Top 12 Famous Mathematicians

Top 12 Famous Mathematicians

1. Srinivasa Ramanujan

Born: 22^nd December, 1887, Erode
Died: 26^th April, 1920, Kumbakonam
Spouse: Janakiammal (m. 1909–1920)
Education: Trinity College, Cambridge (1919–1920), University of Cambridge (1914-1919)
Parents: Komalatammal, K. Srinivasa Iyengar

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory and continued fractions. At age of 31, Ramanujan was one of the youngest Fellows in the history of the Royal Society. He was elected “for his investigation in Elliptic functions and the Theory of Numbers.” On 13th October 1918, he was the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

2. Isaac Newton

Born: 4^th January, 1643, Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, United Kingdom

Died: 31^st March, 1727, Kensington, London, United Kingdom
Full name: Sir Isaac Newton

Education: Trinity College, Cambridge (1667–1668), The King’s School, Grantham (1955-1959)

An English mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton was an astronomer and physicist who is widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution.

3. Euclid

Born: Alexandria, Egypt

Born Date: Unknown

Nationality: Greek
Influenced: Stilpo, Thrasymachus of Corinth, Clinomachus, Eubulides, chthyas
Teacher: Archimedes

A Greek Socratic philosopher, Euclid of Megara founded the Megarian school of philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BCE and was present at his death. He held the supreme good to be one, eternal and unchangeable and denied the existence of anything contrary to the good.

4. Carl Friedrich Gauss

Born: 30^th April, 1777, Braunschweig, Germany

Died: 23^rd February, 1855, Göttingen, Germany
Awards: Copley Medal
Education: University of Helmstedt, University of Göttingen, Braunschweig University of Technology

Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician who contributed significantly in many fields, including number theory, statistics, algebra, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, mechanics, electrostatics, geophysics, astronomy, matrix theory, and optics.

5. Leonhard Euler

Born:  15^th April, 1707, Basel, Switzerland

Died:  18^th September, 1783, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Education: University of Basel (1720–1723)
Influenced: Carl Friedrich Gauss, Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician and engineer who made important and influential discoveries in many branches of mathematics like graph theory and infinitesimal calculus. He also made pioneering contributions to several branches such as topology and analytic number theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.

6. Pierre de Fermat

Born: 17^th August, 1601, Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France

Died: 12^th January, 1665, Castres, France
Education: University of Orléans (1623–1626)
Spouse: Louise Long Fermat
Books: Writings on Geometrical Loci
Parents: Dominique Fermat, Françoise Cazeneuve Fermat

The French mathematician Pierre de Fermat is known as the founder of the modern theory of numbers. Fermat developed a system of analytic geometry which both preceded and surpassed that of Descartes. He developed methods of differential and integral calculus which Newton acknowledged as an inspiration. 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.

7. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Born: 1^st July, 1646, Leipzig, Germany

Died: 14^th November, 1716, Hanover, Germany
Influenced: Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
Education: Leipzig University, University of Altdorf, University of Jena
Influenced by: René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Blaise Pascal

Leibniz pioneered the common discourse of mathematics, including its continuous, discrete, and symbolic aspects. His ideas on symbolic logic were not pursued and it was left to Boole to reinvent this almost two centuries later.

8. Pythagoras

Birth and death date: Unknown

Areas of interest: Politics, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Music
Influenced: Philolaus, Empedocles, Plato, Alcmaeon of Croton, Euclid, Johannes Kepler, Parmenides, Hippasus
Philosophical era: Ancient philosophy
Schools of thought: Pythagoreanism
Influenced by: Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Pherecydes of Syros, Themistoclea

Pythagoras discovered that harmonious intervals in music are based on simple rational numbers. This led to a fascination with integers and mystic numerology. The Pythagoras Theorem was known long before Pythagoras, but he is often credited with the first proof. Apastambha proved it in India at about the same time but some conjecture that Pythagoras visited to India and learned of the proof there.

9. Aryabhatta

Born: 476 AD, Assaka

Died: 550 AD, India
Nationality: Indian
Books: Aryabhatiya
Main interests: Mathematics, Astronomy
Influenced: Lalla, Bhāskara I, Brahmagupta, Varāhamihira

Indian mathematicians excelled for thousands of years, and eventually even developed advanced techniques like Taylor series before Europeans did, but they are denied credit because of Western ascendancy. Among the Hindu mathematicians, Aryabhata was known as Arjehir by Arabs, may be most famous. Aryabhatta is famous for his identity Σ (k3) = (Σ k)2. Aryabhatta worked on the approximation for pi (π), and may have come to the conclusion that π is an irrational number.

 10. Albert Einstein

Born: 14^th March, 1879, Ulm, Germany

Died: 18^th April, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Influenced: Satyendra Nath Bose, Leo Szilard, Wolfgang Pauli
Influenced by: Isaac Newton, Mahatma Gandhi

Albert Einstein was unquestionably one of the two greatest physicists in the history. The atomic theory achieved general acceptance only after Einstein’s 1905 paper which showed that atoms’ discreteness explained Brownian motion. Another 1905 paper introduced the famous equation E = mc². Einstein published at least 300 books or papers on physics altogether. In 1917, he applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe.

11. René Descartes

Born: 31^st March, 1596, Descartes, Indre-et-Loire, France

Died: 11^th February, 1650, Stockholm, Sweden

Influenced: Noam Chomsky, Baruch Spinoza, Slavoj Žižek
Influenced by: Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Archimedes

It is considered that René Descartes was the inventor of both analytic geometry and symbolic algebraic notation. His use of equations to partially solve the geometric Problem of Pappus revolutionized mathematics. René Descartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from the philosophers who preceded him.

12. Georg Cantor

  Born: March 3, 1845, St. Petersburg, Russia

  Died: January 6, 1918, Halle, Germany

Cantor's full name was Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor. Of all the great mathematicians, Cantor most perfectly fulfils the (Hollywood) stereotype that a genius for mathematics and mental illness are somehow inextricable. Cantor's most brilliant insight was to develop a way to talk about mathematical infinity. He developed the famous concept of set theory. His set theory has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. The result was mind-blowing. Unfortunately, he suffered mental breakdowns and was frequently hospitalized. He also became fixated on proving that the works of Shakespeare were in fact written by Francis Bacon.