MARIA GAETANA AGNESI

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (May 16, 1718 January 9, 1799) was an Italian linguist, mathematician, and philosopher. Agnesi (the "gn" digraph is pronounced with the palatal nasal / /) is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus. She was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna. According toDirk Jan Struik, Agnesi is "the first important woman mathematician since Hypatia (fifth century A.D.)". Early life Her father, Pietro, was a wealthy man of business who sold and produced silk who desired to elevate his family into the Milanese nobility. Having been born in Milan, Maria was recognized as a child prodigy very early; she could speak both Italian and Frenchat five years of age. By her thirteenth birthday she had acquired Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, Latin, and was referred to as the "Walking Polyglot". She even educated her younger brothers. When she was 9 years old, she composed and delivered an hour-long speech in Latin to an academic gathering. The subject was women's right to be educated. When she was fifteen, her father began to regularly gather in his house a circle of the most learned men in Bologna, before whom she read and maintained a series of theses on the most abstruse philosophical questions. Records of these meetings are given in Charles de Brosses' Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which her father had published in 1738. These displays, being probably not altogether congenial to Maria (who wanted to retire) ceased by her twentieth year because she strongly desired to enter a convent at that time. Although her father refused to grant this wish, he agreed to let her live from that time on in an almost conventual semi-retirement, avoiding all interactions with society and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics. During that time, Maria studied both differential and integral calculus. Pietro Agnesi also married twice more after Maria's mother died, so that Maria Agnesi ended up the eldest of 21 children. In addition to her performances and lessons, her responsibility was to teach her siblings. This task kept her from her own goal of entering a convent. Scholars thought she was dazzingly beautiful and hers was recognized as one of the richest noble families in Milan.

MARY CARTWRIGHT

Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright DBE (17 December 1900 3 April 1998) was a leading 20thcentury British mathematician. She was born in Aynho, Northamptonshire where her father was the vicar and died in Cambridge, England. Through her Grandmother Jane Holbech she was descended from the poet John Donne and William Mompesson the Vicar of Eyam. She then taught at Alice Ottley School in Worcester and Wycombe Abbey School in Buckinghamshire before returning to Oxford in 1928 to read for her D.Phil. She was supervised by G. H. Hardy in her doctoral studies. During the academic year 19289 Hardy was atPrinceton, so it was E. C. Titchmarsh who took over the duties as a supervisor. Her thesis on zeros of entire functions was examined by J. E. Littlewood whom she met for the first time as an external examiner in her oral examination for the D.Phil. She would later become a major collaborator with Littlewood, over many years. In 1930 Cartwright was awarded a Yarrow Research Fellowship and she went to Girton College, Cambridge, to continue working on the topic of her doctoral thesis. Attending Littlewood's lectures, she solved one of the open problems which he posed. Her theorem, now known as Cartwright's theorem, gives an estimate for the maximum modulus of an analytic function that takes the same value no more than p times in the unit disc. To prove the theorem she used a new approach, applying a technique introduced by Lars Ahlfors for conformal mappings. In 1936 she became director of studies in mathematics at Girton College, and in 1938 she began work on a new project which had a major impact on the direction of her research. The Radio Research Board of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research produced a memorandum regarding certain differential equations which came out of modeling radio and radar work. They asked the London Mathematical Society if they could help find a mathematician who could work on these problems and Cartwright became interested in this memorandum. The dynamics lying behind the problems were unfamiliar to Cartwright so she approached Littlewood for help with this aspect. They began to collaborate studying the equations. The fine structure which Littlewood describes here is today seen to be a typical instance of the butterfly effect. The collaboration led to important results, and these have greatly influenced the direction that the modern theory of dynamical systems has taken. In 1945 she simplified Hermite's elementary proof of the irrationality of . Her version of the proof was published in an appendix to Sir Harold Jeffreys' book Scientific Inference. In 1947 she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society and, although she was not the first woman to be elected to that Society, she was the first female mathematician.

SHEN KUO

Shen Kuo or Shen Gua (Chinese: ; pinyin: Sh n Ku; WadeGiles: Shen K'uo) (1031 1095), style name Cunzhong ( ) and pseudonym Mengqi (now usually given as Mengxi) Weng ( ), was apolymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty (9601279). Excelling in many fields of study and statecraft, he was a mathematician, astronomer, meteorologist, geologist, zoologist, botanist,pharmacologist, agron omist, archaeologist, ethnographer, cartographer, encyclopedist, general, diplomat,hydraulic engineer, inventor, academy chancellor, finance minister, governmental state inspector, poet, andmusician. He was the head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, as well as an Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as theNew Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (1021 1086). In his Dream Pool Essays ( ; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the polestar and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancer compasses in regards to declination).

EDWARD BOUCHET

Edward Bouchet (1852 1918) the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from an American University and was the first African-American to graduate from Yale University in 1874. He completed his dissertation in Yale's Ph.D. program in 1876 becoming the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. (in any subject). His area of study was Physics. Bouchet was also the first African-American to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Bouchet was also among 20 Americans (of any race) to receive a Ph.D. in physics and was the sixth to earn a Ph. D. in physics from Yale. Early life Edward Bouchet was born in his house in New Haven, Connecticut to parents William and Susan Cooley Bouchet. At that time there were only three schools in New Haven open to black children. Bouchet was enrolled in the Artisan Street Colored School with only one teacher, who nurtured Bouchet's academic abilities. He attended the New Haven High School from 18661868 and then Hopkins School from 1868-1870 where he was named valedictorian (after graduating first in his class). Professional Life Bouchet was unable to find a university teaching position after college, probably due to racial discrimination. Bouchet moved to Philadelphia in 1876 and took a position at the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY). He taughtphysics and chemistry at the ICY for 26 years. The ICY was later renamed Cheyney University. He resigned in 1902 at the height of the W. E. B. Du Bois Booker T. Washington controversy over the need for an industrial vs. collegiate education for blacks. Bouchet spent the next 14 years holding a variety of jobs around the country. Between 1905 and 1908, Bouchet was director of academics at St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia (presently, St. Paul's College). He joined the faculty of Bishop College in Marshall, Texas in 1913. Illness finally forced him to retire in 1916 and he moved back to New Haven. He died there, in his childhood home, in 1918, at age of 66. He had never married and had no children. The American Physical Society (APS.Physics) confers the Edward A. Bouchet Award on some the nation's outstanding physicist for their contribution to physics. The Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute was founded in 1988 by the lateNobel Laureate, Professor Abdus Salam under the direction of the founding Chairman Charles S. Brown. In 2005, Yale and Howard universities founded the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society in his name.

