Calculus of Finite
Differences (1860), and general methods in probability. He published around 50 papers and was
one of the first to investigate the basic properties of numbers, such as the distributive property,
that underlie the subject of algebra.

Many honours were given to Boole as the genius in his work was recognised. He received
honorary degrees from the universities of Dublin and Oxford and was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society (1857). However his career, which was started rather late, came to an
unfortunately early end when he died at the age of 49. The circumstances are described
by Macfarlane in [18] as follows:-
One day in 1864 he walked from his residence to the College, a distance of two miles, in the
drenching rain, and lectured in wet clothes. The result was a feverish cold which soon fell upon
his lungs and terminated his career ....
What Macfarlane fails to say is that Boole's wife believed that a remedy should resemble the
cause. She put Boole to bed and threw buckets of water over the bed since his illness had been
caused by getting wet.

Hirst described Boole as:-

... evidently an earnest able and at the same time a genial man.
His work was praised by De Morgan who said:-
Boole's system of logic is but one of many proofs of genius and patience combined. ... That the
symbolic processes of algebra, invented as tools of numerical calculation, should be competent
to express every act of thought, and to furnish the grammar and dictionary of an all-containing
system of logic, would not have been believed until it was proved. When Hobbes ... published
his "Computation or Logique" he had a remote glimpse of some of the points which are placed in
the light of day by Mr Boole.
Boolean algebra has wide applications in telephone switching and the design of modern
computers. Boole's work has to be seen as a fundamental step in today's computer revolution.

Georg Cantor,

German mathematician who founded set theory and introduced

the mathematically meaningful concept of transfinite numbers,
indefinitely large but distinct from one another. Cantor’s
parents were Danish. His artistic mother, a Roman Catholic,
came from a family of musicians, and his father, a Protestant,
was a prosperous merchant. When his father became ill in 1856,
the family moved to Frankfurt. Cantor’s mathematical talents
emerged prior to his 15th birthday while he was studying in
private schools and at gymnasien at Darmstadt first and then at
Wiesbaden; eventually, he overcame the objections of his father, who wanted him to become an
engineer. He is best known as the inventor of set theory that later became a fundamental
theory in mathematics. He was able to establish the importance of one-to-one correspondence
between members of two sets, well-ordered sets, and defined infinite sets. These proved that real
numbers are much more numerous than natural numbers. Actually, his theorem implies the
existence of ‘infinity of infinities.’ Georg also defined the ordinal and cardinal numbers and their
arithmetic.

Brahmagupta

was a great mathematician and astronomer. Brahamgupta

considered himself to be an astrologer, maybe because his father
Jisnugupta was an astrologer but today, he is mostly remembered
for his significant works in the field of mathematics. He was born
in 598 CE in Bhinmal, a city in Rajasthan. He spent a major part
of his life in Rajasthan. Ujjain was the centre of Indian
mathematical astronomy in ancient times and Brahamgupta was
the director of this centre. Brahmagupta (ad 628) was the first mathematician to provide the
formula for the area of a cyclic quadrilateral. His contributions to geometry are significant.
He is the first person to discuss the method of finding a cyclic quadrilateral with rational
sides.
CHRISTIAN ALABA
John Napier
John Napier of Merchiston (/ˈneɪpiər/;[1] 1 February
1550 – 4 April 1617), nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston,
was a Scottish landowner known as
a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the
8th Laird of Merchiston. His Latinized name was Ioannes
Neper.
John Napier is best known as the discoverer
of logarithms. He also invented the so-called "Napier's
bones" and made common the use of the decimal point in
arithmetic and mathematics.
Napier's birthplace, Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh, is
now part of the facilities of Edinburgh Napier University.
There is a memorial to him at St Cuthbert's at the west
side of Edinburgh.
His work, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614) contained fifty-seven pages of
explanatory matter and ninety pages of tables listing the natural logarithms of trigonometric
functions.[12]: Ch. III  The book also has an excellent discussion of theorems in spherical
trigonometry, usually known as Napier's Rules of Circular Parts.
Modern English translations of both Napier's books on logarithms and their description can be
found on the web, as well as a discussion of Napier's bones and Promptuary (another early
calculating device).[13]
His invention of logarithms was quickly taken up at Gresham College, and prominent English
mathematician Henry Briggs visited Napier in 1615. Among the matters they discussed were a
re-scaling of Napier's logarithms, in which the presence of the mathematical constant now known
as e (more accurately, e times a large power of 10 rounded to an integer) was a practical
difficulty. Neither Napier nor Briggs actually discovered the constant e; that discovery was made
decades later by Jacob Bernoulli.
Napier delegated to Briggs the computation of a revised table. The computational advance
available via logarithms, the inverse of powered numbers or exponential notation, was such that
it made calculations by hand much quicker.[14] The way was opened to later scientific advances,
in astronomy, dynamics, and other areas of physics.
Napier made further contributions. He improved Simon Stevin's decimal notation, introducing
the period (.) as the delimiter for the fractional part.[15]: p. 8, archive p. 32)  Lattice
multiplication, used by Fibonacci, was made more convenient by his introduction of Napier's
bones, a multiplication tool using a set of numbered rods.
Napier may have worked largely in isolation, but he had contact with Tycho Brahe who
corresponded with his friend John Craig. Craig certainly announced the discovery of logarithms
to Brahe in the 1590s (the name itself came later); there is a story from Anthony à Wood,
perhaps not well substantiated, that Napier had a hint from Craig that Longomontanus, a follower
of Brahe, was working in a similar direction.
It has been shown[by whom?][weasel words] that Craig had notes on a method of Paul
Wittich that used trigonometric identities to reduce a multiplication formula for the sine
function to additions.

