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Greatest Mathematicians

Bernhard
Isaac Newton Archimedes Carl Gauss Leonhard Euler Euclid
Riemann

Alex. Pierre de
Henri Poincaré J.-L. Lagrange David Hilbert G.W. Leibniz
Grothendieck Fermat

Vedic
 Baudhayana
 Katyayana
 Panini, ca. 5th c. BC, Algebraic grammarian
 Yajnavalkya, credited with authorship of the Shatapatha Brahmana, which contains
calculations related to altar construction.

Classical
Post-Vedic Sanskrit to Pala period mathematicians (5th c. BC to 11th c. AD)
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 Aryabhata - Astronomer who gave accurate calculations for astronomical constants,

476AD-520AD
 Aryabhata II
 Bhaskara I
 Brahmagupta - Helped bring the concept of zero into arithmetic (598 AD-670 AD)
 Bhāskara II
 Mahavira
 Pavuluri Mallana - the first Telugu Mathematician
 Varahamihira
 Shridhara (between 650-850) - Gave a good rule for finding the volume of a sphere.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers:

An Imaginary Tale:
The Story of “i” [the square root of minus one]:
Dr. Euler’s Fabulous Formula:
Cures Many Mathematical Ills:
Godel, Escher, Bach:
An Eternal Golden Braid:
Mathematics for the Nonmathematician:
God Created the Integers:
The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed
History:
Fermat’s Last Theorem:
The Code Book:
The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to
Quantum Cryptography:
To Infinity and Beyond:
Prime Obsession:
Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved
Problem in Mathematics
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Thales of Miletus (ca 624 - 546 BC) Greek domain---"Founder of Abstract

Geometry," and the "First Philosopher."

Apastambha (ca 630-560 BC) India--- The Dharmasutra composed by Apastambha

contains mensuration techniques, novel geometric construction techniques, a method
of elementary algebra, and what may be the first known proof of the Pythagorean
Theorem. Apastambha's work uses the excellent (continued fraction) approximation√2
≈ 577/408, a result probably derived with a geometric argument.
Pythagoras of Samos (ca 578-505 BC) Greek domain---Pythagoras, who is
sometimes called the "First Philosopher," He is credited with being first to use axioms
and deductive proofs, so his influence on Plato and Euclid may be enormous. The
words "philosophy" and "mathematics" are said to have been coined by Pythagoras.

Panini (of Shalatula) (ca 520-460 BC) Gandhara (India)--- Ashtadhyayi.

Panini has been called "the Indian Euclid"

Hippocrates of Chios (ca 470-410 BC) Greek domain---Hippocrates (no relation to the
famous physician) wrote his own Elements more than a century before Euclid.

. Hippocrates is said to have invented the reductio ad absurdem proof method.

Hippocrates is most famous for his work on the three ancient geometric quandaries:
his work on cube-doubling (the Delian Problem) laid the groundwork for successful
efforts by Archytas and others; his circle quadrature was of course ultimately
unsuccessful but he did prove ingenious theorems about "lunes" (certain circle
fragments); and some claim Hippocrates was first to trisect the general angle.

Euclid of Megara & Alexandria (ca 322-275 BC) Greece/Egypt--- He was

the first to prove that there are infinitely many prime numbers; he stated and proved
the unique factorization theorem; and he devised Euclid's algorithm for computing
gcd. He introduced the Mersenne primes and observed that (M2+M)/2 is always
perfect (in the sense of Pythagoras) if M is Mersenne. (The converse, that any even
perfect number has such a corresponding Mersenne prime, was tackled by Alhazen
and proven by Euler.) He proved that there are only five "Platonic solids," as well as
theorems of geometry far too numerous to summarize; among many with special
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historical interest is the proof that rigid-compass constructions can be implemented

with collapsing-compass constructions. Among several books attributed to Euclid
are The Division of the Scale (a mathematical discussion of music), The Optics, The
Cartoptrics (a treatise on the theory of mirrors), a book on spherical geometry, a book
on logic fallacies, and his comprehensive math textbook The Elements.

Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) Greek domain--- Archimedes made

advances in number theory, algebra, and analysis, but is most renowned for his many
theorems of plane and solid geometry. He was first to prove Heron's formula for the
area of a triangle. His excellent approximation to √3 indicates that he'd partially
anticipated the method of continued fractions. He found a method to trisect an
arbitrary angle (using a markable straightedge — the construction is impossible using
strictly Platonic rules). Although it doesn't survive in his writings, Pappus reports that
he discovered the Archimedean solids. One of his most remarkable and famous
geometric results was determining the area of a parabolic section, for which he offered
two independent proofs, one using his Principle of the Lever, the other using a
geometric series.

Aryabhatta (476-550) Ashmaka & Kusumapura (India)--- While Europe was in its
early "Dark Age," Aryabhatta advanced arithmetic, algebra, elementary analysis, and
especially trigonometry, using the decimal system. Aryabhatta is sometimes called the
"Father of Algebra" instead of al-Khowârizmi (who himself cites the work of
Aryabhatta). His most famous accomplishment in mathematics was the Aryabhatta
Algorithm (connected to continued fractions) for solving Diophantine equations.
Aryabhatta made several important discoveries in astronomy; for example, his
estimate of the Earth's circumference was more accurate than any achieved in ancient
Greece. He was among the ancient scholars who realized the Earth rotated daily on an
axis; claims that he also espoused heliocentric orbits are controversial, but may be
confirmed by the writings of al-Biruni. Aryabhatta is said to have introduced the
constant e. He used π ≈ 3.1416; it is unclear whether he discovered this independently
or borrowed it from Liu Hui of China. Among theorems first discovered by
Aryabhatta is the famous identity
Σ (k3) = (Σ k)2

Brahmagupta `Bhillamalacarya' (589-668) Rajasthan (India)---

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No one person gets unique credit for the invention of the decimal system but
Brahmagupta's textbook Brahmasphutasiddhanta was very influential, and is
sometimes considered the first textbook "to treat zero as a number in its own right." It
also treated negative numbers. (Others claim these were first seen 800 years earlier in
Chang Tshang's Chinese text and were implicit in what survives of earlier Hindu
works, but Brahmagupta's text discussed them lucidly.)Brahmagupta Bhillamalacarya
(`The Teacher from Bhillamala') made great advances in arithmetic, algebra, numeric
analysis, and geometry. Several theorems bear his name, including the formula for the
area of a cyclic quadrilateral:
16 A2 = (a+b+c-d)(a+b-c+d)(a-b+c+d)(-a+b+c+d)
Another famous Brahmagupta theorem dealing with such quadrilaterals can be
phrased "In a circle, if the chords AB and CD are perpendicular and intersect at E,
then the line from E which bisects AC will be perpendicular to BD." Proving
Brahmagupta's theorems are good challenges even today.

René Déscartes (1596-1650) France--- He is considered the inventor of analytic

geometry and therefore the "Father of Modern Mathematics."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) France-- Pascal was an outstanding genius who studied
geometry as a child. At the age of sixteen he stated and proved Pascal's Theorem, a
fact relating any six points on any conic section. The Theorem is sometimes called the
"Cat's Cradle" or the "Mystic Hexagram." Pascal followed up this result by showing
that each of Apollonius' famous theorems about conic sections was a corollary of the
Mystic Hexagram; along with Gerard Desargues (1591-1661), he was a key pioneer of
projective geometry.

Isaac (Sir) Newton (1642-1727) England--- Although others also developed

the techniques independently, Newton is regarded as the Father of Calculus (which he
called "fluxions"); he shares credit with Leibniz for the Fundamental Theorem of
Calculus (that integration and differentiation are each other's inverse operation). He
applied calculus for several purposes: finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves
and the maxima and minima of functions. In addition to several other important
advances in analytic geometry, his mathematical works include the Binomial
Theorem, his eponymous numeric method, the idea of polar coordinates, and power
series for exponential and trigonometric functions. (His equation ex = ∑ xk / k! has
been called the "most important series in mathematics.")