J. ERNEST WILKINS, JR.

J Ernest Wilkins, Jr. (born November 27, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois) is an African American mathematician and nuclear scientist, who gained first fame on entering the University of Chicago at age 13, becoming its youngest ever student. His intelligence led to him being referred to as a "negro genius" in the media. In a widely varied and notable career, Wilkins contributed to the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. He also gained fame working in and conducting nuclear physics research in both academia and industry. He wrote numerous scientific papers, served in various important posts, earned several significant awards and helped recruitminority students into the sciences.[1] During his studies, and various careers he was not untouched by the prevalent racism that existed for much of his life. Education In 1940 Wilkins completed his B.Sc. in mathematics at age 17, then his M.Sc. at age 18, and finally went on to complete a Ph.D in mathematics at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1942 at age 19. He also later earned both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mechanical engineering from New York University in 1957 and 1960. Career From 1943 to 1944 Wilkins taught mathematics at Tuskegee Universityin Alabama, then called the Tuskegee Institute, after initially failing to secure a research position. In 1944 he returned to the University of Chicago where he served first as an associate mathematical physicist and then as a physicist in its Metallurgical Laboratory, as part of the Manhattan Project. Working under the direction of Arthur Holly Compton and Enrico Fermi, Wilkins researched the extraction of fissionable nuclear materials, but was not told of the research group's ultimate goal until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Wilkins then continued to teach mathematics and conduct significant research in neutron absorption with physicist Eugene Wigner, including the development of mathematical models for that. He would also later help design and develop nuclear reactors for electrical power generation, becoming part owner of one such company. In 1970 Wilkins went on to serve Howard University as its distinguished professor of Applied Mathematical Physicsand also founded the university's new PhD program in mathematics.[2] During his tenure at Howard he undertook a sabbatical position as a visiting scientist atArgonne National Laboratory from 1976 to 1977. From 1974 to 1975 Wilkins served as president of the American Nuclear Society and in 1976 became the second African American to be elected to theNational Academy of Engineering.

TATYANA AFANASYEVA

Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva (Russian: ) (Kiev, 19 November 1876 Leiden, 14 April 1964) was a Russian/Dutch mathematician. On 21 December 1904 she was married to Paul Ehrenfest (18801933) an Austrian physicist and mathematician. They had two daughters and two sons: one daughter, Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician. Afanasyeva was born in Kiev in the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine). After her father died she was brought up by an uncle in St Petersburg, Russia, where she attended a women's pedagogical school and a Women's College. In 1902 she transferred to Gttingen, where she met Ehrenfest. The couple got married in 1904, and in 1907 they returned to St Petersburg. In 1912 they moved to Leiden, where Paul Ehrenfest was appointed to succeed H.A. Lorentz as professor at the University of Leiden. Tatyana collaborated closely with her husband, most famously on their classic review of the statistical mechanics ofBoltzmann. She published many papers on various topics such as randomness and entropy, and teachinggeometry to children.

HERTHA MARKS AYRTON

(Phoebe Sarah) Hertha Ayrton, ne Marks (28 April 1854 in Portsea - 23 August 1923) was an English engineer, mathematician and inventor. Life and work Hertha Ayrton was born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsea, Hampshire, England on 28 April 1854. She attended Girton College, Cambridge where she studied mathematics, and passed the Mathematical Tripos in 1880. At that time Cambridge gave only certificates and not degrees to women. She successfully completed an external examination and received a B.Sc. degree from the University of London in 1881. On 6 May 1885 Marks married one of her teachers at the Technical College at Finsbury, William Edward Ayrton. She assisted him with experiments in physics and electricity. In 1899, she was elected the first female member of theInstitution of Electrical Engineers. She was the first woman ever to read her own paper before the Royal Society of London. Ayrton invented a draftsman's device that could be used for dividing a line into equal parts as well as for enlarging and reducing figures. She was also active in devising and solving mathematical problems, many of which were published in "Mathematical Questions and Their Solutions" from the Educational Times. Ayrton was agnostic, but retained close ties to the Jewish community. In her teens she adopted the named "Hertha" after the eponymous heroine of an Algernon Charles Swinburne poem that criticized organized religion. The Ayrtons' daughter, Barbara Bodichon Ayrton (18861950), was named after feminist Barbara Bodichon, and was a suffragette.

RUTH AARONSON BARI

Ruth Aaronson Bari (November 17, 1917 August 25, 2005) was an American mathematician known for her work in graph theory andhomomorphisms. The daughter of PolishJewish immigrants to the U.S., she was a professor at George Washington University beginning in 1966. She was the mother of environmental activist Judi Bari, science reporter Gina Kolata and art historian Martha Bari. Career Bari grew up in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College, earning her bachelors degree in mathematics in 1939. She earned her MA at Johns Hopkins University in 1943, but had originally enrolled in the doctoral program. When the university suggested that women in the graduate program should give up their fellowships so that men returning from WWII could study, Bari acceded.[1] After marrying Arthur Bari she spent the next two decades devoted to family. She returned to Johns Hopkins, where she completed her dissertation on "absolute reducibility of maps of at most 19 regions" in 1966 at the age of 47. Baris dissertation explored chromatic polynomials and the Birkhoff-Lewis conjecture. She determined that Because of the fact that all other cubic maps with fewer than 20 regions contain at least one absolutely reducible configuration, it follows that the Birkhoff-Lewis conjecture holds for all maps with fewer than 20 regions. Her Ph.D. advisor was Daniel Lewis, Jr.[3] After receiving her degree, renowned mathematician William Tutte invited Bari to spend two weeks lecturing on her work in Canada at the University of Waterloo. Bari's work in the areas of graph theory and homomorphismsand especially that of chromatic polynomialshas been recognized as influential. In 1976, two professors relied on computer work to solve the perennial problem of Baris dissertation, involving the four-color conjecture. When her daughter, Dr. Martha Bari, an art historian at Hood College, asked her if she felt cheated by the technological solution, Bari replied, Im just grateful that it was solved within my lifetime and that I had the privilege to witness it. During her teaching career, Bari participated in a class-action lawsuit against George Washington University, which protested inequalities in promotion and pay for female faculty members. The protests were successful, and Bari retired at the legally mandated age of 70 in 1988 with the distinction of professor emeritus.

