Rank mathematicians biography

6.) Sophie Germain (1776-1831)

Despite facing incredible adversity as a female mathematician in Paris during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Germain persisted and became one of the most famous mathematicians of all time.

the works of al-Khowârizmi, into Latin, but Leonardo was the influential teacher. Although Liu Hui mentions Chang's skill, it isn't clear Chang had the mathematical genius to qualify for this list, but he would still be a strong candidate due to his book's immense historical importance: It was the dominant Chinese mathematical text for centuries, and had great influence throughout the Far East.

He is best known for his Fibonacci sequence.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727 CE)

English mathematician Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day 1642. In addition to several names already on our list and Hart's -- Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, Euclid, Descartes -- the Pantheon List includes several other mathematicians missing from Hart's list: Leonardo (#6), Pythagoras (#10), Archimedes (#11), Thales (#38), Pascal (#67), Ptolemy (#80)).

He may have been first to recognize proofs that parts of mountains had once been submerged under ocean. (Today, Egyptian fractions lead to challenging number theory problems with no practical applications, but they may have had practical value for the Egyptians. He provided new insights into optics and music; he was the best geographer of his day.

Referring to this system, Gauss was later to exclaim "To what heights would science now be raised if Archimedes had made that discovery!"

Some histories describe him as bringing Islamic mathematics to Europe, but in Fibonacci's own preface to Liber Abaci, he specifically credits the Hindus:

...

Aryabhata (476-550) Ashmaka & Kusumapura (India)     --     [ #37 ]

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.

He practiced astrology and was imprisoned for heresy when he cast a horoscope for Jesus. The very first examples of maths can be found in Africa. He may have discovered the simple parametric form of primitive Pythagorean triplets (xx-yy, 2xy, xx+yy), although the first explicit mention of this may be in Euclid's Elements. The precession of the equinox had been noticed by Hipparchus (and ancient Egyptians must have been aware of it) but the explanation for the precession was first given by Newton: Earth's axial precession is due to the tidal forces of Moon and Sun.

His other intellectual interests included theology, and mysticism. Although notions of trigonometry were not in use, Euclid's theorems include some closely related to the Laws of Sines and Cosines. Greece was eventually absorbed into the Roman Empire (with Archimedes himself famously killed by a Roman soldier). He constructed the parabolas defined by four given points, as well as various cubic curve constructions.

He did early work in both integration and differentiation, following Archimedes rather than Cavalieri; he worked on analytic geometry independently of Descartes. In the realm of physics, his unparalleled works on fluid dynamics and Fourier series remain unmatched.

2. Archimedes

Known For: Archimedes’ principle; Hydrostatics

Born around 287 BC in Syracuse, Sicily, Archimedes was well-versed in mathematics, physics, and astronomy of that time.

Archimedes discovered formulae for the volume and surface area of a sphere, and may even have been first to notice and prove the simple relationship between a circle's circumference and area. My book is written. He worked on the theory of area-preserving transformations, with applications to map-making.