Euclid of Megara & Alexandria (ca 322-275 BC) Greece/Egypt

Euclid may have been a student of Aristotle. He founded the school of mathem
atics at the great university of Alexandria. He was the first to prove that ther
e are infinitely many prime numbers; he proved the unique factorization theorem
("Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic"); and devised Euclid's algorithm for comput
ing gcd. He introduced the Mersenne primes and observed that (M2+M)/2 is always
perfect (in the sense of Pythagoras) if M is Mersenne. (The converse, that any e
ven perfect number has such a corresponding Mersenne prime, was tackled by Alhaz
en and proven by Euler.) He proved that there are only five "Platonic solids," a
s well as theorems of geometry far too numerous to summarize; among many with sp
ecial historical interest is the proof that rigid-compass constructions can be i
mplemented with collapsing-compass constructions. Among several books attributed
to Euclid are The Division of the Scale (a mathematical discussion of music), T
he Optics, The Cartoptrics (a treatise on the theory of mirrors), a book on sphe
rical geometry, a book on logic fallacies, and his comprehensive math textbook T
he Elements. Several of his masterpieces have been lost, including works on coni
c sections and other advanced geometric topics. Apparently Desargues' Homology T
heorem (a pair of triangles is coaxial if and only if it is copolar) was proved
in one of these lost works; this is the fundamental theorem which initiated the
study of projective geometry. Euclid ranks #14 on Michael Hart's famous list of
the Most Influential Persons in History. The Elements introduced the notions of
axiom and theorem; was used as a textbook for 2000 years; and in fact is still t
he basis for high school geometry, making Euclid the leading mathematics teacher
of all time. Some think his best inspiration was recognizing that the Parallel
Postulate must be an axiom rather than a theorem.
There are many famous quotations about Euclid and his books. Abraham Lincoln
abandoned his law studies when he didn't know what "demonstrate" meant and "wen
t home to my father's house [to read Euclid], and stayed there till I could give
any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demo
nstrate means, and went back to my law studies."

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Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (1887-1920) India

Like Abel, Ramanujan was a self-taught prodigy who lived in a country distan
t from his mathematical peers, and suffered from poverty: childhood dysentery an
d vitamin deficiencies probably led to his early death. Yet he produced 4000 the
orems or conjectures in number theory, algebra, and combinatorics. He might be a
lmost unknown today, except that his letter caught the eye of Godfrey Hardy, who
saw remarkable, almost inexplicable formulae which "must be true, because if th
ey were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them." Ramanuj
an's specialties included infinite series, elliptic functions, continued fractio
ns, partition enumeration, definite integrals, modular equations, gamma function
s, "mock theta" functions, hypergeometric series, and "highly composite" numbers
. Much of his best work was done in collaboration with Hardy, for example a proo
f that almost all numbers n have about log log n prime factors (a result which i
nspired probabilistic number theory). Much of his methodology, including unusual
ideas about divergent series, was his own invention. (As a young man he made th
e absurd claim that 1+2+3+4+... = -1/12. Later it was noticed that this claim tr
anslates to a true statement about the Riemann zeta function, with which Ramanuj
an was unfamiliar.) Ramanujan's innate ability for algebraic manipulations equal
ed or surpassed that of Euler and Jacobi.
Ramanujan's most famous work was with the partition enumeration function p()
, Hardy guessing that some of these discoveries would have been delayed at least
a century without Ramanujan. Together, Hardy and Ramanujan developed an analyti
c approximation to p(). (Rademacher and Selberg later discovered an exact expres
sion to replace the Hardy-Ramanujan formula; when Ramanujan's notebooks were stu
died it was found he had anticipated their technique, but had deferred to his fr
iend and mentor.)
Many of Ramanujan's other results would also probably never have been discov
ered without him, and are so inspirational that there is a periodical dedicated
to them. The theories of strings and crystals have benefited from Ramanujan's wo
rk. (Today some professors achieve fame just by finding a new proof for one of R
amanujan's many results.) Unlike Abel, who insisted on rigorous proofs, Ramanuja
n often omitted proofs. (Ramanujan may have had unrecorded proofs, poverty leadi
ng him to use chalk and erasable slate rather than paper.) Unlike Abel, much of
whose work depended on the complex numbers, most of Ramanujan's work focused on
real numbers. Despite these limitations, Ramanujan is considered one of the grea
test geniuses ever.
Because of its fast convergence, an odd-looking formula of Ramanujan is ofte
n used to calculate p:
992 / p = v8 ?k=0,8 (4k! (1103+26390 k) / (k!4 3964k))

Brahmagupta `Bhillamalacarya' (589-668) Rajasthan (India)