AGNES SIME BAXTER

Agnes Sime Baxter (Hill) (18 March 1870 9 March 1917) was a Canadianborn mathematician. She studied atDalhousie University, receiving her BA in 1891, and her MA in 1892. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1895; her dissertation was On Abelian integrals, a resume of Neumanns Abelsche Integrele with comments and applications." Academics Baxter enrolled at Dalhousie University in 1887. Her primary courses of study were mathematics and mathematical physics. Despite the relative lack of female scholars in these areas, Baxter received her bachelor's degree in 1891. She received multiple awards at graduation, including the Sir William Young Medal for highest standing in mathematics and mathematical physics. Baxter completed her master's degree at Dalhousie in 1892. From 1892 to 1894, Baxter held a fellowship at Cornell University in New York. On the completion of her thesis, "On Abelian integrals, a resume of Neumanns Abelsche Integrele with comments and applications," she became the second Canadian woman and the fourth woman on the North American continent to receive a Ph. D. in mathematics. Non-Academic Life Agnes Sime Baxter was born on March 18, 1870 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Baxter family had immigrated to Canada from Scotland. Her father, Robert Baxter, was manager of the Halifax Gas Light Company, having managed a Scottish electric light company before moving to Nova Scotia. Agnes Baxter married Dr. Albert Ross Hill on August 20, 1896. The marriage produced two daughters. Mrs. Ross Hill chose not to teach at the institutions where her husband was a professor, although Albert credited her with assisting him in his work. Agnes Ross Hill died on March 9, 1917 in Columbia, Missouri after protracted illness.

MILIE DU CHTELET

Gabrielle milie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Chtelet (17 December 1706, Paris 10 September 1749, Lunville) was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica; published in 1759, ten years after her death, hers is still the standard translation in French. Voltaire, one of her lovers, declared in a letter to his friend King Frederick II of Prussia that du Chtelet was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman". Biography Early life Du Chtelet was born on 17 December 1706 in Paris, the only daughter of six children. Three brothers lived to adulthood: Ren-Alexandre (b. 1698), Charles-Auguste (b. 1701), and Elisabeth-Thodore (b. 1710). Her eldest brother, Ren-Alexandre, died in 1720, and the next brother, Charles-Auguste, died in 1731. However, her younger brother, Elisabeth-Thodore, lived to a successful old age, becoming an abb and eventually a bishop. Two other brothers died very young.[3] Du Chtelet also had an illegitimate half-sister, Michelle, who was born of her father and Anne Bellinzani, an intelligent woman who was interested in astronomy and married to an important Parisian official. Her father was Louis Nicolas le Tonnelier de Breteuil, a member of the lesser nobility. At the time of du Chtelet's birth, her father held the position of the Principal Secretary and Introducer of Ambassadors to King Louis XIV. He held a weekly salon on Thursdays, to which wellrespected writers and scientists were invited. Early education Du Chtelet's education has been the subject of much speculation, but nothing is known with certainty. Among their acquaintances was Fontenelle, the perpetual secretary of the French Acadmie des Sciences. milie's father Louis-Nicolas, recognizing her early brilliance, arranged for Fontenelle to visit and talk about astronomy with her when she was 10 years old. milie's mother, Gabrielle-Anne de Froulay, was brought up in a convent, at the time the predominant educational institution available to French girls and women.[1] While some sources believe her mother did not approve of her intelligent daughter, or of her husband's encouragement of milie's intellectual curiosity, there are also other indications that her mother not only approved of du Chtelet's early education, but actually encouraged her to vigorously question stated fact.

ISAAC (SIR) NEWTON (1642-1727) ENGLAND

Newton was an industrious lad who built marvelous toys (e.g. a model windmill powered by a mouse on treadmill). At about age 22, on leave from University, this genius began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, dynamics, thermodynamics, acoustics and celestial mechanics. He is most famous for his Three Laws of Motion (inertia, force, reciprocal action) and Law of Universal Gravitation. As Newton himself acknowledged, the Laws weren't fully novel: Hipparchus, Ibn al-Haytham, Galileo and Huygens had all developed much basic mechanics already, and Newton credits the First Law itself to Aristotle. (However, since Christiaan Huygens, the other great mechanist of the era and who had also deduced that Kepler's laws imply inverse-square gravitation, considered the action at a distance in Newton's universal gravitation to be "absurd," at least this much of Newton's mechanics must be considered revolutionary. Newton's other intellectual interests included chemistry, theology, astrology and alchemy.) Although this list is concerned only with mathematics, Newton's greatness is indicated by the wide range of his physics: even without his revolutionary Laws of Motion and his Cooling Law of thermodynamics, he'd be famous just for his work in optics, where he explained diffraction and observed that white light is a mixture of all the rainbow's colors. (Although his corpuscular theory competed with Huygen's wave theory, Newton understood that his theory was incomplete without waves, and thus anticipated wave-particle duality.) Newton also designed the first reflecting telescope, first reflecting microscope, and the sextant. 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.") He contributed to algebra and the theory of equations, generalizing Dscartes' rule of signs. (The generalized rule of signs was incomplete and finally resolved two centuries later by Sturm and Sylvester.) He developed a series for the arcsin function. He developed facts about cubic equations (just as the "shadows of a cone" yield all quadratic curves, Newton found a curve whose "shadows" yield all cubic curves). He proved that same-mass spheres of any radius have equal gravitational attraction: this fact is key to celestial motions. He discovered Puiseux

series almost two centuries before they were re-invented by Puiseux. (Like some of the greatest ancient mathematicians, Newton took the time to compute an approximation to ; his was better than Vieta's, though still not as accurate as al-Kashi's.) Newton is so famous for his calculus, optics and laws of motion, it is easy to overlook that he was also one of the greatest geometers. He solved the Delian cube-doubling problem. Even before the invention of the calculus of variations, Newton was doing difficult work in that field, e.g. his calculation of the "optimal bullet shape." Among many marvelous theorems, he proved several about quadrilaterals and their in- or circum-scribing ellipses, and constructed the parabola defined by four given points. He anticipated Poncelet's Principle of Continuity. An anecdote often cited to demonstrate his brilliance is the problem of the brachistochrone, which had baffled the best mathematicians in Europe, and came to Newton's attention late in life. He solved it in a few hours and published the answer anonymously. But on seeing the solution Jacob Bernoulli immediately exclaimed "I recognize the lion by his footprint." In 1687 Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, surely the greatest scientific book ever written. The motion of the planets was not understood before Newton, although the heliocentric system allowed Kepler to describe the orbits. In Principia Newton analyzed the consequences of his Laws of Motion and introduced the Law of Universal Gravitation. (In this work Newton also proved important theorems about inverse-cube forces, work largely unappreciated until Chandrasekhar's modern-day work.) The notion that the Earth rotated about the Sun was introduced in ancient Greece, but Newton explained why it did, and the Great Scientific Revolution began. Newton once wrote "Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." Sir Isaac Newton was buried at Westminster Abbey in a tomb inscribed "Let mortals rejoice that so great an ornament to the human race has existed." Newton ranks #2 on Michael Hart's famous list of the Most Influential Persons in History. (Muhammed the Prophet of Allah is #1.) Whatever the criteria, Newton would certainly rank first, or behind only Einstein, on any list of physicists, or scientists in general, but some listmakers would demote him slightly on a list of pure mathematicians: his emphasis was physics not mathematics, and the contribution of Leibniz (Newton's rival for the title Inventor of Calculus) lessens the historical importance of Newton's calculus. One reason I've ranked him at #1 is a comment by Gottfried Leibniz himself: "Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he has done is much the better part."