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) Switzerland---Euler may be the most influential

mathematician who ever lived (though some would make him second to Euclid); he
ranks #77 on Michael Hart's famous list of the Most Influential Persons in History.
His colleagues called him "Analysis Incarnate." Laplace, famous for denying credit to
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fellow mathematicians, once said "Read Euler: he is our master in everything." His
notations and methods in many areas are in use to this day. Euler was the most prolific
mathematician in history and is also widely regarded as the best algorist of all
time.Just as Archimedes extended Euclid's geometry to marvelous heights, so Euler
took marvelous advantage of the analysis of Newton and Leibniz. He gave the world
modern trigonometry. Euler was also first to prove several interesting theorems of
geometry, including facts about the 9-point Feuerbach circle; relationships among a
triangle's altitudes, medians, and circumscribing and inscribing circles; and an
expression for a tetrahedron's area in terms of its sides. Euler was first to explore
topology, proving theorems about the Euler characteristic.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918) Russia, Germany--- Cantor created modern set
theory, defining cardinal numbers, well-ordering, ordinal numbers, and discovering
the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. He defined equality between cardinal numbers
based on the existence of a bijection, and was the first to demonstrate that the real
numbers have a higher cardinal number than the integers. (The rationals have the
same cardinality as the integers; the reals have the same cardinality as the points of N-
space.) Although there are infinitely many distinct transfinite numbers, Cantor
conjectured that C, the cardinality of the reals, was the second smallest transfinite
number. This "Continuum Hypothesis" was included in Hilbert's famous List of
Problems, and was partly resolved many years later: Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis
is an "Undecidable Statement" of Set Theory.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Germany, Switzerland, U.S.A.-- Another famous 1905

paper introduced the famous equationE = mc2; yet Einstein published other papers
that same year, two of which were more important and influential than either of the
two just mentioned! No wonder that physicists speak of the Miracle Year without
bothering to qualify it as Einstein's Miracle Year! (Altogether Einstein published at
least 300 books or papers on physics.)Although most famous for his Special and
General Theories of Relativity, Einstein's discovery of the photon made him the key
pioneer in quantum theory (and led to his only Nobel Prize). Many years later, he was
first to call attention to the "spooky" nature of quantum entanglement.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (1887-1920) India--- he produced 4000

theorems or conjectures in number theory, algebra, and combinatorics. He might be
almost unknown today, except that his letter caught the eye of Godfrey Hardy, who
saw remarkable, almost inexplicable formulae which "must be true, because if they
were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them." Ramanujan's
specialties included infinite series, elliptic functions, continued fractions, partition
enumeration, definite integrals, modular equations, gamma functions, "mock theta"
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functions, hypergeometric series, and "highly composite" numbers. Much of his best
work was done in collaboration with Hardy, for example a proof that almost all
numbers n have about log log n prime factors (a result which inspired probabilistic
number theory). Much of his methodology, including unusual ideas about divergent
series, was his own invention. (As a young man he made the absurd claim
that 1+2+3+4+... = -1/12. Later it was noticed that this claim translates to a true
statement about the Riemann zeta function, with which Ramanujan was unfamiliar.)
Ramanujan's innate ability for algebraic manipulations equaled or surpassed that of
Euler and Jacobi.

John von Neumann (1903-1957) Hungary, U.S.A.--- He developed von

Neumann Algebras. He was first to state and prove the minimax theorem and thus
invented game theory; this work also advanced operations research. He invented
cellular automata, famously constructing a self-reproducing automaton. He invented
elegant definitions for the counting numbers (0 = {}, n+1 = n ∪ {n}). He also worked
in analysis, operator theory, matrix theory, measure theory, numerical analysis,
ergodic theory, group representations, continuous geometry, statistics and topology.