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

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Giants  of  Science


40-word Biographies

 Thales of Miletus Thales of Miletus   (c. 624-546 BC)

The first of the 7 sages of Greece, he laid the foundations for Philosophy, rational speculations about Nature and basic geometry.  He stated that triangles with paralell sides are similar:  Men are to their shadows what the pyramid is to its own shadow.

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 Archimedes of Syracuse Archimedes of Syracuse   (c. 287-212 BC)

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.

The Sand Reckoner   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Historical Tidbits   |   Facebook Fans


 Geber Geber,  experimental chemist  (c. AD 721-815)

Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan al azdi  was born in Tus (Persia) but the Arabs claim him as one of their own.  Geber (or Jabir) made remarkable scientific advances in practical chemistry but is also credited with eponymous  gibberish  on occult alchemy.

Wikipedia   |   Jabir   |   Chemical Heritage Foundation   |   al Shindagah


 Nicole Oresme bore these arms as
 Bishop of Lisieux, from 1377 to his death.

 Nicole Oresme Nicole Oresme   (1323-1382)

Nicolas Oresme  is credited with the introduction of fractional exponents and the graphing of functions.  He also established the divergence of the harmonic series.  Oresme anticipated analytic geometry, the law of free fall and chemical structures...

MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Université de Caen


 Nicolaus Copernicus 
 (Housemark)

 Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus   (1473-1543)

Mikolaj Kopernik  attended Krakow, Bologna, Padua and Ferrara.  Due to his uncle, he became a canon at Frauenberg (1497) where he would have an observatory.  Around 1514, he gave an heliocentric explanation to planetary retrograde motion.

De revolutionibus (1543)   |   Copernican revolution   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein


 Galileo 
 Galilei

 Galileo Galilei, 1636
 portrait painted by 
 Justus Sustermans (1597-1681)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.

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 Galileo 
 Galilei

 Johannes Kepler, 1610 Johannes Kepler   (1571-1630)

Kepler's  precise calculations helped establish  heliocentric  astronomy.  In 1609 and 1619, he published his famous  3  laws of planetary motion.  He studied optics, polyhedra, logarithms, etc.  In hindsight, Kepler also paved the way for  Calculus.

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 Rene
 Descartes

 Rene Descartes, 1649
 portrait painted by Dutch master
 Frans Hals (c. 1580-1666) René Descartes   (1596-1650)

Descartes attended the famous Jesuit college of  La Flèche from 1607 to 1615.  He met his scientific mentor Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637) in 1618.  He introduced  cartesian geometry  in one of three appendices to  Discours sur la méthode  (1637).

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 Isaac 
 Newton

 Sir Isaac Newton, 1689
 portrait painted by
 Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723) 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.

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 Gottfried 
 Leibniz

 Gottfried von Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz   (1646-1716)

A major philosopher and a polymath,  Leibniz  invented differential calculus independently of Newton.  He introduced a consistent notation for integrals and infinitesimals (1675).  Unlike d'Alembert, Leibniz never thought of the derivative as a limit.
 Signature of 
 G. W. Leigniz

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 Leonhard Euler 
 portrait painted by 
 Johann Georg Brucker 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Jean le Rond d'Alembert 
 1717-1783

 Jean d'Alembert 
 portrait painted by 
 Maurice Quentin de La Tour Jean-le-Rond d'Alembert   (1717-1783)

Born illegitimately to  Louis Camus Destouches-Canon   and  Claudine de Tencin,  he was editor of the  Encyclopedia.  He founded analytical mechanics on a principle of virtual work and solved the wave equation.  The  d'Alembertian  is a 4D operator.

Remarkable Mathematicians (pdf)   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Joseph Louis Lagrange 
 1736-1813

 Joseph Louis Lagrange Joseph Louis Lagrange   (1736-1813)

Lagrange pioneered the calculus of variation (before Euler gave it that name, in 1766)  and applied it to analytical mechanics.  He also invented Lagrange multipliers.  In 1794,  Polytechnique was founded and Lagrange became its first  professor of analysis.

Remarkable Mathematicians (pdf)   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Pierre-Simon Laplace 
 1749-1827

 Pierre Simon Laplace Pierre Simon Laplace   (1749-1827)

Introduced to mathematics in Caen by  Christophe Gadbled  and  Pierre Le Canu, he was mentored by d'Alembert in Paris.  He went on to become one of the most innovative and influential scientists ever.  (Laplacian, Laplace transform, etc.)

Taupe Laplace (Caen)   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Adrien-Marie Legendre, 1752-1833 
 by Louis-Leopold Boilly (1820)

 Adrien-Marie Legendre Adrien-Marie Legendre   (1752-1833)

Legendre was one of the greatest contributors to the mathematics of his times.  Many concepts are named after him.  At left is what seems to be his only extant portrait  (it was found among 73 caricatures of members of the French academy of Sciences).
 Signature of 
 Adrien-Marie Legendre

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 Carl F. 
 Gauss

 Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1840 
 portrait by the Danish painter
 Christian Albrecht Jensen (1792-1870) 
 for the Pulkovo observatoryCarl 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.
 Signature of 
 C. F. Gauss

Quadratic reciprocity  |  MacTutor  |  Wikipedia  |  Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Simeon Denis Poisson Siméon Poisson   (1781-1840; X1798)

Among his many mathematical contributions is a very abstract construct in  analytical mechanics  (Poisson Brackets, 1809)  which helped Dirac formulate a precise correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics  (Sept. 20, 1925).  Ecole Polytechnique (X)

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 Augustin Fresnel Augustin Fresnel   (1788-1827; X1804)

Educated in Caen and at  Polytechnique  Augustin Fresnel  established  (with Arago)  that light is a transverse wave whose two orthogonal polarizations do  not  interfere with each other.  He promoted the use of Fresnel lenses in lighthouses.  Ecole Polytechnique (X)