JOHANN CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS (1777-1855) GERMANY

Carl Friedrich Gauss, the "Prince of Mathematics," exhibited his calculative powers when he corrected his father's arithmetic before the age of three. His revolutionary nature was demonstrated at age twelve, when he began questioning the axioms of Euclid. His genius was confirmed at the age of nineteen when he proved that the regular n-gon was constructible, for odd n, if and only if n is the product of distinct prime Fermat numbers. (Click to see construction of regular 17-gon.) At age 24 he publishedDisquisitiones Arithmeticae, probably the greatest book of pure mathematics ever. Gauss built the theory of complex numbers into its modern form, including the notion of "monogenic" functions which are now ubiquitous in mathematical physics. He proved the n=3 case of Fermat's Last Theorem for a class of complex integers; though more general, the proof was simpler than the real integer proof, a discovery which revolutionized algebra. The other contributions of Gauss are quite numerous and include the first complete proof of Euclid's Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (that every natural number has a unique expression as product of primes), the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (that an n-th degree polynomial has n complex roots), hypergeometric series, foundations of statistics, and differential geometry. Gauss was the premier number theoretician of all time, proving Euler's Law of Quadratic Reciprocity. He also did important work in geometry, providing an improved solution to Apollonius' famous problem of tangent circles, stating and proving the Fundamental Theorem of Normal Axonometry, and solving astronomical problems related to comet orbits and navigation by the stars. (The first asteroid was discovered when Gauss was a young man; he famously constructed an 8th-degree polynomial equation to predict its orbit.) Gauss also did important work in several areas of physics, and invented the heliotrope. Much of Gauss's work wasn't published: unbeknownst to his colleagues it was Gauss who first discovered non-Euclidean geometry (even anticipating Einstein by suggesting physical space might not be Euclidean), doubly periodic elliptic functions, a prime distribution formula, quaternions, foundations of topology, the Law of Least Squares, Dirichlet's class number formula, the key Bonnet's Theorem of differential geometry (now usually called Gauss-Bonnet Theorem), the butterfly procedure for rapid calculation of Fourier series, and even the rudiments of knot theory. Also in this category is the Fundamental Theorem of Functions of a Complex

Variable (that the line-integral over a closed curve of a monogenic function is zero): he proved this first but let Cauchy take the credit. Gauss is widely agreed to be the most brilliant and productive mathematician who ever lived and many would rank him #1; however several of the others on the list had more historical importance. Abel hints at a reason for this: "[Gauss] is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand." Gauss once wrote "It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, ... which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again ..."

SIMON DENIS POISSON (1781-1840) FRANCE

Simon Poisson was a protg of Laplace and, like his mentor, is among the greatest applied mathematicians ever. Poisson was an extremely prolific researcher and also an excellent teacher. In addition to important advances in several areas of physics, Poisson made important contributions to Fourier analysis, definite integrals, path integrals, statistics, partial differential equations, calculus of variations and other fields of mathematics. Poisson made improvements to Lagrange's equations of celestial motions, which Lagrange himself found inspirational. Another of Poisson's many contributions to mathematical physics was his conclusion that the wave theory of light implies a bright Arago spot at the center of certain shadows. (Poisson used this paradoxical result to argue that the wave theory was false, but instead the Arago spot, hitherto hardly noticed, was observed experimentally.) Poisson once said "Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics."

JEAN-VICTOR PONCELET (1788-1867) FRANCE

After studying under Monge, Poncelet became an officer in Napoleon's army, then a prisoner of the Russians. To keep up his spirits as a prisoner he devised and solved mathematical problems using charcoal and the walls of his prison cell instead of pencil and paper. During this time he reinvented projective geometry. Regaining his freedom, he wrote many papers, made numerous contributions to geometry; he also made contributions to practical mechanics. Poncelet is considered one of the most influential geometers ever; he is especially noted for his Principle of Continuity, an intuition with broad application. His notion of imaginary solutions in geometry was inspirational. Although projective geometry had been studied earlier by mathematicians like Desargues, Poncelet's work excelled and served as an inspiration for other branches of mathematics including algebra, topology, Cayley's invariant theory and group-theoretic developments by Lie and Klein. His theorems of geometry include his Closure Theorem about Poncelet Traverses, the Poncelet-Brianchon Hyperbola Theorem, and Poncelet's Porism (if two conic sections are respectively inscribed and circumscribed by an n-gon, then there are infinitely many such n-gons). Perhaps his most famous theorem, although it was left to Steiner to complete a proof, is the beautiful Poncelet-Steiner Theorem about straight-edge constructions.

AUGUSTIN-LOUIS CAUCHY (1789-1857) FRANCE

Cauchy was extraordinarily prodigious, prolific and inventive. Home-schooled, he awed famous mathematicians at an early age. In contrast to Gauss and Newton, he was almost over-eager to publish; in his day his fame surpassed that of Gauss and has continued to grow. Cauchy did important work in analysis, algebra, number theory and discrete topology. His most important contributions included convergence criteria for infinite series, the "theory of substitutions" (permutation group theory), and especially his insistence on rigorous proofs. Cauchy's research also included differential equations, determinants, and probability. He invented the calculus of residues. Although he was one of the first great mathematicians to focus on abstract mathematics (another was Euler), he also made important contributions to mathematical physics, e.g. the theory of elasticity. Cauchy's theorem of solid geometry is important in rigidity theory; the Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality has very wide application (e.g. as the basis for Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle); the famous Burnside's Counting Theorem was first discovered by Cauchy; etc. He was first to prove Taylor's Theorem rigorously, and first to prove Fermat's conjecture that every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of k k-gon numbers for any k. One of the duties of a great mathematician is to nurture his successors, but Cauchy selfishly dropped the ball on both of the two greatest young mathematicians of his day, mislaying the key manuscripts of both Abel and Galois. (For this historical miscontribution perhaps Cauchy should be demoted slightly.)

NICOLAI IVANOVITCH LOBACHEVSKY (1793-1856) RUSSIA

Lobachevsky is famous for discovering non-Euclidean geometry. Despite his great mathematical skill, some say his particular genius lies in the rejection of a 2100-year old axiom; for this reason he has been called "the Copernicus of Geometry." He did not regard his new geometry as simply a theoretical curiosity, writing "There is no branch of mathematics ... which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world." He also worked in several branches of analysis and physics, anticipated the modern definition of function, and may have been first to explicitly note the distinction between continuous and differentiable curves. He also discovered the important Dandelin-Grffe method of polynomial roots independently of Dandelin and Grffe. (In his lifetime, Lobachevsky was under-appreciated and over-worked; his duties led him to learn architecture and even some medicine.) Although Gauss and Bolyai discovered non-Euclidean geometry independently about the same time as Lobachevsky, it is worth noting that both of them had strong praise for Lobachevsky's genius.

