Biography of five great mathematicians contributions


Al Khawarizmi

Al Khawarizmi was a Persian mathematician who worked in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and geography. He has been named as the father of algebra. He was responsible for spreading the Hindu-Arabic Numeral system to the Middle East and Europe.

Born CE
DiedAfter
Areas workedArithmetic, algebra, astronomy

Archimedes

Archimedes was a Greek mathematician and astronomer from the city of Syracuse. He is considered as one of the greatest mathematician of all the time. Archimedes worked on many geometrical theorems like the area of circle, surface area and volume of sphere, area of an ellipse, area under a parabola and the area of spiral. His very famous Archimedes Principle has been universally accepted.

Born BC
Died BC
Birth PlaceSyracuse, Italy
Famous forArchimedes Principle

Aryabhata

Aryabhata was an Indian mathematician and astronomer in Gupta era. He worked on topics such as finding of square and cube roots, mensuration, arithmetic progression, quadratic equations, linear and indeterminate equations. He calculated the value of π upto 4 decimal places.

Born CE
Died CE
Birth PlacePataliputra, Gupta Empire

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician in the 17th century. He worked on Probability and conic sections when he was teenager only. Later he introduced a tabular representation of binomial coefficients which is now known as pascal’s triangle.

Born19 June
Died19 August
Birth PlaceParis, France
Areas workedProbability, Conic sections
Famous forPascal triangle

Carl Freidrich Gauss

Carl Freidrich Gauss was a German mathematician and considered as the most influential mathematicians of the history. He started solving many problems of maths since his early childhood. Many terms in algebra, geometry, number theory and physics are after his name.

Born30 April
Died23 February
Birth PlaceBrunswick, Germany

Euclid

Euclid was of Greek origin and is also known as father of geometry. Euclid’s birthdate is unknown and BCE – BCE is an estimated time period of his life. He is one of the most influential mathematician in history of mathematics due to his written work on fundamentals of geometry in Elements.

Born BCE
Died BCE
Birth PlaceGreece
Areas workedGeometry
Famous forElements

Fancios Vitea

Fancios Vitea was a French mathematician who worked on algebra who first created symbolic algebra. He was a lawyer by trade though.

Born
Died23 February
Birth PlaceFrance
Famous forViète’s formula

George Rheticus

George Rheticus was born in Austria and is known for his trigonometric tables.

Born16 February
Died4 December
Birth PlaceAustria
Areas workedTrigonometry

Heron or Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexendria is also known as Heron of Alexendria and was Greek mathematician and worked in the field of physics also. He worked most of his life in his native city Alexendria. He is remembered for his known Heron’s formula to find the area of a triangle from length of its sides.

Born10 AD
Died70 AD
Birth PlaceAlexendria, Egypt
Areas workedMathematics, Physics
Famous forHeron’s Formula

Pierre De Fermat

Pierre De Fermat was a French mathematician who researched into the number theory and has played a significant role in early developments of infinitesimal calculus. He is known for his Fermat’s last theorem in number theory.

Born
Died12 January,
Birth PlaceFrance
Areas workedNumber Theory
Famous forFermat’s last theorem

Pierre Simon Laplace

Pierre Simon Laplace was a French mathematician and a polymath who worked in the fields of mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy and philosophy. He formulated Laplace’s equation and have been famous for his Laplace transform. He is honored as the greatest scientist of all time.

Born23 March
Died5 March
Birth PlaceFrance
Famous forLaplace transform

Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and known abouts his life are ambiguous but as per little knowledge to known his birth place is Samos. He is well remembered for his historical discovery in mathematics and is famous for Pythagoras Theorem.

Born BC
Died BC
Birth PlaceGreece
Areas workedMathematics
Famous forPythagoras Theorem

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes was a French mathematician, a philosopher and scientist. He introduced Cartesian geometry or Coordinate geometry which is a widely used branch in mathematics.

Born31 March
Died11 February
Birth PlaceFrance
Areas workedGeometry and Algebra

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who contributed to number theory, infinite series and continued fractions in his short span of life only. He was the youngest to receive Fellows of the Royal Society and elected as Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Born22 December
Died26 April
Birth PlaceIndia

Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and is known as Father of Science. He is much famous for his theorems that the diameter of a circle subtends a right angle at any point on the circle and the well known Basic Proportionality Theorem.

Born BC
Died BC
Birth PlaceGreece
Areas workedGeometry
Famous forThales Theorem