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell FRSE FRS (13 June 1831 – 5
November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician[1][2] and
scientist responsible for the classical
theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first
theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as
different manifestations of the same
phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism
have been called the "second great unification in
physics"[3] where the first one had been realised
by Isaac Newton.
With the publication of "A Dynamical Theory of the
Electromagnetic Field" in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated
that electric and magnetic fields travel through space
as waves moving at the speed of light. He proposed that
light is an undulation in the same medium that is the
cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.[4] The unification of light and electrical phenomena
led to his prediction of the existence of radio waves. Maxwell is also regarded as a founder of the
modern field of electrical engineering.[5]
Maxwell helped develop the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, a statistical means of describing
aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for presenting the first durable colour
photograph in 1861 and for his foundational work on analysing the rigidity of rod-and-joint
frameworks (trusses) like those in many bridges.
His discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields
as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-
century scientist having the greatest influence on 20th-century physics. His contributions to the
science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton
and Albert Einstein.[6] In the millennium poll—a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists—
Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein.
[7] On the centenary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein described Maxwell's work as the "most
profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton".
[8] Einstein, when he visited the University of Cambridge in 1922, was told by his host that he
had done great things because he stood on Newton's shoulders; Einstein replied: "No I don't. I
stand on the shoulders of Maxwell."

Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville (/ˈsʌmərvɪl/; née Fairfax,
formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November
1872)[1] was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath.
She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835
she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first
female Honorary Members of the Royal Astronomical
Society.
When John Stuart Mill organized a massive petition to
Parliament to give women the right to vote, he made
sure that the first signature on the petition would be
Somerville's.
In 1834 she became the first person to be described in
print as a 'scientist'.[2] When she died in 1872, The
Morning Post declared in her obituary that "Whatever
difficulty we might experience in the middle of the
nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there
could be no question whatever as to the queen of science".[3][4]
Somerville College, a college of the University of Oxford, is named after her, reflecting the
virtues of liberalism and academic success which the college wished to embody.[5] She is
featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017 along
with a quotation from her work On the Connection of the Physical Sciences.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī (Persian: ‫محمد‬
18 ‫ ابن محم™™د ابن حس™™ن طوسی‬February 1201 – 26 June 1274), better
known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (Persian: ‫ ;نص™™™یر ال™™™دین طوسی‬or
simply Tusi /ˈtuːsi/[4] in the West), was a Persian polymath,
architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian.[5] Nasir
al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of
math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi
made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created
very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary
model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides
in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and
chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well. Tusi is widely regarded as one
of the greatest scientists of medieval Islam, [6] since he is often considered the creator
of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. [7][8][9] The Muslim scholar Ibn
Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars.[10] There is
also reason to believe that he may have influenced Copernican heliocentrism.[11][12][13][14][15]
[16]
 Nasir proposed that humans are related to animals and that some animals have a limited level
of awareness while humans have a superior level of awareness amongst animals. He also framed
a very basic evolutionary theory (though markedly different from modern evolutionary theory)

Colin Maclaurin
Colin Maclaurin (/məˈklɔːrən/; Scottish Gaelic: Cailean
MacLabhruinn;[pronunciation?] February 1698 – 14 June 1746)
[1]
 was a Scottish mathematician who made important
contributions to geometry and algebra.[2] He is also known
for being a child prodigy and holding the record for being
the youngest professor. The Maclaurin series, a special case
of the Taylor series, is named after him.
Owing to changes in orthography since that time (his name
was originally rendered as M'Laurine[3]), his surname is
alternatively written MacLaurin
Maclaurin used Taylor series to characterize maxima,
minima, and points of inflection for infinitely differentiable
functions in his Treatise of Fluxions. Maclaurin attributed
the series to Brook Taylor, though the series was known
before to Newton and Gregory, and in special cases to Madhava of Sangamagrama in fourteenth
century India.[6] Nevertheless, Maclaurin received credit for his use of the series, and the Taylor
series expanded around 0 is sometimes known as the Maclaurin series. Maclaurin also made
significant contributions to the gravitation attraction of ellipsoids, a subject that furthermore
attracted the attention of d'Alembert, A.-C. Clairaut, Euler, Laplace, Legendre, Poisson and
Gauss. Maclaurin showed that an oblate spheroid was a possible equilibrium in Newton's theory
of gravity. The subject continues to be of scientific interest, and Nobel Laureate Subramanyan
Chandrasekhar dedicated a chapter of his book Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium to Maclaurin
spheroids.[7]
Independently from Euler and using the same methods, Maclaurin discovered the Euler–
Maclaurin formula. He used it to sum powers of arithmetic progressions, derive Stirling's
formula, and to derive the Newton-Cotes numerical integration formulas which
includes Simpson's rule as a special case.[7]
Maclaurin contributed to the study of elliptic integrals, reducing many intractable integrals to
problems of finding arcs for hyperbolas. His work was continued by d'Alembert and Euler, who
gave a more concise approach.[7]
In his Treatise of Algebra (Ch. XII, Sect 86), published in 1748 two years after his death,
Maclaurin proved a rule for solving square linear systems in the cases of 2 and 3 unknowns, and
discussed the case of 4 unknowns.[8][9] This publication preceded by two years Cramer's
publication of a generalization of the rule to n unknowns, now commonly known as Cramer's
rule.
KATHERINE JOHNSON

Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26,

1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American
mathematician whose calculations of orbital
mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to
the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed
spaceflights.[1] During her 33-year career at
NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation
for mastering complex manual calculations and
helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the
tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role
as one of the first African-American women to
work as a NASA scientist".

Johnson's work included calculating trajectories,

launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights,
including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John
Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar
Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also
essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans
for a mission to Mars. She was known as a "human computer" for her tremendous
mathematical capability and ability to work with space trajectories with such little
technology and recognition at the time.