JULIUS PLCKER (1801-1868) GERMANY

Plcker was one of the most innovative geometers, inventing line geometry (extending the atoms of geometry beyond just points), enumerative geometry (which considered such questions as the number of loops in an algebraic curve), geometries of more than three dimensions, and generalizations of projective geometry. He resolved the famous Cramer-Euler Paradox. In addition to his mathematical work in algebraic and analytic geometry, Plcker did very important work in physics, e.g. his work with cathode rays. His students included Felix Klein; his work was also an important inspiration for Sophus Lie. Although perhaps less brilliant as a theorem prover than Steiner (his rival), Plcker's work, taking full advantage of analysis and seeking physical applications, was more influential.

NIELS HENRIK ABEL (1802-1829) NORWAY

At an early age, Niels Abel studied the works of the greatest mathematicians, found flaws in their proofs, and resolved to reprove some of these theorems rigorously. He was the first to fully prove the general case of Newton's Binomial Theorem, one of the most widely applied theorems in mathematics. Perhaps his most famous achievement was the (deceptively simple) Abel's Theorem of Convergence (published posthumously), one of the most important theorems in analysis; but there are several other Theorems which bear his name. Abel also made contributions in algebraic geometry and the theory of equations. Inversion (replacing y = f(x) with x = f-1(y)) is a key idea in mathematics (consider Newton's Fundamental Theorem of Calculus); Abel developed this insight. Legendre had spent much of his life studying elliptic integrals, but Abel inverted these to get elliptic functions, which quickly became a productive field of mathematics, and led to more general complex-variable functions, which were important to the development of both abstract and applied mathematics. Finding the roots of polynomials is a key mathematical problem: the general solution of the quadratic equation was known by ancients; the discovery of general methods for solving polynomials of degree three and four is usually treated as the major math achievement of the 16th century; so for over two centuries an algebraic solution for the general 5th-degree polynomial (quintic) was a Holy Grail sought by most of the greatest mathematicians. Abel proved that most quintics did not have such solutions. This discovery, at the age of only nineteen, would have quickly awed the world, but Abel was impoverished, had few contacts, and spoke no German. When Gauss received Abel's manuscript he discarded it unread, assuming the unfamiliar author was just another crackpot trying to square the circle or some such. His genius was too great for him to be ignored long, but, still impoverished, Abel died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six. His fame lives on and even the lower-case word 'abelian' is applied to several concepts. Hermite said "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for 500 years."

CARL G. J. JACOBI (1804-1851) GERMANY

Jacobi was a prolific mathematician who did decisive work in the algebra and analysis of complex variables, and did work in number theory (e.g. cubic reciprocity) which excited Carl Gauss. He is sometimes described as the successor to Gauss. As an algorist (manipulator of involved algebraic expressions), he may have been surpassed only by Euler and Ramanujan. He was also a very highly regarded teacher. Jacobi has special importance in the development of the mathematics of physics. Jacobi's most important early achievement was the theory of elliptic functions. He also made important advances in many other areas, including higher fields, number theory, algebraic geometry, differential equations, theta functions, q-series, determinants, Abelian functions, and dynamics. He devised the algorithms still used to calculate eigenvectors and for other important matrix manipulations. Jacobi was the first to apply elliptic functions to number theory, producing a new proof of Fermat's famous conjecture (Lagrange's theorem) that every integer is the sum of four squares. Like Abel, as a young man Jacobi attempted to factor the general quintic equation. Unlike Abel, he seems never to have considered proving its impossibility. This fact is sometimes cited to show that despite Jacobi's creativity, his ill-fated contemporary was the more brilliant genius.

JOHANN PETER GUSTAV LEJEUNE DIRICHLET (1805-1859) GERMANY

Dirichlet was preeminent in algebraic and analytic number theory, but did advanced work in several other fields as well: He discovered the modern definition of function, the Voronoi diagram of geometry, and important concepts in differential equations, topology, and statistics. Although he was one of the foremost mathematicians of the early 19th century, he is often overlooked. (I rank him higher than most Lists of Great Mathematicians do.) Dirichlet was an important teacher, interpreting the work of Gauss and mentoring famous mathematicians like Leopold Kronecker and Ferdinand Eisenstein. His proofs were noted both for great ingenuity and unprecedented rigor. As an example of his careful rigor, he found a fundamental flaw in Steiner's Isoperimetric Theorem proof which no one else had noticed. As an impoverished lad Dirichlet spent his money on math textbooks; Gauss' masterwork became his life-long companion. Fermat and Euler had proved the impossibility ofxk + yk = zk for k = 4 and k = 3; Dirichlet became famous by proving impossibility for k = 5 at the age of 20. Later he proved the case k = 14 and, later still, may have helped Kummer extend Dirichlet's quadratic fields, leading to proofs of more cases. More important than his work with Fermat's Last Theorem was his Unit Theorem, considered one of the most important theorems of algebraic number theory. The Unit Theorem is unusually difficult to prove; it is said that Dirichlet discovered the proof while listening to music in the Sistine Chapel. A key step in the proof uses "Dirichlet's Pigeonhole Principle", a trivial idea but which Dirichlet applied with great ingenuity. Dirichlet also did important work in analysis and is considered the founder of analytic number theory. He invented a method of L-series to prove the important theorem (Gauss' conjecture) that any arithmetic series (without a common factor) has an infinity of primes. It was Dirichlet who proved the fundamental Theorem of Fourier series: that periodic analytic functions can always be represented as a simple trigonometric series. Although he never proved it rigorously, he is especially noted for the Dirichlet's Principle which posits the existence of certain solutions in the calculus of variations, and which Riemann found to be particularly fruitful. Other fundamental results Dirichlet contributed to analysis and number theory include a theorem about Diophantine approximations and his Class Number Formula.

