History of Mathematics

English mathematician and philosopher, 1815–64: invented, and gave his name to, a form of algebra based on logical functions rather than numerical		George Boole
English mathematician (1561–1631) who introduced common logarithms		Henry Briggs
French mathematician and philosopher who invented analytical geometry; coined the term "imaginary number", meaning it to be derogatory		Rene Descartes
The ancient Greek "Father of Geometry": Elements (published around 300 BC) has been called "the most successful and influential textbook ever written"		Euclid
Swiss mathematician, 1707–83: made important and influential discoveries in infinitesimal calculus, graph theory, topology and analytic number theory		Leonhard Euler
French mathematician, 1607–65: recognised (along with Pascal) as one of the founders of probability theory, but most famous for his so–called 'last theorem' – for which he claimed to have a proof, but which was not demonstrably proved until 1994 – by Andrew Wiles		Pierre de Fermat
Canadian mathematician, 1863–1932: gave his name to the medal that he established in 1936, awarded every four years since 1950 to between two and four mathematicians under the age of 40 for outstanding achievement in mathematics		John Charles Fields
Austrian–born maths professor at Warwick University, one of four recipients of the Fields Medal in 2014		Martin Hairer
German polymath (1676–1716): developed a theory of calculus independently from Sir Isaac Newton; according to Wikipedia, mathematical works have always favored his notation to Newton's		Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Inventor of logarithms (1614) and the decimal point		John Napier
Generalised the binomial theorem (1676); shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus		Isaac Newton
French mathematician who invented a calculating machine in 1642, invented the roulette wheel in a search for perpetual motion, contributed to the development of calculus and the theory of probability; first described a tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, commonly named after him but sometimes known as the "arithmetical triangle"		Blaise Pascal
French mathematician (1781–1840) who gave his name to a probability distribution		Siméon–Denis Poisson
English logician (1834–1923): gave his name to a type of diagram that shows the relationships between a collection of sets, intersecting areas denoting elements that are common to the sets represented		John Venn
English mathematician who proved Fermat's Last Theorem, 1998		Andrew Wiles

You are here:

History of Mathematics