In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of

Freedom. In 2016, she was presented with the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA
astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was
portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States
Congress.[3] In 2021, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
HENRI POINCARE

Jules Henri Poincaré (UK: /ˈpwæ̃kɑːreɪ/[4]

[US: stress final syllable], French: [ɑ̃ʁi
pwɛk̃ aʁe] (listen);[5][6] 29 April 1854 – 17
July 1912) was a French mathematician,
theoretical physicist, engineer, and
philosopher of science. He is often described
as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The
Last Universalist",[7] since he excelled in all
fields of the discipline as it existed during
his lifetime.
As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and
applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics.[8] In his research on the
three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system
which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the
founders of the field of topology.

Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics
under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their
modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity
transformations and recorded them in a letter to Hendrik Lorentz in 1905. Thus he obtained
perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the
theory of special relativity. In 1905, Poincaré first proposed gravitational waves (ondes
gravifiques) emanating from a body and propagating at the speed of light as being required by
the Lorentz transformations.The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named
after him.Early in the 20th century he formulated the Poincaré conjecture that became over time
one of thefamous unsolved problems in mathematics until it was solved in 2002–2003 by Grigori
Perelman
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Benoit B.[n 1] Mandelbrot[n 2] (20 November 1924 – 14

October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American
mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the
practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as
"the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the
uncontrolled element in life".[5][6][7] He referred to himself
as a "fractalist"[8] and is recognized for his contribution to the
field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word
"fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and
self-similarity" in nature.

In 1936, at the age of 11, Mandelbrot and his family

emigrated from Warsaw, Poland, to France. After World War
II ended, Mandelbrot studied mathematics, graduating from
universities in Paris and in the United States and receiving a
master's degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of
Technology. He spent most of his career in both the United States and France, having dual
French and American citizenship. In 1958, he began a 35-year career at IBM, where he became
an IBM Fellow, and periodically took leaves of absence to teach at Harvard University. At
Harvard, following the publication of his study of U.S. commodity markets in relation to cotton
futures, he taught economics and applied sciences.

Because of his access to IBM's computers, Mandelbrot was one of the first to use computer
graphics to create and display fractal geometric images, leading to his discovery of the
Mandelbrot set in 1980. He showed how visual complexity can be created from simple rules. He
said that things typically considered to be "rough", a "mess", or "chaotic", such as clouds or
shorelines, actually had a "degree of order".[10] His math and geometry-centered research
included contributions to such fields as statistical physics, meteorology, hydrology,
geomorphology, anatomy, taxonomy, neurology, linguistics, information technology, computer
graphics, economics, geology, medicine, physical cosmology, engineering, chaos theory,
econophysics, metallurgy, and the social sciences.[11]

Toward the end of his career, he was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale
University, where he was the oldest professor in Yale's history to receive tenure.[12] Mandelbrot
also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de
France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. During
his career, he received over 15 honorary doctorates and served on many science journals, along
with winning numerous awards. His autobiography, The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific
Maverick, was published posthumously in 2012.
JOSEPH FOURIER

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (/ˈfʊrieɪ, -iər/;[1] French:

[fuʁje]; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French
mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best
known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series,
which eventually developed into Fourier analysis and
harmonic analysis, and their applications to problems of
heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and
Fourier's law of conduction are also named in his honour.
Fourier is also generally credited with the discovery of the
greenhouse effect.

Fourier was born at Auxerre (now in the Yonne

département of France), the son of a tailor. He was
orphaned at the age of nine. Fourier was recommended to
the Bishop of Auxerre and, through this introduction, he
was educated by the Benedictine Order of the Convent of
St. Mark. The commissions in the scientific corps of the army were reserved for those of good
birth, and being thus ineligible, he accepted a military lectureship on mathematics. He took a
prominent part in his own district in promoting the French Revolution, serving on the local
Revolutionary Committee. He was imprisoned briefly during the Terror but, in 1795, was
appointed to the École Normale and subsequently succeeded Joseph-Louis Lagrange at the École
Polytechnique.

Fourier accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition in 1798, as scientific

adviser, and was appointed secretary of the Institut d'Égypte. Cut off from France by the British
fleet, he organized the workshops on which the French army had to rely for their munitions of
war. He also contributed several mathematical papers to the Egyptian Institute (also called the
Cairo Institute) which Napoleon founded at Cairo, with a view of weakening British influence in
the East. After the British victories and the capitulation of the French under General Menou in
1801, Fourier returned to France.
PAUL ERDŐS
Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March
1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician.
He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and
producers of mathematical conjectures[2] of the 20th
century.[3] Erdős pursued and proposed problems in discrete
mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical
analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability
theory.[4] Much of his work centered around discrete
mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems
in the field. He championed and contributed to Ramsey
theory, which studies the conditions in which order
necessarily appears. Overall, his work leaned towards
solving previously open problems, rather than developing or
exploring new areas of mathematics.

Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during

his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed.[5] He firmly believed mathematics to be a social
activity, living an itinerant lifestyle with the sole purpose of writing mathematical papers with
other mathematicians. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics, working with
more than 500 collaborators, and for his eccentric lifestyle; Time magazine called him "The
Oddball's Oddball".[6] He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—
indeed, his death came only hours after he solved a geometry problem at a conference in
Warsaw. Erdős's prolific output with co-authors prompted the creation of the Erdős number, the
number of steps in the shortest path between a mathematician and Erdős in terms of co-
authorships
PRINCESS AIZE PERALTA
Aryabhatta

Aryabhatta was an extraordinary teacher and scholar

who had immense knowledge about mathematics
and astronomy. He suggested the heliocentric theory
which proved that the sun is located in the centre of
the solar system and all the planets revolve around
it. In fact he made this discovery way before
Copernicus made this discovery in the West.