PIERRE DE FERMAT (1601-1665) FRANCE

Fermat's most famous discoveries in number theory include the ubiquitously-used Fermat's Little Theorem; the n = 4 case of his conjectured Fermat's Last Theorem (he may have proved the n = 3 case as well); the fact that every natural number is the sum of three triangle numbers; and Fermat's Christmas Theorem (that any prime (4n+1) can be represented as the sum of two squares in exactly one way, also called the Fermat-Euler Prime Number Theorem). As suggested by the "Euler" in the name of this latter theorem (which Fermat records proving with difficulty using "infinite descent"), proofs for this and many other Fermat results had to be rediscovered (most of Fermat's work was never published). However it is wrong to suppose that Fermat's work comprised mostly false or unproven conjectures. (This misconception arises from his so-called "Last Theorem" which was actually just a private scribble.) Fermat developed a system of analytic geometry which both preceded and surpassed that of Dscartes; he developed methods of differential and integral calculus which Newton acknowledged as an inspiration. Solving df(x)/dx = 0 to find extrema of f(x) is perhaps the most useful idea in applied mathematics; this technique originated with Fermat. Fermat was also the first European to find the integration formula for the general polynomial; he used his calculus to find centers of gravity, etc. Fermat's contemporaneous rival Ren Dscartes is more famous than Fermat, and Dscartes' writings were more influential. Whatever one thinks of Dscartes as aphilosopher, however, it seems clear that Fermat was the better mathematician. Fermat and Dscartes did work in physics and independently discovered the (trigonometric) law of refraction, but Fermat gave the correct explanation, and used it remarkably to anticipate the Principle of Least Action later enunciated by Maupertius (though Maupertius himself, like Dscartes, had an incorrect explanation of refraction). Fermat and Dscartes independently discovered analytic geometry, but it was Fermat who extended it to more than two dimensions, and followed up by developing elementary calculus.

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. He also made important early contributions to calculus. Returning to geometry late in life, Pascal advanced the theory of the cycloid. In addition to his work in geometry and calculus, he founded probability theory, and made contributions to axiomatic theory. His name is associated with the Pascal's Triangle of combinatorics and Pascal's Wager in theology. Like most of the greatest mathematicians, Pascal was interested in physics and mechanics, studying fluids, explaining vacuum, and inventing the syringe and hydraulic press. At the age of eighteen he designed and built the world's first automatic adding machine. (Although he continued to refine this invention, it was never a commercial success.) He suffered poor health throughout his life, abandoned mathematics for religion at about age 23, and died at an early age. Many think that had he devoted more years to mathematics, Pascal would have been one of the greatest mathematicians ever.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) GERMANY

Leibniz was one of the most brilliant and prolific intellectuals ever; and his influence in mathematics (especially his co-invention of the infinitesimal calculus) was immense. His childhood IQ has been estimated as second-highest in all of history, behind only Goethe. Descriptions which have been applied to Leibniz include "one of the two greatest universal geniuses" (da Vinci was the other); "the most important logician between Aristotle and Boole;" and the "Father of Applied Science." Leibniz described himself as "the most teachable of mortals." Mathematics was just a self-taught sideline for Leibniz, who was a philosopher, lawyer, historian, diplomat and renowned inventor. Because he "wasted his youth" before learning mathematics, he probably ranked behind the Bernoullis as well as Newton in pure mathematical talent, and thus he may be the only mathematician among the Top Ten who was never the greatest living algorist or theorem prover. We won't try to summarize Leibniz' contributions to philosophy and diverse other fields including biology; as just three examples: he predicted the Earth's molten core, introduced the notion of subconscious mind, and built the first calculator that could do multiplication. Leibniz pioneered the common discourse of mathematics, including its continuous, discrete, and symbolic aspects. (His ideas on symbolic logic weren't pursued and it was left to Boole to reinvent this almost two centuries later.) Mathematical innovations attributed to Leibniz include the symbols , df(x)/dx; the concepts of matrix determinant and Gaussian elimination; the theory of geometric envelopes; and the binary number system. He invented more mathematical terms than anyone, including "function," "analysis situ," "variable," "abscissa," "parameter," and "coordinate." His works seem to anticipate cybernetics and information theory; and Mandelbrot acknowledged Leibniz' anticipation of self-similarity. Like Newton, Leibniz discovered The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus; his contribution to calculus was much more influential than Newton's, and his superior notation is used to this day. As Leibniz himself pointed out, since the concept of mathematical analysis was already known to ancient Greeks, the revolutionary invention was notation ("calculus"), because with "symbols [which] express the exact nature of a thing briefly ... the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished."

JOHANN BERNOULLI (1667-1748) SWITZERLAND

Johann Bernoulli learned from his older brother and Leibniz, and went on to become principle teacher to Leonhard Euler. He developed exponential calculus; together with his brother Jacob, he founded the calculus of variations. Johann solved the catenary before Jacob did; this led to a famous rivalry in the Bernoulli family. (No joint papers were written; instead the Bernoullis, especially Johann, began claiming each others' work.) Although his older brother may have demonstrated greater breadth, Johann had no less skill than Jacob, contributed more to calculus, discovered L'Hopital's Rule before L'Hopital did, and made important contributions in physics, e.g. about vibrations, elastic bodies, optics, tides, and ship sails. It may not be clear which Bernoulli was the "greatest." Johann has special importance as tutor to Leonhard Euler, but Jacob has special importance as tutor to his brother Johann!

DANIEL BERNOULLI (1700-1782) SWITZERLAND

Johann had a nephew and several descendants who were also outstanding mathematicians. Of these, the most important was his son Daniel. Johann insisted that Daniel study biology and medicine rather than mathematics, so Daniel specialized initially in mathematical biology. He went on to win the Grand Prize of the Paris Academy no less than ten times, and was a close friend of Euler. He developed partial differential equations, anticipated Fourier series, did important work in statistics and the theory of equations, wrote on the St. Petersburg Paradox (discovered by his cousin Nicholas), but is most famous for his important discoveries in mathematical physics, including the Bernoulli Principle underlying airflight. Daniel Bernoulli is sometimes called "the Founder of Mathematical Physics."

ALEXIS CLAUDE CLAIRAUT (1713-1765) FRANCE

The reputations of Euler and the Bernoullis are so high that it is easy to overlook that others in that epoch made essential contributions to mathematical physics. (Euler made errors in his development of physics, in some cases because of a Europeanist rejection of Newton's theories in favor of the contradictory theories of Dscartes and Leibniz.) The Frenchmen Clairaut and d'Alembert were the two other great mathematicians of the early 18th century. Alexis Clairaut was very precocious, delivering a math paper at age 13, and becoming the youngest person ever elected to the Paris Academy of Sciences. He developed the concept of skew curves (the earliest precursor of spatial curvature); he made very important contributions in differential equations and mathematical physics. Clairaut supported Newton against the Continental schools, and helped translate Newton's work into French. The theories of Newton and Dscartes gave different predictions for the shape of the Earth (whether the poles were flattened or pointy); Clairaut participated in Maupertuis' expedition to Lappland to measure the polar regions. Measurements at high latitudes showed the poles to be flattened: Newton was right. Clairaut worked on the theories of ellipsoids and the three-body problem, e.g. Moon's orbit. That orbit was the major mathematical challenge of the day, and there was great difficulty reconciling theory and observation. It was Clairaut who finally resolved this, by approaching the problem with more rigor than others. When Euler finally understood Clairaut's solution he called it "the most important and profound discovery that has ever been made in mathematics." Later, when Halley's Comet reappeared as he had predicted, Clairaut was acclaimed as "the new Thales."

