Aux grands hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante.

Here is a chronological list of a few mathematicians and scientists whose towering
achievements have helped shape the Science of their time and ours. [ Nominate ]

Giants of Science

40-word Biographies

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287-212 BCE)

A native and resident of Syracuse, Archimedes studied in Alexandria and maintained relations with Alexandrian scholars. Although he became famous for designing war machines, this early physicist was, above all, an outstanding mathematician.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein | Historical Tidbits

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Using his own pulse as a timer, Galileo discovered the pendulum isochronism in 1581. He found that all bodies fall with the same acceleration and declared mechanical laws valid for all observers in uniform motion. He made the first telescopic observations.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1669. FRS in 1672. Publishes Principia in 1687. Retires from research in 1693. Warden (1696) then Master (1699) of the Royal Mint. President of the Royal Society from 1703. Knighted in 1705.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

The most prolific mathematician of all times, Euler became totally blind in 1771 but produced almost half of his phenomenal output in St. Petersburg after 1766, with the help of several assistants, including the young Nicolaus Fuss (1755-1826) from 1773 on.

Solution of the Basel Problem (1735) | MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

At the age of 7, the Prince of Mathematics found instantly the sum (5050) of all integers from 1 to 100 (as the sum of 50 pairs, each adding up to 101). At age 19, his breakthrough about constructible polygons helped him choose a mathematical career.

Modular arithmetic | Quadratic reciprocity | MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Augustin Cauchy (1789-1857; X1805)

Cauchy wrote 789 papers in all areas of the mathematics and theoretical physics of his time. In 1821, his Cours d'analyse at Polytechnique put analysis on a rigorous footing. He originated the calculus of residues (1826) and complex analysis (1829).

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Bernhard Riemann, mathematician (1826-1866)

In 1851, his thesis introduced Riemann surfaces. His habilitation lecture on the foundations of geometry (1854) stunned even Gauss. In 1859, Riemann probed the distribution of primes using his zeta function and he formulated the Riemann Hypothesis.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

In 1864, he devised Maxwell's equations which unify electricity and magnetism, by describing electromagnetic fields traveling at the speed of light. In 1866, Maxwell proposed (independently of Boltzmann) the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Hendrik A. Lorentz (1853-1928)

His numerous contributions to electromagnetic theory include the coordinate transformation which is the cornerstone of Special Relativity. In 1892, H.A. Lorentz proposed a theory of the electron (experimentally discovered by J.J. Thomson in 1898).

Nobel 1902 | MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

J. Henri Poincaré (1854-1912; X1873)

Poincaré was the last universal genius and quintessential absent-minded professor (cf. Savant Cosinus comic strip). Poincaré conceived Special Relativity before Einstein did. His mathematical legacy includes chaos theory and topology.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein | Bruce Medal 1911

Max Planck (1858-1947)

Planck combined the formulas of Wien (UV) and Rayleigh (IR) to obtain a single expression for the whole blackbody spectrum. On Dec. 14, 1900, he justified it by proposing that exchanges of energy only occur in discrete lumps, which he dubbed quanta.

Nobel 1918 | Wikipedia | MacTutor

David Hilbert, mathematician (1862-1943)

One of the most powerful mathematicians ever, David Hilbert gave a famous list of 23 unsolved problems in 1900. Quantum Theory is formally based on the complex normed vector spaces which are named after him.

Hilbert's List | Wikipedia | MacTutor

Marie Curie (1867-1934)

Marie Sklodowska-Curie was the first woman to earn a Nobel prize and the first person to earn two. In 1898, she isolated two new elements (polonium and radium) by tracking their ionizing radiation, using the electrometer of Jacques and Pierre Curie.

Nobel 1903 | Nobel 1911 | Wikipedia | AIP

Elie Cartan, mathematician (1869-1951)

In 1913, Cartan established, from a purely geometrical standpoint, the relations that lead to the quantization of spin. He developed exterior calculus and published his full Theory of Spinors as a textbook in 1935.

MacTutor | Wikipedia | Weisstein

Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)

In 1905, Einstein published on Brownian motion (existence of atoms) the photoelectric effect (discovery of the photon) and his own Special Theory of Relativity, which he would unify with gravity in 1915 by formulating the General Theory of Relativity.

Emmy Noether, mathematician (1882-1935)

Emmy Noether discovered the remarkable equivalence between symmetries in physical laws and conserved physical quantities (Noether's theorem, 1915). Her considerable legacy also includes three Isomorphism Theorems named after her (1927).

1918 Paper | MacTutor | Wikipedia | EmmyNoether.com

Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

In 1913, Bohr started the quantum revolution with a model where the orbital angular momentum of an electron only has discrete values. He spearheaded the Copenhagen Interpretation which holds that quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic.

Nobel 1922 | Wikipedia | Coat of Arms

Erwin Schrödinger, physicist (1887-1961)

In 1926, Schrödinger matched observed quantum behavior with the properties of a continuous nonrelativistic wave obeying the Schrödinger Equation. In 1935, he challenged the Copenhagen Interpretation, with the famous tale of Schrödinger's cat.

Nobel 1933 | Nobel Lecture | Wikipedia | MacTutor

Louis de Broglie, physicist (1892-1987)

In 1923, de Broglie proposed that any particle has wavelike properties, with a wavelength inversely proportional to its momentum (this helps justify Schrödinger's equation). He predicted interferences for an electron beam hitting a crystal.

Nobel 1929 | Wikipedia | MacTutor

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984)

In 1925, Paul Dirac came up with the formalism on which quantum mechanics is now based. In 1928, he discovered a relativistic wave function for the electron, which predicted the existence of antimatter (first observed by Anderson in 1932).

Nobel 1933 | Wikipedia | MacTutor

Kurt Gödel, logician (1906-1978)

Wikipedia | MacTutor

Richard P. Feynman, physicist (1918-1988)

In 1949, he introduced Feynman diagrams to describe the relativistic quantum theory of electromagnetic interactions known as Quantum electrodynamics (QED). This has helped visualize all other types of fundamental interactions ever since.

Nobel 1965 | Wikipedia | MacTutor | Videos (1979 Lectures)

Steven Weinberg, physicist (1933-)

In 1967, he formulated the electroweak unification of the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism, predicting a massive neutral messenger particle (the Z boson) which was first observed in 1979. Steven Weinberg gave the Standard Model its name.

home | Nobel 1979 | Wikipedia | Emperor Has No Clothes Award

John H. Conway, mathematician (1937-)

In 1970, Conway found the simple rules of a cellular automaton (the Game of Life ) capable of self-replication and universal computation. His many other original contributions include the ultimate extension of the ordered number line: surreal numbers.

New York Times | Wikipedia | MacTutor

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