Aryabhatta was born in Kerala and lived from 476

AD to 550 AD, he completed his education from the
ancient university of Nalanda and later he moved to
Bihar and continued his studies in the great centre of
learning located in close proximity to Kusumapura
in Bihar and lived in Taregana District in Bihar in the late 5th and early 6th century., a great
Indian mathematician and astronomer was born in 476 CE. His name is sometimes wrongly spelt
as ‘Aryabhatta’. His age is known because he mentioned in his book ‘Aryabhatia’ that he was
just 23 years old while he was writing this book. According to his book, he was born in
Kusmapura or Patliputra, present-day Patna, Bihar. Scientists still believe his birthplace to be
Kusumapura as most of his significant works were found there and claimed that he completed all
of his studies in the same city. Kusumapura and Ujjain were the two major mathematical centres
in the times of Aryabhata. Some of them also believed that he was the head of Nalanda
university. However, no such proofs were available to these theories. His only surviving work is
‘Aryabhatia’ and the rest all is lost and not found till now. ‘Aryabhatia’ is a small book of 118
verses with 13 verses (Gitikapada) on cosmology, different from earlier texts, a section of 33
verses (Ganitapada) giving 66 mathematical rules, the second section of 25 verses
(Kalakriyapada) on planetary models, and the third section of 5o verses (Golapada) on spheres
and eclipses. In this book, he summarised Hindu mathematics up to his time. He made a
significant contribution to the field of mathematics and astronomy. In the field of astronomy, he
gave the geocentric model of the universe. He also predicted a solar and lunar eclipse. In his
view, the motion of stars appears to be in a westward direction because of the spherical earth’s
rotation about its axis. In 1975, to honour the great mathematician, India named its first satellite
Aryabhata. In the field of mathematics, he invented zero and the concept of place value. His
major works are related to the topics of trigonometry, algebra, approximation of π, and
indeterminate equations. The reason for his death is not known but he died in 55o CE. Bhaskara
I, who wrote a commentary on the Aryabhatiya about 100 years later wrote of Aryabhata:-

Aryabhatta (476-550), the most important ancient mathematician of India. Aryabhatta headed the
classical era of Indian mathematics. He helped to ignite a new era in mathematics, which in turn
spurred on other sciences, such as astronomy. Among his many accomplishments were the
introduction of the concept of trigonometry, the most precise estimation of π (the ratio of the
circumference to the diameter of a circle) up to that date (3.1416), and an accurate estimation of
a solar year. His calculations on the circumference of the earth (62832 miles) and the length of
the solar year (within about 13 minutes of the modern calculation) were remarkably close
approximations. In making such calculations, Aryabhatta had to solve several mathematical
problems that had not been addressed before including problems in algebra (bij-ganit) and
trigonometry. In the course of developing a precise mapping of the lunar eclipse, Aryabhatta was
obliged to introduce the concept of infinitesimals - i.e. tatkalika gati to designate the
infinitesimal, or near instantaneous motion of the moon, and express it in the form of a basic
differential equation. It is worth mentioning that Roots of the Modern Trignometry lie in the
book titled Surya Siddhanta . It mentions Zia (Sine), Kotizia (Cosine) etc. Please note that the
word (Zia) changed to "Jaib" in Arab first. The translation of Jaib in Latin was done as "Sinus".
And this "Sinus" became "Sine" later on. The word Trigonometry also is derived from the Indian
word Trikonomiti, Trikono meaning a Triangle, (modern day Tribhuja).
Brahmagupta
In the 7th century, Brahmagupta (born 598) did important work in
enumerating the basic principles of algebra. In 628 he wrote
his Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta (“The Revised System of Brahma”).
In addition to listing the algebraic properties of zero, he also listed
the algebraic properties of negative numbers and used these signs
for addition, subtraction and multiplication (+, -, x). He was the first
to postulate that, “The multiplication of a positive number with a
negative number comes out to be a negative number. Further when a
positive number is divided by a negative number or a negative
number is divided by a positive number the result is a negative
number.”

His work on solutions to quadratic indeterminate equations

anticipated the work of Euler and Lagrange. It is a sobering thought that even eight hundred
years later European mathematics would be struggling to cope with the use of negative numbers
and of zero. More than that, he made other major contributions to the understanding of integer
solutions to indeterminate equations and to interpolation formulas invented to aid the
computation of sine tables. Although almost all ancient countries used quantities of unknown
values for solution of problems, the expansion of Algebra (Biz Ganit) became possible only
when Indians realized that all the calculations of Numerical Mathematics could be done by
notations, and for the first time used Sanskrit Alphabet to denote unknown quantities.

Brahmagupta is also credited with the following:

To give the general solution to the quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0 in the form :

x = [-b ± (b2 - 4ac)1/2]/2aTo give an alternate proof of the Pythagorean Theorem by calculating
the same area in two different ways and then canceling out terms to get a² + b² = c².

Developments also took place in applied mathematics such as in creation of trigonometric tables
and measurement units. Yativrsabha's work Tiloyapannatti (6th C) gives various units for
measuring distances and time and also describes the system of infinite time measures.

Aryabhatta's equations were elaborated on by Manjula (10th C) and Bhaskaracharya (12th C)

who derived the differential of the sine function. Later mathematicians used their intuitive
understanding of integration in deriving the areas of curved surfaces and the volumes enclosed
by them.

Between the 7th C and the 11th C, Indian numerals developed into their modern form, and along
with the symbols denoting various mathematical functions eventually became the foundation
stones of modern mathematical notation.
Bhaskara
Bhāskara (c. 600 – c. 680) (commonly called Bhāskara I to
avoid confusion with the 12th-century
mathematician Bhāskara II) was a 7th-century Indian
mathematician and astronomer, who was the first to
write numbers in the Hindu decimal system with a circle for
the zero, and who gave a unique and remarkable
rational approximation of the sine function in his
commentary on Aryabhata's work. This commentary,
Āryabhaṭīyabhāṣya, written in 629 CE, is among the oldest
known prose works
in Sanskrit on mathematics and astronomy. He also wrote
two astronomical works in the line of Aryabhata's school,
the Mahābhāskarīya and the Laghubhāskarīya. Bhāskara
wrote three astronomical contributions. In 629, he annotated the Aryabhatiya, written in verses,
about mathematical astronomy. The comments referred exactly to the 33 verses dealing with
mathematics. There he considered variable equations and trigonometric formulae.

