©2000, Society For Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Index
Beltrami, Eugenio
Bernoulli, Daniel
Bessel, Friedrich William
Birkhoff, Garrett
Cantor, Georg
Cauchy, Augustin-Louis
Cayley, Arthur
Chebyshev, Pafnuty Lvovich
Cholesky, Andre-Louis
Courant, Richard
Dirichlet, Johann Peter
Euler, Leonhard
Fischer, Ernst
Fourier, Jean-Baptiste
Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg
Gauss, Johann Carl Friedrich
Givens, J. Wallace
Grassmann, Hermann
Hadamard, Jacques
Hamilton, William Rowan
Hermite, Charles
Hilbert, David
Hlder, Otto Ludwig
Hooke, Robert J.
Householder, Alston S.
Jacobi, Karl Gustav
Jordan, M. E. C.
Kant, Immanuel
Kronecker, Leopold
Krylov, A. N.
Kummer, Ernst Eduard
Lagrange, Joseph Louis
Lanczos, Cornelius
Laplace, Pierre-Simon
Lebesgue, Henri
Legendre, Adrien-Marie
Leibniz, G. W. von
Leontief, Wassily
Leverrier, U. J. J.
Markov, Andrei
Minkowski, Hermann
Mises, Richard von
Neumann, John Louis von

Ohm, Georg
Peano, Giuseppe
Penrose, Roger
Perron, Oskar
Piazzi, Giuseppe
Poisson, Simon Denis
Schrdinger, Erwin
Schur, Issai
Schwarz, Herman Amandus
Seki Kowa, Takakazu
Sylvester, James J.
Taussky-Todd, Olga
Todd, John
Toeplitz, Otto
Tukey, John Wilder
Weierstrass, K. T. W.
Weyl, Hermann
Wielandt, Helmut
Young, David M.
2000, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
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Eugenio Beltrami
Nikolai Ivanovich
Lobachevsky
1792 - 1856
Jnos Bolyai
1802 - 1860
Eugenio Beltrami was born November 16, 1835 in Cremona, Lombardy,

Austrian Empire (now Italy). He studied at Pavia from 1853 to 1856 and then in
Milan before being appointed to the University of Bologna in 1862 as a visiting
professor of algebra and analytic geometry. In 1866 he was appointed professor
of rational mechanics. He also worked in universities in Pisa, Rome, and Pavia.
Beltrami is best known for pioneering modern non-Euclidean geometry. His
work ranged over almost the whole field of pure and applied mathematics, but he
especially focused on theories of surfaces and space of constant curvature. He
published his most famous paper, Essay on an Interpretation of Non-Euclidean
Geometry, in 1868. It gives a concrete realization of the non-Euclidean geometry
of Nikolai Lobachevsky and Jnos Bolyai and connects it with George Riemann's
geometry. The concrete realization uses the surface generated by the revolution
of the tractrix about its asymptote.
Beltrami developed what has become known as the Klein-Beltrami disc model of
hyperbolic geometry. The geodiscs are chords in the disc and the isometries are
projective isometries of the plane that map the unit to the disc itself.
Beltrami also worked in optics, thermodynamics, elasticity, and magnetism. His
contributions to these topics appeared posthumously in the four-volume work,
Opere Matematiche (1902-1920).
He died June 4, 1899 in Rome, Italy.
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Daniel Bernoulli
Jacob Bernoulli
1654-1705
Daniel Bernoulli was born into a family that included several prestigious mathematicians. His father, Johann, and his uncle,
Jacob, were both involved in the early development of calculus, and his two brothers each made their mark in the mathematical
community.
Johann's father wanted his son to be a merchant, and Johann wanted the same for his middle son: he even tried to force Daniel
into a business career. However, Daniel proved as stubborn as Johann himself, and he did end up in academia. He decided to
study medicine, but he still found a way to work on the subject he loved. Daniel used his father's theories on energy to develop
his doctoral dissertation on the mechanics of breathing.
Johann Bernoulli
1667-1748
There were more negative feelings between Daniel and his father than just Daniel's choice of career. Daniel published his
masterpiece, Hydrodynamica, in 1738. Johann studied Daniel's book and used his son's developments to create his own work,
which he called Hydraulica. In an attempt to take credit for his son's work, he listed the publication date of Hydraulica as 1732,
although its actual date is closer to 1739.
Nicolaus Bernoulli
1695-1726
Johann Bernoulli III

1744-1807
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Friedich William Bessel
Stamp of Bessel issued by

Germany on June 19,
1984, his 200th birthday.
Being a less-than-stellar student, Bessel left school and was apprenticed to a
Bremen merchant house. It was during the course of his bookkeeping work
that he acquired an interest in mathematics. The firm of Kulenkamp dealt in
the import/export business, and the young Friedrich developed an interest in
geography and navigation from working with them. These interests led him
to compute the orbit of Halley's Comet from observations made by T.
Harriott in 1607.
About 300
mathematicians have
lunar craters named after
them. Bessel is one of
them.
In 1809 he was appointed director of the Knigsberg Observatory and