No one person gets unique credit for the invention of the decimal system but
Brahmagupta's textbook Brahmasphutasiddhanta was very influential, and is somet
imes considered the first textbook "to treat zero as a number in its own right."
It also treated negative numbers. (Others claim these were first seen 800 years
earlier in Chang Tshang's Chinese text and were implicit in what survives of ea
rlier Hindu works, but Brahmagupta's text discussed them lucidly.)
Brahmagupta Bhillamalacarya (`The Teacher from Bhillamala') made great advan
ces in arithmetic, algebra, numeric analysis, and geometry. Several theorems bea
r his name, including the formula for the area of a cyclic quadrilateral:
16 A2 = (a+b+c-d)(a+b-c+d)(a-b+c+d)(-a+b+c+d)
Another famous Brahmagupta theorem dealing with such quadrilaterals can be p
hrased "In a circle, if the chords AB and CD are perpendicular and intersect at
E, then the line from E which bisects AC will be perpendicular to BD." Proving B
rahmagupta's theorems are good challenges even today.
 In addition to his famous writings on practical mathematics and his ingeniou
s theorems of geometry, Brahmagupta solved the general quadratic equation, and w
orked on Diophantine and Pell's equations. He proved the Brahmagupta-Fibonacci I
dentity (the set of sums of two squares is closed under multiplication). He appl
ied mathematics to astronomy, predicting eclipses, etc.

Diophantus of Alexandria (ca 250) Greece, Egypt

Diophantus was one of the most influential mathematicians of antiquity; he w
rote several books on arithmetic and algebra, and explored number theory further
than anyone earlier. (He probably studied Babylonian algebra, which was more ad
vanced than anything in ancient Greece.) He advanced a rudimentary arithmetic an
d algebraic notation, allowed rational-number solutions to his problems rather t
han just integers, and was aware of results like the Brahmagupta-Fibonacci Ident
ity; for these reasons he is often called the "Father of Algebra." His work, how
ever, may seem quite limited to a modern eye: his methods were not generalized,
he knew nothing of negative numbers, and, though he often dealt with quadratic e
quations, never seems to have commented on their second solution. His notation,
clumsy as it was, was used for many centuries. (The shorthand x3 for "x cubed" w
as not invented until Déscartes.)
Very little is known about Diophantus. Many of his works have been lost, inc
luding proofs for lemmas cited in the surviving work, some of which are so diffi
cult it would almost stagger the imagination to believe Diophantes really had pr
oofs! Among these are Fermat's conjecture (Lagrange's theorem) that every intege
r is the sum of four squares, and the following: "Given any positive rationals a
, b with a>b, there exist positive rationals c, d such that a3-b3 = c3+d3." (Thi
s latter "lemma" was investigated by Vieta and Fermat and finally solved, with s
ome difficulty, in the 19th century. It seems unlikely that Diophantes actually
had proofs for such "lemmas.")

Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) Greece/Sicily

Archimedes is universally acknowledged to be the greatest of ancient mathema
ticians. He studied at Euclid's school (probably after Euclid's death), but his
work far surpassed the works of Euclid. His achievements are particularly impres
sive given the lack of good mathematical notation in his day. His proofs are not
ed not only for brilliance but for their "awesome" clarity. Archimedes made adva
nces in number theory, algebra, and analysis, but is most renowned for his many
theorems of plane and solid geometry. He was first to prove Heron's formula for
the area of a triangle. His excellent approximation to v3 indicates that he'd pa
rtially anticipated the method of continued fractions. He found a method to tris
ect an arbitrary angle (using a markable straightedge the construction is imposs
ible using strictly Platonic rules). Although it doesn't survive in his writings
, Pappus reports that he discovered the Archimedean solids. One of his most rema
rkable and famous geometric results was determining the area of a parabolic sect
ion, for which he offered two independent proofs, one using his Principle of the
Lever, the other using a geometric series.
Archimedes' methods anticipated both the integral and differential calculus.
He was similar to Newton in that he used his (non-rigorous) calculus to discove
r results, but then devised rigorous geometric proofs for publication. His origi
nal achievements in physics include the principles of leverage, the first law of
hydrostatics, and inventions like the compound pulley, the hydraulic screw, and
war machines. His books include Floating Bodies, Spirals, The Sand Reckoner, Me
asurement of the Circle, and Sphere and Cylinder. He developed the Stomachion pu
zzle (and solved a difficult enumeration problem involving it). Archimedes prove
d that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a circumscribing cylin
der. He requested that a representation of such a sphere and cylinder be inscrib
ed on his tomb.
That Archimedes shared the attitude of later mathematicians like Hardy and B
rouwer is suggested by Plutarch's comment that Archimedes regarded applied mathe
matics "as ignoble and sordid ... and did not deign to [write about his mechanic
al inventions; instead] he placed his whole ambition in those speculations the b
eauty and subtlety of which are untainted by any admixture of the common needs o
f life."
Recently, modern technology has led to the discovery of new writings by Arch
imedes, hitherto hidden on a palimpsest, including a note that implies an unders
tanding of the distinction between countable and uncountable infinities (a disti
nction which wasn't resolved until Georg Cantor, who lived 2300 years after the
time of Archimedes). Although Archimedes was certainly one of the greatest geniu
ses ever, many listmakers would rank him lower than I have: He was simply too fa
r ahead of his time to have great historical significance.
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. For these reasons, p is often called Archime
des' constant. His approximation 223/71 < p < 22/7 was the best of his day, thou
gh Apollonius soon surpassed it.