His work Mahabhaskariya divides into eight chapters about mathematical astronomy. In chapter

7, he gives a remarkable approximation formula for sin x, that is which he assigns to Aryabhata.
It reveals a relative error of less than 1.9% (the greatest deviation  Moreover, relations between
sine and cosine, as well as between the sine of an angle >90° >180° or >270° to the sine of an
angle <90° are given. Parts of Mahabhaskariya were later translated into Arabic.

Bhāskara already dealt with the assertion that if p is a prime number, then 1 + (p–1)! is divisible
by p. It was proved later by Al-Haitham, also mentioned by Fibonacci, and is now known
as Wilson's theorem.

Moreover, Bhāskara stated theorems about the solutions of today so-called Pell equations. For
instance, he posed the problem: "Tell me, O mathematician, what is that square which multiplied
by 8 becomes - together with unity - a square?" In modern notation, he asked for the solutions of
the Pell equation 8x² + 1 = y² . It has the simple solution x = 1, y = 3, or shortly (x,y) = (1,3),
from which further solutions can be constructed, e.g., (x,y) = (6,17).

Bhāskara clearly believed that π was irrational and in support of Aryabhata's approximation to π,

criticized its approximation to √10 (common among Jain mathematicians).

He was the first mathematician to open discussion about quadrilaterals whose four sides are not
equal with none of the opposite sides parallel.
Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), the man who reshaped

twentieth-century mathematics with his various
contributions in several mathematical domains, including
mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions,
number theory, and game theory is recognized as one of
history's greatest mathematicians. Leaving this world at
the youthful age of 32, Ramanujan made significant
contributions to mathematics that only a few others could
match in their lifetime. Surprisingly, he never received any
formal mathematics training. Most of his mathematical
discoveries were based only on intuition and were
ultimately proven correct. With its humble and sometimes
difficult start, his life story is just as fascinating as his
incredible work. Every year, Ramanujan’s birth
anniversary on December 22 is observed as National Mathematics Day.

Srinivasa Ramanujan began developing his theories in mathematics and published his first paper
in 1911. He was mentored at Cambridge by GH Hardy, a well-known British mathematician who
encouraged him to publish his findings in a number of papers. In 1918, Ramanujan became the
second Indian to be included as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Ramanujan’s major contributions to mathematics:

Ramanujan's contribution extends to mathematical fields such as complex analysis, number

theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

Infinite series for pi: In 1914, Ramanujan found a formula for infinite series for pi, which forms
the basis of many algorithms used today. Finding an accurate approximation of π (pi) has been
one of the most important challenges in the history of mathematics.

Game theory: Ramanujan discovered a long list of new ideas for solving many challenging
mathematical problems that have given great impetus to the development of game theory. His
contribution to game theory is purely based on intuition and natural talent and is unmatched to
this day.

Mock theta function: He elaborated on the mock theta function,  a concept in the field of modular
forms of mathematics.

Ramanujan number: 1729 is known as the Ramanujan number which is the sum of the cubes of
two numbers 10 and 9.
Circle Method: Ramanujan, along with GH Hardy, invented the circle method which gave the
first approximations of the partition of numbers beyond 200. This method contributed
significantly to solving the notorious complex problems of the 20th century, such as Waring's
conjecture and other additional questions.

Theta Function: Theta function is a special function of several complex variables. German

mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi invented several closely related theta functions known
as Jacobi theta functions. Theta function was studied by extensively Ramanujan who came up
with the Ramanujan theta function, that generalizes the form of Jacobi theta functions and also
captures general properties. Ramanujan theta function is used to determine the critical
dimensions in Bosonic string theory, superstring theory, and M-theory.

Other notable contributions by Ramanujan include hypergeometric series, the Riemann series,
the elliptic integrals, the theory of divergent series, and the functional equations of the zeta
function.

Narendra Karmarkar
Narendra Karmarkar was born in the Gwalior to a small
middle class Marathi family. Narendra Karmarkar had
received his B.Tech in the Electrical Engineering from
the IIT Mumbai in 1978. He had completed his M.S
from the famous California Institute of University and
completed his Ph.D. in the Computer Science from the
famous University of California, Berkeley. He had
published his most famous result in 1984 while he was
then working for the Bell Laboratories in the New
Jersey. Narendra Karmarkar was a famous professor at
the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research located in
Mumbai. He is currently now working on a very new
architecture used for supercomputing. Some of the
ideas that are published at the Fab5 conference which
is organised by the MIT center for the bits and atoms.

Karmarkar’s Famous algorithm

Karmarkar’s algorithm solves the various linear Programming problems in the polynomial time.
These problems are mostly represented by a “n” variables and a “m” constraints. The previous
used method for solving these type of problems consisted a lot of problem representation by a
“x” sided solid with a “y” vertices, where all the solution was then approached by traversing it
from the vertex tovertex. Karmarkar’s novel method approaches all the solution by method of
cutting through the all the above solid in all its traversal. Consequently, the complex
optimization problems are also solved much faster using the method of Karmarkar algorithm. A
practical example of this type of efficiency is the solution to a very complex problem in the
communications network optimization where all the solution time taken was reduced from the
weeks to some days. His algorithm thus enables the faster business and various policy decisions.
Karmarkar’s algorithm has also stimulated all the development of the several other used interior
point methods, some of which are now used in the current codes for solving the linear programs.
DANILO LARRACAS
John Forbes Nash Jr.

