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Famous Mathematicians
Mathematicians through history and what each is known for.
0 of 63 known
63 cards
- EuclidMathematicianWrote the Elements, the foundation of geometry (about 300 BCE)
- PythagorasMathematicianGreek thinker linked to the Pythagorean theorem (6th century BCE)
- ArchimedesMathematicianGreek scholar who found area and volume of the sphere and estimated pi
- EratosthenesMathematicianGreek scholar who estimated Earth's size and made a sieve for primes
- ThalesMathematicianEarly Greek geometer; the inscribed angle in a semicircle theorem
- HypatiaMathematicianMathematician and teacher in Alexandria, about 400 CE
- DiophantusMathematicianGreek writer on equations, often called a father of algebra
- AryabhataMathematicianIndian mathematician and astronomer (born 476 CE); worked on pi and sines
- BrahmaguptaMathematicianIndian mathematician who gave rules for zero and negative numbers (628 CE)
- Al-KhwarizmiMathematicianPersian scholar whose book on equations gave us the word algebra; 'algorithm' comes from his name
- Omar KhayyamMathematicianPersian poet and mathematician who studied cubic equations
- Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa)MathematicianBrought Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe; the Fibonacci sequence
- Zu ChongzhiMathematicianChinese mathematician who found pi to about 7 digits (5th century)
- Liu HuiMathematicianChinese mathematician who estimated pi with polygons (3rd century)
- MadhavaMathematicianIndian mathematician who found infinite series for sine, cosine and pi (14th century)
- RamanujanMathematicianIndian mathematician known for remarkable formulas and number theory (1887-1920)
- René DescartesMathematicianCreated the coordinate plane linking algebra and geometry
- Pierre de FermatMathematicianNumber theory; Fermat's Last Theorem
- Blaise PascalMathematicianPascal's triangle and early probability
- Isaac NewtonMathematicianCo-inventor of calculus; laws of motion and gravity
- Gottfried LeibnizMathematicianCo-inventor of calculus; the integral and derivative notation we use
- Leonhard EulerMathematicianProlific Swiss mathematician; e, i, graph theory, Euler's formula
- Carl Friedrich GaussMathematicianGerman 'prince of mathematicians'; number theory, the bell curve, 1 to 100 sum story
- Joseph-Louis LagrangeMathematicianMechanics and number theory
- Pierre-Simon LaplaceMathematicianProbability and celestial mechanics
- Sophie GermainMathematicianFrench mathematician who worked on primes and elasticity
- Évariste GaloisMathematicianShowed which polynomial equations can be solved by formulas; founded group theory
- Niels Henrik AbelMathematicianNorwegian mathematician; proved the quintic has no general formula
- Bernhard RiemannMathematicianGerman mathematician; Riemann hypothesis, geometry of curved spaces
- Georg CantorMathematicianFounded set theory; showed that some infinities are bigger than others
- David HilbertMathematicianGerman mathematician who posed 23 famous problems in 1900
- Henri PoincaréMathematicianFrench mathematician; topology and chaos
- Emmy NoetherMathematicianGerman mathematician; abstract algebra and Noether's theorem
- Ada LovelaceMathematicianWrote the first published computer program (1843) for Babbage's engine
- Charles BabbageMathematicianDesigned early mechanical computers
- Florence NightingaleMathematicianNurse who used statistical charts to improve health care
- Mary SomervilleMathematicianScottish science writer and mathematician (1780-1872)
- Maria Gaetana AgnesiMathematicianItalian mathematician who wrote an early calculus textbook
- Kurt GödelMathematicianShowed math systems have true statements that cannot be proven (1931)
- Alan TuringMathematicianFounded theoretical computer science; broke wartime codes
- John von NeumannMathematicianGame theory and computer architecture
- Claude ShannonMathematicianFounded information theory
- Katherine JohnsonMathematicianNASA mathematician who calculated orbits and flight paths
- Dorothy VaughanMathematicianNASA mathematician and computer programmer
- Mary JacksonMathematicianNASA mathematician and the agency's first Black female engineer
- Grace HopperMathematicianComputer scientist and Navy admiral; early programming languages
- Maryam MirzakhaniMathematicianIranian mathematician; first woman to win the Fields Medal (2014)
- Terence TaoMathematicianAustralian-American mathematician; Fields Medal in 2006
- Andrew WilesMathematicianProved Fermat's Last Theorem (1994-95)
- Paul ErdősMathematicianHungarian mathematician who wrote with hundreds of collaborators
- Benoit MandelbrotMathematicianFractal geometry
- John NapierMathematicianScottish inventor of logarithms (1614)
- Robert RecordeMathematicianIntroduced the equals sign in 1557
- William OughtredMathematicianInvented the slide rule; used × for multiplication
- George BooleMathematicianBoolean algebra, the basis of computer logic
- Carl JacobiMathematicianGerman mathematician; elliptic functions and determinants
- Augustin-Louis CauchyMathematicianFrench mathematician who made calculus rigorous
- Johannes KeplerMathematicianAstronomer and mathematician; laws of planetary motion
- Galileo GalileiMathematicianItalian scientist who used math to describe motion
- Thomas BayesMathematicianEnglish statistician; Bayes' theorem
- Karl PearsonMathematicianFounded modern statistics; the correlation coefficient
- G. H. HardyMathematicianEnglish mathematician who recognized Ramanujan's genius
- HipparchusMathematicianGreek astronomer who began trigonometry tables
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