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 Augustin 
 Gauss

 Louis Augustin Cauchy 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).  Ecole Polytechnique (X)

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 Michael Faraday Michael Faraday, experimentalist   (1791-1867)

In 1831,  Faraday  came up with the  Law of Electromagnetic Induction, which ultimately made the electric era possible.  He is widely regarded as one of the greatest experimentalists who ever lived.  Yet, he had little or no grasp of higher mathematics.
 Signature of 
 Michael Faraday

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 William Rowan Hamilton Sir William Rowan Hamilton   (1805-1865)

Hamilton taught himself mathematics at the age of 17.  In 1833, he devised a version of  rational mechanics (based on co-called  conjugate momenta)  which helps clarify modern formulations of quantum mechanics.  He invented quaternions in 1843.

DIT 2005   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Joseph Liouville Joseph Liouville   (1809-1882; X1825)

Many of Liouville's 400+ papers include key contributions, like his conservation of Hamiltonian phase-measure.  In 1836, he founded the  Journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées  and promoted the work of others, including  Evariste Galois.  Ecole Polytechnique (X)

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 Bernhard Riemann, 1863 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.

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 James 
 Clerk Maxwell

 James Clerk Maxwell 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.

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 Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Boltzmann   (1844-1906)

Boltzmann  was a proponent of  atomic theory  and the father of  statistical mechanicsBoltzmann's constant is the coefficient of proportionality between  entropy  (in J/k)  and the natural logarithm of the number of allowed physical states.
 Signature of 
 Ludwig Boltzmann

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 Georg Cantor Georg Cantor, mathematician   (1845-1918)

Cantor's diagonal argument shows that the points of a line are not countable.  More generally, Cantor's Theorem  states that no function from a set to its  powerset  can possibly be  surjective,  which establishes an infinite sequence of increasing  infinities.

Dangerous Knowledge (Video)   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Ricci-Curbastro

 Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro   (1853-1925)

In 1884, he started the investigations of  quadratic differential forms  which led him to invent  tensor calculus  (1884-1894).  The text he published about that with  Tullio Levi-Civita in 1900 would enable Einstein to formulate General Relativity in 1915.
 Signature of 
 Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro

Ph.D. 1873   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein


 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz Hendrik A. Lorentz   (1853-1928)

Among the  many  contributions of  H.A. Lorentz  is the coordinate transformation which is the cornerstone of  Special Relativity.  In 1892, Lorentz proposed a theory of the  electron  (discovered by Perrin in 1895 and J.J. Thomson in 1898).

Nobel 1902   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Facebook Fans


 Jules Henri Poincare 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.
 Signature of 
 Henri Poincare  Ecole Polytechnique (X)

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 Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla, inventor   (1856-1943)

At least 272 patents were awarded to Tesla in 25 countries.  His work is the basis of modern  alternating current  (AC) electric power distribution.  The SI unit of  magnetic induction  (magnetic flux density)  was named after him, in 1960.
 Signature of 
 Nikola Tesla

Master of Lightning   |   Wikipedia   |   Weisstein   |   Tesla coil   |   Fans


 Max Planck 
 (1858-1947) 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.
 Signature of Max Planck 
 at 10 years of age

Nobel 1918   |   Wikipedia   |   MacTutor   |   Facebook Fans


 David Hilbert 
 (1862-1943) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Marie 
 Curie

 Marie Curie 
 (1867-1934) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Elie Cartan 
 (1869-1951) 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.

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 Albert Einstein 
 (1876-1955) 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.
 Signature of 
 Albert Einstein

Nobel 1921   |   MacTutor   |   Wikipedia   |   Bonn   |   Weisstein   |   AIP


 Emmy Noether 
 (1882-1935) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Niels 
 Bohr

 Niels Bohr 
 (1885-1962) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Erwin Schroedinger 
 (1887-1961) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 Srinivasa Ramanujan 
 (1887-1920) Srinivasa Ramanujan   (1887-1920)

Ramanujan lacked a formal mathematical education but, in 1913, a few of his early results managed to startle  G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) who invited him to Cambridge in 1914.  Ramanujan has left an unusual legacy of brilliant unconventional results.

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 Louis 
 de Broglie

 Louis de Broglie
 (1892-1987) 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

 Paul Dirac 
 (1885-1962) 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   |   Facebook Fans


 John von Neumann (1903-1957) 
 at Los Alamos John von Neumann   (1903-1957)

 
 Signature of 
 John von Neumann

The Scientific 100   |   Wikipedia   |   MacTutor   |   Facebook Fans


 Kurt Goedel 
 (1906-1978) Kurt Gödel, logician   (1906-1978)

 
 Signature of 
 Kurt Goedel

Grave   |   Dangerous Knowledge   |   Wikipedia   |   MacTutor   |   Facebook Fans


 Alan Turing 
 (1912-1954) Alan Turing, computer scientist  (1912-1954)

Turing Machine  is a finite automaton endowed with an infinite read/write tape on which it can move back and forth, one step at a time.  Turing showed that this type of machine is actually capable of computing anything that any other machine could.

The Death of Alan Turing (Video)   |   Wikipedia   |   MacTutor   |   Facebook Fans


 Richard P. Feynman 
 (1918-1988) 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  |  1972 Interviews  |  1979 QED Lectures  |  1988  |  Facebook Fans


 Steven Weinberg 
 (1933-) Steven Weinberg, physicist   (1933-)

In 1967, he formulated the  electroweak  unification of the weak nuclear force and 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  |  Facebook Fans

 Glider in Conway's 
 Game of Life

 John Horton Conway 
 (1937-) John H. Conway   (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.

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