- Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton <small><nowiki>[</nowiki> OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726<nowiki>]</nowiki></small> was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist. His treatise "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", published in 1687, described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, … - Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 - 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. A prolific writer, he was also a populariser of philosophy and a commentator on a large variety of topics, ranging from very serious issues to those much less so. Continuing a family tradition in political affairs, he was a prominent anti-war activist, … - Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal, (June 19 1623-August 19 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. - Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer. The illegitimate son of a notary, Messer Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, … - Alan Turing
This short on-line biography of Alan Turing is based on the entry I wrote for the British Dictionary of National Biography in 1995. The eight parts correspond roughly to the eight sections of my full biography Alan Turing : the enigma. There are no hyperlinks in the text. For links and for more images, go to the corresponding page of the Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook. Part 8 - Alan Turing 's Crisis - John von Neumann
John von Neumann (born Margittai Neumann János Lajos on December 28, 1903 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary; died February 8, 1957 in Washington D.C., United States) was a Austria-Hungary-born American mathematician who made contributions to quantum physics, functional analysis, set theory, topology, economics, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), … - Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27 1832 - January 14 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. His most famous writings are "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass" as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. - Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler , the most prolific mathematician of all time, wrote more than 500 books and papers during his lifetime about 800 pages per year with another 400 publications appearing posthumously; his collected works already fill 73 large volumes tens of thousands of pages with more volumes still to appear. - G. H. Hardy
Professor Godfrey Harold Hardy FRS (February 7, 1877 - December 1, 1947) was a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. He was called "Harold" by a few close friends, and otherwise "G. H.". Non-mathematicians usually know him for "A Mathematician's Apology", his essay from 1940 on the aesthetics of mathematics. - Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include the first systematic studies of uniformly accelerated motion, improvements to the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo's experiment-based work was a significant break from the abstract approach of Aristotle. - Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (December 27 1571 - November 15 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and a key figure in the 17th century astronomical revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works "Astronomia nova", "Harmonices Mundi", and "Epitome of Copernican Astronomy". - David Hilbert
David Hilbert was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He invented or developed a broad range of fundamental ideas, in invariant theory, the axiomatization of geometry, and with the notion of Hilbert space, one of the foundations of functional analysis. He adopted and warmly defended Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. - Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose, OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He is renowned for his work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher. - Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15 1861, Ramsgate, Kent, England - December 30 1947, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an English-born mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. With Bertrand Russell, he coauthored the epochal "Principia Mathematica". - Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (22 December 1887 - 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the greatest mathematical minds in recent history. With almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions in the areas of mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions. Ramanujan, born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, India, first encountered formal mathematics at age ten. - Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes (Greek ; 276 BC - 194 BC) was a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer. His contemporaries nicknamed him "beta" (Greek for "number two") because he supposedly proved himself to be the second in the ancient Mediterranean region in many fields. He is noted for devising a system of latitude and longitude, and for being the first known to have calculated the circumference of the Earth. He also made what he thought was a map of the Earth. - Carl Friedrich Gauss
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss or Gauß (30 April 1777 - 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", … - Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel (April 28, 1906 Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic) - January 14, 1978 Princeton, New Jersey) was an Austrian American mathematician and philosopher. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel's work has had immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead and David Hilbert, … - Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his serious theorizing in futurism and science fiction concepts, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism, and proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. - René Descartes
René Descartes (March 31, 1596 - February 11, 1650), also known as "Renatus Cartesius" (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. Dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and the "Father of Modern Mathematics", much of subsequent western philosophy is a reaction to his writings, which have been closely studied from his time down to the present day. - Fibonacci
Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Leonardo Pisano, Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo Fibonacci, or, most commonly, simply Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented mathematician of the Middle Ages". Fibonacci is best known to the modern world for: * The spreading of Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe, … - James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 - 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was formulating a set of equations - eponymously named Maxwell's equations - that for the first time expressed the basic laws of electricity and magnetism in a unified fashion. He also developed the Maxwell distribution, a statistical means to describe aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. - Terence Tao
Terence Chi-Shen Tao is an Australian mathematician working primarily on harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics, analytic number theory and representation theory. A child prodigy, Tao is currently a professor of mathematics at UCLA. He was promoted to a full professor at age 24. In August 2006, he was awarded the Fields Medal. Just one month later, in September 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. - Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (b. October 21, 1914, Tulsa, Oklahoma) is a popular American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing magic (conjuring), pseudoscience, literature (especially Lewis Carroll), philosophy, and religion. He wrote the "Mathematical Games" column in "Scientific American" from 1956 to 1981 and has published over 60 books. - Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American theoretical and applied mathematician. He was a pioneer in the study of stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems. Wiener is perhaps best known as the founder of cybernetics, a field that formalizes the notion of feedback and has implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society. - John Allen Paulos
John Allen Paulos is an extensively kudized author, popular public speaker , and monthly columnist for ABCNews.com ( archived or current , the text copyright by JAP, only the presentation copyright by ABC ) and formerly for the Guardian . Professor of math at Temple , a state university in Philadelphia, he earned his Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Wisconsin . - Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (born 16 December 1917) is a British science-fiction author and inventor, most famous for his novel "2001: A Space Odyssey", and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name. Clarke is the last surviving member of what was sometimes known as the "Big Three" of science fiction, which included Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. - Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles , Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics, has been named one of 23 winners of 1997 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships. Wiles's fellowship provides $275,000 over five years. A member of the faculty since 1982, Wiles created an international sensation in 1994 when he published a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, solving a mathematical puzzle that had stumped experts for 350 years. - Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart, FRS (born 1945), is a professor of mathematics at University of Warwick, United Kingdom. - W. R.
William R. (Red) Alford was an American mathematician who worked in the field of number theory. Born in Canton, Mississippi, he was a United States Air Force veteran. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Physics from the Citadel (1959), his Ph.D in Mathematics from Tulane University (1963), and his J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law (1976) in Athens, Georgia. After earning his J.D. he practiced law in Athens, … - George Boole
George Boole, (November 2, 1815 - December 8, 1864) was a British mathematician and philosopher. As the inventor of Boolean algebra, the basis of all modern computer arithmetic, Boole is regarded in hindsight as one of the founders of the field of computer science, although computers did not exist in his day. (See "Legacy" below.) - Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré was one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as 'The Last Universalist', 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. - Georg Cantor
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3, 1845, St. Petersburg, Russia - January 6, 1918, Halle, Germany) was a German mathematician. He is best known as the creator of set theory. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. - Democritus
Democritus (Greek:) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace ca. 460 BC). Democritus was a student of Leucippus and co-originator of the belief that all matter is made up of various imperishable, indivisible elements which he called "atoma" (sg. "atomon") or "indivisible units", from which we get the English word atom. - Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat (August 17 1601-January 12 1665) was a French lawyer at the "Parlement" of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus. In particular, he is recognised for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus, as well as his research into the theory of numbers. - Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian (Greek) philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics or natural philosophy. His name led him to be associated with Pythian Apollo; Aristippus explained his name by saying, … - Felix Klein
Felix Christian Klein (April 25, 1849 - June 22, 1925) was a German mathematician, known for his work in group theory, function theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory. His 1872 Erlangen Program, classifying geometries by their underlying symmetry groups, was a hugely influential synthesis of much of the mathematics of the day. - Diophantus
Diophantus of Alexandria (Greek: b. between 200 and 214, d. between 284 and 298 AD), sometimes called "the father of algebra", was a Greek mathematician of the Hellenistic period. He is the author of a series of classical mathematical books called "Arithmetica" and worked with equations which we now call Diophantine equations; the method to solve those problems is now called Diophantine analysis. - Claude Shannon
Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001), an American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. - Bernhard Riemann
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (pronounced "REE mahn" or in ; September 17, 1826 - July 20, 1866) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity.
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