John Forbes Nash Jr. (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015)

was an American mathematician who made fundamental
contributions to game theory, real algebraic
geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential
equations.[2][3] Nash and fellow game theorists John
Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten were awarded the
1994 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel (popularly known as the Nobel
Prize in Economics). In 2015, he and Louis
Nirenberg were awarded the Abel Prize for their
contributions to the field of partial differential equations.
As a graduate student in the Mathematics
Department at Princeton University, Nash introduced a
number of concepts (including Nash equilibrium and
the Nash bargaining solution) which are now considered
central to game theory and its applications in various
sciences. In the 1950s, Nash discovered and proved
the Nash embedding theorems by solving a system of nonlinear partial differential equations
arising in Riemannian geometry. This work, also introducing a preliminary form of the Nash–
Moser theorem, was later recognized by the American Mathematical Society with the Leroy P.
Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. Ennio De Giorgi and Nash found, with
separate methods, a body of results paving the way for a systematic understanding
of elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations. Their De Giorgi–Nash theorem on the
smoothness of solutions of such equations resolved Hilbert's nineteenth problem on regularity in
the calculus of variations, which had been a well-known open problem for almost sixty years.
In 1959, Nash began showing clear signs of mental illness, and spent several years at psychiatric
hospitals being treated for schizophrenia. After 1970, his condition slowly improved, allowing
him to return to academic work by the mid-1980s.[4] His struggles with his illness and his
recovery became the basis for Sylvia Nasar's biographical book A Beautiful Mind in 1998, as
well as a film of the same name directed by Ron Howard, in which Nash was portrayed by New
Zealand Australian actor Russell Crowe.
John von Neumann

John von
Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/; Hungarian: Neumann János
Lajos, pronounced [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December
28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-
American mathematician, physicist, computer
scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as
having perhaps the widest coverage of any
mathematician of his time[13] and was said to have been
"the last representative of the great mathematicians who
were equally at home in both pure and applied
mathematics".[14][15] He integrated pure and applied
sciences.
Von Neumann made major contributions to many fields,
including mathematics (foundations of
mathematics, measure theory, functional
analysis, ergodic theory, group theory, lattice theory, representation theory, operator
algebras, matrix theory, geometry, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum
mechanics, hydrodynamics, ballistics, nuclear physics and quantum statistical
mechanics), economics (game theory and general equilibrium theory), computing (Von
Neumann architecture, linear programming, numerical meteorology, scientific computing, self-
replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. He was a pioneer of the application
of operator theory to quantum mechanics in the development of functional analysis, and a key
figure in the development of game theory and the concepts of cellular automata, the universal
constructor and the digital computer.
Von Neumann published over 150 papers in his life: about 60 in pure mathematics, 60 in applied
mathematics, 20 in physics, and the remainder on special mathematical subjects or non-
mathematical ones.[16] His last work, an unfinished manuscript written while he was dying in
hospital, was later published in book form as The Computer and the Brain.
His analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.
In a shortlist of facts about his life he submitted to the National Academy of Sciences, he wrote,
"The part of my work I consider most essential is that on quantum mechanics, which developed
in Göttingen in 1926, and subsequently in Berlin in 1927–1929. Also, my work on various forms
of operator theory, Berlin 1930 and Princeton 1935–1939; on the ergodic theorem, Princeton,
1931–1932."[17]
During World War II, von Neumann worked on the Manhattan Project with theoretical
physicist Edward Teller, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam and others, problem-solving key steps
in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb. He
developed the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type
nuclear weapon and coined the term "kiloton" (of TNT) as a measure of the explosive force
generated.[18] During this time and after the war, he consulted for a vast number of
organizations including the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Army's Ballistic
Research Laboratory, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.[19] At the peak of his influence in the 1950s he was the chair for a number of
critical Defense Department committees including the Nuclear Weapons Panel of the Air
Force Scientific Advisory Board and the ICBM Scientific Advisory Committee as well as a
member of the influential Atomic Energy Commission. He played a key role alongside Bernard
Schriever and Trevor Gardner in contributing to the design and development of the United
States' first ICBM programs.[20] During this time he was considered the nation's foremost expert
on nuclear weaponry and the leading defense scientist at the Pentagon.[21] As a Hungarian
émigré, concerned that the Soviets would achieve nuclear superiority, he designed and promoted
the policy of mutually assured destruction to limit the arms race.[22]
In honor of his achievements and contributions to the modern world, he was named in 1999
the Financial Times Person of the Century, as a representative of the century's characteristic ideal
that the power of the mind could shape the physical world, and of the "intellectual brilliance and
human savagery" that defined the 20th century.

David Hilbert

David Hilbert (/ˈhɪlbərt/;[4] German: [ˈdaːvɪt ˈhɪlbɐt]; 23

January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German
mathematician and one of the most influential
mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert
discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental
ideas in many areas, including invariant theory, the calculus
of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number
theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of
operators and its application to integral
equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of
mathematics (particularly proof theory).
Hilbert adopted and defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. In 1900, he
presented a collection of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of
the 20th century.[5][6]
Hilbert and his students contributed significantly to establishing rigor and developed important
tools used in modern mathematical physics. Hilbert is known as one of the founders of proof
theory and mathematical logic.
Hilbert solves Gordan's Problem[edit]
Hilbert's first work on invariant functions led him to the demonstration in 1888 of his
famous finiteness theorem. Twenty years earlier, Paul Gordan had demonstrated the theorem of
the finiteness of generators for binary forms using a complex computational approach. Attempts
to generalize his method to functions with more than two variables failed because of the
enormous difficulty of the calculations involved. To solve what had become known in some
circles as Gordan's Problem, Hilbert realized that it was necessary to take a completely different
path. As a result, he demonstrated Hilbert's basis theorem, showing the existence of a finite set of
generators, for the invariants of quantics in any number of variables, but in an abstract form.
That is, while demonstrating the existence of such a set, it was not a constructive proof—it did
not display "an object"—but rather, it was an existence proof[27] and relied on use of the law of
excluded middle in an infinite extension.
Hilbert sent his results to the Mathematische Annalen. Gordan, the house expert on the theory of
invariants for the Mathematische Annalen, could not appreciate the revolutionary nature of
Hilbert's theorem and rejected the article, criticizing the exposition because it was insufficiently
comprehensive.

Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS (/ˈsriːnɪvɑːsə rɑːˈmɑːnʊdʒən/;[1] born Srinivasa Ramanujan
͡
Aiyangar, IPA: [sriːniʋaːsa ɾaːmaːnudʑan ajːaŋgar]; 22
December 1887 – 26 April 1920)[2][3] was an
Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal
training in pure mathematics, he made substantial
contributions to mathematical analysis, number
theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including
solutions to mathematical problems then considered
unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own
mathematical research in isolation: according to Hans
Eysenck: "He tried to interest the leading professional
mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part.
What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar,
and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could
not be bothered".[4] Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he
began a postal correspondence with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of
Cambridge, England. Recognising Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him
to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced
groundbreaking new theorems, including some that "defeated me completely; I had never seen
anything in the least like them before",[5] and some recently proven but highly advanced results.
During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results
(mostly identities and equations).[6] Many were completely novel; his original and highly
unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta
function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and
inspired a vast amount of further research.[7] Of his thousands of results, all but a dozen or two
have now been proven correct.[8] The Ramanujan Journal, a scientific journal, was established to
publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan,[9] and his notebooks—
containing summaries of his published and unpublished results—have been analysed and studied
for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2012, researchers
continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar
outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that
remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death.[10][11] He became one of the
youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian
to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his original letters, Hardy stated that a
single look was enough to show they could have been written only by a mathematician of the
highest calibre, comparing Ramanujan to mathematical geniuses such as Euler and Jacobi.
In 1919, ill health—now believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes
of dysentery many years previously)—compelled Ramanujan's return to India, where he died in
1920 at the age of 32. His last letters to Hardy, written in January 1920, show that he was still
continuing to produce new mathematical ideas and theorems. His "lost notebook", containing
discoveries from the last year of his life, caused great excitement among mathematicians when it
was rediscovered in 1976.
A deeply religious Hindu,[12] Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities
to divinity, and said his family goddess, Namagiri Thayar, revealed his mathematical knowledge
to him. He once said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God."

Carl Friedrich Gauss

In his 1799 doctorate in absentia, A new proof of the

theorem that every integral rational algebraic function of
one variable can be resolved into real factors of the first
or second degree, Gauss proved the fundamental theorem
of algebra which states that every non-constant single-variable polynomial with complex
coefficients has at least one complex root. Mathematicians including Jean le Rond
d'Alembert had produced false proofs before him, and Gauss's dissertation contains a critique of
d'Alembert's work. Ironically, by today's standard, Gauss's own attempt is not acceptable, owing
to the implicit use of the Jordan curve theorem. However, he subsequently produced three other
proofs, the last one in 1849 being generally rigorous. His attempts clarified the concept of
complex numbers considerably along the way.
Gauss also made important contributions to number theory with his 1801 book Disquisitiones
Arithmeticae (Latin, Arithmetical Investigations), which, among other things, introduced
the triple bar symbol ≡ for congruence and used it in a clean presentation of modular arithmetic,
contained the first two proofs of the law of quadratic reciprocity, developed the theories of
binary and ternary quadratic forms, stated the class number problem for them, and showed that a
regular heptadecagon (17-sided polygon) can be constructed with straightedge and compass. It
appears that Gauss already knew the class number formula in 1801.[49]
In addition, he proved the following conjectured theorems:
Fermat polygonal number theorem for n = 3
Fermat's Last Theorem for n = 5
Descartes's rule of signs
Kepler conjecture for regular arrangements
He also
explained the pentagramma mirificum (see University of Bielefeld website)
developed an algorithm for determining the date of Easter
invented the Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm for calculating the discrete Fourier transforms 160
years before Cooley and Tukey
ROWENA ANALASTAS
Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας ὁ

Σάμιος, romanized: Pythagóras ho Sámios, lit. 'Pythagoras
the Samian', or simply Πυθαγόρας; Πυθαγόρης in Ionian
Greek; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)[b] was an ancient Ionian Greek
philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism.
His political and religious teachings were well known
in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies
of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general.
Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to
have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the
island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding
Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that,
around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy,
where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to
secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary
prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although modern scholars doubt
that he ever advocated complete vegetarianism.
The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration
of souls", which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. He
may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the planets move
according to mathematical equations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of
music. Scholars debate whether Pythagoras developed the numerological and musical teachings
attributed to him, or if those teachings were developed by his later followers,
particularly Philolaus of Croton. Following Croton's decisive victory over Sybaris in around 510
BC, Pythagoras's followers came into conflict with supporters of democracy and Pythagorean
meeting houses were burned. Pythagoras may have been killed during this persecution, or
escaped to Metapontum, where he eventually died.
In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries,
including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of
Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the
planet Venus. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher ("lover of
wisdom")[c] and that he was the first to divide the globe into five climatic zones. Classical
historians debate whether Pythagoras made these discoveries, and many of the accomplishments
credited to him likely originated earlier or were made by his colleagues or successors. Some
accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and
that numbers were important, but it is debated to what extent, if at all, he actually contributed to
mathematics or natural philosophy.
Pythagoras influenced Plato, whose dialogues, especially his Timaeus, exhibit Pythagorean
teachings. Pythagorean ideas on mathematical perfection also impacted ancient Greek art. His
teachings underwent a major revival in the first century BC among Middle Platonists, coinciding
with the rise of Neopythagoreanism. Pythagoras continued to be regarded as a great philosopher
throughout the Middle Ages and his philosophy had a major impact on scientists such
as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton. Pythagorean symbolism was used
throughout early modern European esotericism, and his teachings as portrayed
in Ovid's Metamorphoses influenced the modern vegetarian movement.