JOHANN HEINRICH LAMBERT (1727-1777) SWITZERLAND, PRUSSIA

Lambert had to drop out of school at age 12 to help support his family, but went on to become a mathematician of great fame and breadth. He was first to prove that is irrational. (He proved more strongly that tan x and ex are both irrational for any non-zero rational x. His proof for this was so remarkable for its time, that its completeness wasn't recognized for over a century.) He also conjectured that and e were transcendental. He made advances in analysis (including the introduction of Lambert's W function) and in trigonometry (introducing the hyperbolic functions sinh and cosh); proved a key theorem of spherical trigonometry, and solved the "trinomial equation." He also made important contributions in philosophy, cosmology (conceiving of star clusters, galaxies and supergalaxies), map-making (inventing several map projections), inventions (he built the first practical hygrometer and photometer), dynamics, and especially optics (several laws of optics carry his name). Lambert is famous for his work in geometry, proving Lambert's Theorem (the path of rotation of a parabola tangent triangle passes through the parabola's focus), as well as a famous identity used to calculate cometary orbits which Lagrange declared to be the most beautiful and significant result in celestial motions. Lambert was first to explore straight-edge constructions without compass. He also developed non-Euclidean geometry, long before Bolyai and Lobachevsky did.

GASPARD MONGE (1746-1818) FRANCE

Gaspard Monge, son of a humble peddler, was an industrious and creative inventor who astounded early with his genius, becoming a professor of physics at age 16. As a military engineer he developed the new field of descriptive geometry, so useful to engineering that it was kept a military secret for 15 years. Monge eventually became a close friend and companion of Napoleon Bonaparte, and demonstrated great courage on several occasions. Monge is most famous for laying the foundation for differential geometry. He also did work in discrete math, and differential equations, and anticipated Poncelet's Principle of Continuity. Monge's most famous theorems of geometry are the "Three Circles Theorem" and "Four Spheres Theorem." While his work in descriptive geometry has little interest to pure mathematics, his application of calculus to the curvature of surfaces inspired Gauss and eventually Riemann. Monge was an inspirational teacher whose students included Fourier, Sophie Germain, Chasles, Brianchon, Ampere, Carnot, Poncelet and several other famous mathematicians. Chasles reports that Monge never drew figures in his lectures, but could make "the most complicated forms appear in space ... with no other aid than his hands, whose movements admirably supplemented his words." The contributions of Poncelet may be more important than those of Monge, but Monge demonstrated great genius as an untutored child, while Poncelet's skills probably developed due to his great teacher. The great Lagrange said "With [Monge's] application of analysis to geometry this devil of a man will make himself immortal."

ADRIEN MARIE LEGENDRE (1752-1833) FRANCE

Legendre was an outstanding mathematician who did important work in plane and solid geometry, spherical trigonometry, celestial mechanics and other areas of physics, and especially elliptic integrals and number theory. He also made important contributions in several areas of analysis: he invented the Legendre transform and Legendre polynomials; the notation for partial derivatives is due to him. He invented the Legendre symbol; invented the study of zonal harmonics; proved that 2 was irrational (the irrationality of had already been proved by Lambert); and wrote important textbooks in several fields. Although he never accepted nonEuclidean geometry, and had spent much time trying to prove the Parallel Postulate, his inspiring geometry text remained a standard until the 20th century. As one of France's premier mathematicians, Legendre did other important work, promoting the careers of Lagrange and Laplace, developing trig tables, geodesic projects, etc. There are several important Theorems proposed by Legendre for which he is denied credit, either because his proof was incomplete or was preceded by another's. He proposed the famous theorem about primes in a progression which was proved by Dirichlet; proved and used the important Law of Least Squares which Gauss had left unpublished; proved the N=5 case of Fermat's Last Theorem which is credited to Dirichlet; proposed the famous Prime Number Theorem which was finally proved by Hadamard; and developed various techniques commonly credited to Laplace. His two most famous theorems of number theory, the Law of Quadratic Reciprocity and the Three Squares Theorem (a difficult extension of Lagrange's Four Squares Theorem), each had slightly flawed proofs left to Gauss to correct. Legendre also proved an early version of Bonnet's Theorem. Legendre's work in the theory of equations and elliptic integrals directly inspired the achievements of Galois and Abel (which then obsoleted much of Legendre's own work); Chebyshev's work also built on Legendre's foundations.

JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH FOURIER (1768-1830) FRANCE

Joseph Fourier had a varied career: precocious but mischievous orphan, theology student, young professor of mathematics (advancing the theory of equations), then revolutionary activist. Under Napoleon he was a brilliant and important teacher and historian; accompanied the French Emperor to Egypt; and did excellent service as district governor of Grenoble. In his spare time at Grenoble he continued the work in mathematics and physics that led to his immortality. After the fall of Napoleon, Fourier exiled himself to England, but returned to France when offered an important academic position and published his revolutionary treatise on the Theory of Heat. Fourier anticipated linear programming, developing the simplex method and Fourier-Motzkin Elimination. He is also noted for the notion of dimensional analysis, was first to describe the Greenhouse Effect, and continued his earlier brilliant work with equations. Fourier's claim to greatness rests on one particular technique: his use of trigonometric series (now called Fourier series) in the solution of differential equations. Since "Fourier" analysis is in extremely common use among applied mathematicians, he joins the select company of the eponyms of "Cartesian" coordinates, "Gaussian" curve, and "Boolean" algebra. Because of the importance of Fourier analysis, many listmakers would rank Fourier much higher than I have done; however the work was not exceptional as pure mathematics. Fourier's Heat Equation built on Newton's Law of Cooling; and the Fourier series solution itself had already been introduced by Euler, Lagrange and Daniel Bernoulli. (Another mathematical physicist with greatness due to intuition rather than rigor was Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925).) Fourier's solution to the heat equation was counterintuitive (heat transfer doesn't seem to involve the oscillations fundamental to trigonometric functions): The brilliance of Fourier's imagination is indicated in that the solution had been rejected by Lagrange himself. Although rigorous Fourier Theorems were finally proved only by Dirichlet, Riemann and Lebesgue, it has been said that it was Fourier's "very disregard for rigor" that led to his great achievement, which Lord Kelvin compared to poetry.

CHARLES BABBAGE

Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioningdifference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine, an astonishingly complex device for the 19th century. Considered a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert Einstein ( / lb rt a nsta n/; German: [ alb t a n ta n] ( listen); 14 March 1879 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution inphysics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole. He escaped from Nazi Germany in 1933, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin similar research. He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955. Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities; he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects such as socialism,international relations and the existence of God. His great intelligence and originality have made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.