Euclid

Euclid (/ˈjuːklɪd/; Greek: Εὐκλείδης; fl. 300 BC) was
an ancient Greek mathematician active as
a geometer and logician.[3] Considered the "father of
geometry",[4] he is chiefly known for
the Elements treatise, which established the
foundations of geometry that largely dominated the
field until the early 19th century. His system, now
referred to as Euclidean geometry, involved new
innovations in combination with a synthesis of theories
from earlier Greek mathematicians, including Eudoxus
of Cnidus, Hippocrates of
Chios, Thales and Theaetetus.
With Archimedes and Apollonius of Perga, Euclid is
generally considered among the greatest
mathematicians of antiquity, and one of the most
influential in the history of mathematics.
Very little is known of Euclid's life, and most information comes from the
philosophers Proclus and Pappus of Alexandria many centuries later. Until the
early Renaissance he was often mistaken for the earlier philosopher Euclid of Megara, causing
his biography to be substantially revised. It is generally agreed that he spent his career
under Ptolemy I in Alexandria and lived around 300 BC, after Plato and before Archimedes.
There is some speculation that Euclid was a student of the Platonic Academy. Euclid is often
regarded as bridging the earlier Platonic tradition in Athens with the later tradition of Alexandria.
In the Elements, Euclid deduced the theorems from a small set of axioms. He also wrote works
on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory, and mathematical rigour. In
addition to the Elements, Euclid wrote a central early text in the optics field, Optics, and lesser-
known works including Data and Phaenomena. Euclid's authorship of two other texts—On
Divisions of Figures, Catoptrics—has been questioned. He is thought to have written many
now lost works.

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (/ɛrəˈtɒsθəniːz/; Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 

195/194 BC) was a Greek polymath:
a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music
theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief
librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is
comparable to what is now known as the study
of geography, and he introduced some of
the terminology still used today.[1]
He is best known for being the first person known to
calculate the circumference of the Earth, which he did by
using the extensive survey results he could access in his
role at the Library; his calculation was remarkably
accurate.[2][3] He was also the first to calculate Earth's
axial tilt, which also proved to have remarkable accuracy.[4] He created the first global
projection of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic
knowledge of his era.
Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology;[5] he endeavoured to revise the dates of
the main events of the semi-mythological Trojan War, dating the Sack of Troy to 1183 BC.
In number theory, he introduced the sieve of Eratosthenes, an efficient method of
identifying prime numbers.
He was a figure of influence in many fields who yearned to understand the complexities of the
entire world.[6] His devotees nicknamed him Pentathlos after the Olympians who were well
rounded competitors, for he had proven himself to be knowledgeable in every area of learning.
Yet, according to an entry[7] in the Suda (a 10th-century encyclopedia), some critics scorned
him, calling him Beta (the second letter of the Greek alphabet) because he always came in
second in all his endeavours.
Hipparchus

Hipparchus (/hɪˈpɑːrkəs/; Greek: Ἵππαρχος, Hipparkhos; c. 190 – c. 120 BC) was a Greek

astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry,
[1] but is most famous for his incidental discovery of
the precession of the equinoxes.[2] Hipparchus was born
in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island
of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working
astronomer between 162 and 127 BC.[3]
Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical
observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer
of antiquity.[4][5] He was the first whose quantitative and
accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive.
For this he certainly made use of the observations and
perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over
centuries by the Babylonians and by Meton of Athens (fifth
century BC), Timocharis, Aristyllus, Aristarchus of Samos,
and Eratosthenes, among others.[6]
He developed trigonometry and constructed trigonometric tables, and he solved several problems
of spherical trigonometry. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he may have
been the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses.
His other reputed achievements include the discovery and measurement of Earth's precession, the
compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog known to be created in the western world,
possibly the invention of the astrolabe, as well as, of the armillary sphere that he used during the
creation of much of the star catalogue. Sometimes Hipparchus is referred to as the "father of
astronomy",[7][8] a title first conferred on him by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre.[

Diophantus
Diophantus of Alexandria (Ancient Greek: Διόφαντος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; born probably sometime
between AD 200 and 214; died around the age of 84, probably sometime between AD 284 and
298) was an Alexandrian mathematician, who was the author of a series of books
called Arithmetica, many of which are now lost. His texts deal with solving algebraic
equations. Diophantine equations ("Diophantine geometry") and Diophantine approximations are
important areas of mathematical research. Diophantus coined the term παρισότης (parisotes) to
refer to an approximate equality.[1] This term was rendered as adaequalitas in Latin, and became
the technique of adequality developed by Pierre de Fermat to find maxima for functions and
tangent lines to curves. Diophantus was the first Greek mathematician who recognized fractions
as numbers; thus he allowed positive rational numbers for the coefficients and solutions. In
modern use, Diophantine equations are usually algebraic equations with integer coefficients, for
which integer solutions are soughtArithmetica is the major work of Diophantus and the most
prominent work on algebra in Greek mathematics. It is a collection of problems giving numerical
solutions of both determinate and indeterminate equations. Of the original thirteen books of
which Arithmetica consisted only six have survived, though there are some who believe that four
Arabic books discovered in 1968 are also by Diophantus. [8] Some Diophantine problems
from Arithmetica have been found in Arabic sources.
It should be mentioned here that Diophantus never used general methods in his
solutions. Hermann Hankel, renowned German mathematician made the following remark
regarding Diophantus.
“Our author (Diophantos) not the slightest trace of a general, comprehensive method is
discernible; each problem calls for some special method which refuses to work even for the most
closely related problems. For this reason it is difficult for the modern scholar to solve the 101st
problem even after having studied 100 of Diophantos’s solutions”.
.