DAVID HILBERT

David Hilbert (German pronunciation: [ da f t h lb t]; January 23, 1862 February 14, 1943) was a Germanmathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry. He also formulated the theory of Hilbert spaces,[1]one of the foundations of functional analysis. Hilbert adopted and warmly defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. A famous example of his leadership in mathematics is his 1900 presentation of a collection of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century. 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, as well as for being among the first to distinguish between mathematics and metamathematics.

CARL GUSTAV JACOB JACOBI

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (December 10, 1804 February 18, 1851) was a German mathematician, widely considered to be the most inspiring teacher of his time and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Biography Jacobi was born of Jewish parentage in Potsdam. From 1816 to 1821 Jacobi went to the VictoriaGymnasium, where he went to the senior classes right from the beginning, but still had to stay for several years. He studied atBerlin University, where he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1825, his thesis being an analytical discussion of the theory of fractions. In 1827 he became extraordinary professor and in 1829 ordinary professor ofmathematics at Knigsberg University, and this chair he filled until 1842. Jacobi suffered a breakdown from overwork in 1843. He then visited Italy for a few months to regain his health. On his return he moved to Berlin, where he lived as a royal pensioner until his death. During the Revolution of 1848Jacobi was politically involved and unsuccessfully presented his parliamentary candidature on behalf of a Liberalclub. This led, after the suppression of the revolution, to his royal grant being cut off but his fame and reputation were such that it was soon resumed. In 1836, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Jacobi's grave is preserved at a cemetery in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, the Friedhof I der Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchengemeinde (61 Baruther Street). His grave is close to that of Johann Encke, the astronomer. The craterJacobi on the Moon is named after him.

PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACE

Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (23 March 1749 5 March 1827) was a French mathematician andastronomer whose work was pivotal to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five volume Mcanique Cleste (Celestial Mechanics) (17991825). This work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based oncalculus, opening up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the so-called Bayesian interpretation of probability was mainly developed by Laplace. He formulated Laplace's equation, and pioneered the Laplace transform which appears in many branches ofmathematical 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 postulate the existence of black holes and the notion of gravitational collapse. He is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time, sometimes referred to as a French Newton orNewton of France, with a phenomenal natural mathematical faculty superior to any of his contemporaries. He became a count of the First French Empire in 1806 and was named a marquis in 1817, after the Bourbon Restoration.

ANDREY MARKOV

Andrey Andreevich Markov was born in Ryazan as the son of the secretary of the public forest management of Ryazan, Andrey Grigorevich Markov, and his first wife Nadezhda Petrovna Markova. In the beginning of the 1860s Andrey Grigorevich moved to St Petersburg to become an asset manager of the princess Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Valvatyeva. In 1866 Andrey Andreevich's school life began with his entrance into Saint Petersburg's fifth grammar school. Already during his school time Andrey was intensely engaged in higher mathematics. As a 17-year-old grammar school student he informed Bunyakovsky, Korkin and Yegor Zolotarev about an apparently new method to solve linear ordinary differential equations and was invited to the so-called Korkin Saturdays, where Korkin's students regularly met. In 1874 he finished the school and began his studies at the physico-mathematical faculty of St Petersburg University. Among his teachers were Yulian Sokhotski (differential calculus, higher algebra), Konstantin Posse(analytic geometry), Yegor Zolotarev (integral calculus), Pafnuty Chebyshev (number theory, probability theory), Aleksandr Korkin (ordinary and partial differential equations), Okatov (mechanism theory), Osip Somov (mechanics) and Budaev (descriptive and higher geometry). In 1877 he was awarded the gold medal for his outstanding solution of the problem "About Integration of Differential Equations by Continuous Fractions with an Application to the Equation " In the following year he passed the candidate examinations and remained at the university to prepare for the lecturer's position. In April 1880 Markov defended his master thesis "About Binary Quadratic Forms with Positive Determinant", which was encouraged by Aleksandr Korkin and Yegor Zolotarev. Five years later, in January 1885, there followed his doctoral thesis "About Some Applications of Algebraic Continuous Fractions". His pedagogical work began after the defense of his master thesis in autumn 1880. As a privatdozent he lectured on differential and integral calculus. Later he lectured alternately on "introduction to analysis", probability theory (succeeding Chebyshev who had left the university in 1882) and calculus of differences. From 1895/96 until 1905 he additionally lectured on differential calculus.

CARL DAVID TOLM RUNGE

Carl David Tolm Runge (German pronunciation: [ ]; 30 August 1856 3 January 1927) was a Germanmathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist. He was co-developer and co-eponym of the RungeKutta method (pronounced [ k ta]), in the field of what is today known as numerical analysis. Biography He spent the first few years of his life in Havana, where his father Julius Runge was the Danish consul. The family later moved to Bremen, where his father died early (in 1864). In 1880, he received his Ph.D. in mathematics at Berlin, where he studied under Karl Weierstrass. In 1886, he became a professor in Hannover, Germany. His interests included mathematics, spectroscopy, geodesy, and astrophysics. In addition to pure mathematics, he did a great deal of experimental work studying spectral lines of various elements (together with Heinrich Kayser), and was very interested in the application of this work to astronomical spectroscopy. In 1904, on the initiative of Felix Klein he received a call to the Georg-August University of Gttingen, which he accepted. There he remained until his retirement in 1925.

SIR GEORGE STOKES, 1ST BARONET

Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 1st Baronet FRS (13 August 18191 February 1903), was a mathematicianand physicist, who at Cambridge made important contributions to fluid dynamics (including the NavierStokes equations), optics, and mathematical physics (including Stokes' theorem). He was secretary, then president, of the Royal Society. George Stokes was the youngest son of the Reverend Gabriel Stokes, rector of Skreen, County Sligo, Ireland, where he was born and brought up in an evangelical Protestant family. After attending schools in Skreen,Dublin, and Bristol, he matriculated in 1837 at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where four years later, on graduating as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, he was elected to a fellowship. In accordance with the college statutes, he had to resign the fellowship when he married in 1857, but twelve years later, under new statutes, he was reelected. He retained his place on the foundation until 1902, when on the day before his 83rd birthday, he was elected to the mastership. He did not hold this position for long, for he died at Cambridge on 1 February the following year, and was buried in the Mill Road cemetery.

ALAN TURING

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (pronounced / tj r / TEWR-ing; 23 June 1912 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German navalcryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of thebombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, theACE. Towards the end of his life Turing became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the BelousovZhabotinsky reaction, which were first observed in the 1960s. Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952 homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time and he accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.