professor of astronomy. To hold this post he needed the title of doctor. It
was on the recommendation of Gauss that a doctorate was awarded to him.
During his 30 years at the observatory he completed a catalog of very
accurate positions for 75,000 stars.
Bessel became the outstanding astronomer of the 19th century. His major
contribution to applied mathematics was his systematization of the functions
that now bear his name.
Although he had a happy marriage, his two sons died at an early age. He
also had three daughters. His health began to deteriorate in 1840, and he
died two years later from cancer.
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Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
'
Issued April 14, 1977 by
Germany to
commemorate the 200th
anniversary of Gauss' Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on April 30, 1777 in Braunsweig, Germany. His father worked as a gardener, canal
birth.
tender, and bricklayer. He was harsh with his sons and tried to thwart every opportunity for advancement that came their way.
On the other hand, his mother, Dorothea Benz, expected great things of Carl and used her own sharp intellect and humorous
good sense to help him realize his dreams. She lived with her son for the last 22 years of her life, and he would allow no one
other than himself to wait on her after she went blind. She lived to be 97.
It would be difficult to find a child more precocious than Gauss. He began showing signs of his genius before he was three. He
amazed his early teachers when they learned he could sum the integers from 1 to 100 instantly by seeing that the sum was 50
pairs of numbers, each pair adding up to 101. He quickly went beyond the scope of his teacher. It was the schoolmaster's
assistant, Johann Martin Bartels, who developed a friendship with Gauss and led him into the mysteries of algebra. When Gauss
was 14, Bartels introduced him to Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand, the Duke of Brunswick. The Duke was so taken with this shy,
awkward boy that he agreed to pay for his education. At the age of 18, Gauss entered the University of Gttingen and could not
decide whether to pursue his love of languages or mathematics. His discovery of the polygon of 17 sides was the impetus that
pushed him into mathematics.
Issued February 2, 1955 to
The second great stage in his career was the rediscovery of Ceres, which led to Gauss' being proclaimed as the greatest
commemorate the
centenary of Gauss' death. mathematician in the world by Pierre-Simon Laplace. His work on calculating the orbit of Ceres with accuracy led him to spend
the next twenty years of his life working on astronomical calculations. Although Gauss was heavily criticized for spending his
time on trivialities such as plotting a minor planet's orbit, he enjoyed the publicity and the many honors he received.
Gauss married in 1805 but his extreme happiness was brief. After only four years his wife died and left him with three small
children. He married again the following year and soon had two more sons and a daughter. It is written that Gauss got along
well with his daughters but had difficulty with his sons. The elder son, Joseph, had his father's gift for mental calculation and
was never a problem, but his other sons ran away to the United States to farm.
Issued by the German In 1806, Gauss' benefactor, Duke Ferdinand, died, and it became necessary for Gauss to find a way to support his large family.
Democratic Republic on He accepted a position as director of the Gttingen Observatory. Although his position brought with it the privilege of teaching,
this was not his major interest and he often found his students tiresome.
April 19, 1977 to
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Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
commemorate the 200th Although Gauss' later years were full of honors, he was not as happy as one might suppose. He worried about dying, and a near
anniversary of Gauss' brush with death made him more conservative than usual. He was viewing a railroad under construction when his horses bolted,
birth.
throwing him from his carriage. Although he was badly shocked, he was unharmed and lived to be 78.
Gauss depicted on
German currency.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Gauss is one of
them.
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Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace
Issued by France on
June 11, 1995 as part
of a series of Famous
Frenchmen. The
stamp was issued to
benefit the Red
Cross.
Pierre-Simon Laplace was born on March 23, 1749 in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France. By some accounts, he was the
son of poor peasant farmers. It appears, however, that his father was comfortably well off in the cider trade and that his mother
came from a fairly prosperous farming family. Laplace did not often speak of his roots. He may have been embarrassed that his
family aspired to little academic achievement.
Wealthy neighbors became impressed with the young Laplace and offered him an education at a Benedictine priory school as a
day pupil. He attended from age seven through sixteen. He intended to enter the Church and enrolled in theology at Caen
University. Under the instruction of two mathematics teachers, C. Gadbled and P. Le Canu, of whom little is known, he
discovered his own mathematical talents.
He soon left Caen without taking his degree and traveled to Paris. He used his wealthy contacts to request an audience with Jean
d'Alembert, who was not impressed and refused to see him. Laplace then wrote d'Alembert a wonderful letter on the general
principles of mechanics. In his reply inviting Laplace to call, d'Alembert wrote, "Sir, you see that I paid little enough attentions
to your recommendations; you don't need any. You have introduced yourself better. That is enough for me; your support is my
due." A few days later, Laplace was appointed professor of mathematics at the Military School of Paris, thanks to d'Alembert's
assistance. He threw himself into his life work--the detailed application of the Newtonian law of gravitation to the entire solar
system. Later, much of Laplace's work made much of d'Alembert's work obsolete, which strained their relationship.
Napolean Bonaparte
In 1784 he was appointed an examiner at the Royal Artillery Corps, and in 1785, he examined and passed the sixteen-year-old
1769-1821
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Laplace married Marie-Charlotte de Courty de Romanges, twenty years his junior. They had a son and a daughter. During the
1973 Reign of Terror Laplace moved his family out of Paris. Both Laplace and Lagrange escaped the guillotine only because
they were requisitioned to calculate trajectories for the artillery and to help in directing the manufacture of saltpeter for
gunpowder. After the Revolution, Laplace became a versatile politician, changing his party each time power was changed. He
seemed to secure a better job each time the government flopped and it cost him nothing to switch his political loyalties.
However, he did not abandon his moral courage when his true convictions were questioned. In an exchange with Napoleon
Bonaparte, who asked why Laplace had written a huge book on the system of the world (Celestial Mechanics) without ever once
mentioning the author of the universe, Laplace replied, "Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis." When Napoleon repeated this to
Lagrange, the latter replied, "Ah, but that is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things."
Jean-Baptiste Joseph As a mathematical astronomer Laplace has sometimes been called the Newton of France; as a mathematician he may be
Fourier
regarded as the founder of the modern phase of the theory of probability. He became a full member of the Academy of Sciences
1768-1830
in 1785 at the age of 36. Laplace enjoyed enormous influence after taking a leading role in the study of physics, becoming a
founding member of Societe de Arcueil in 1805. Other members included mathematicians Biot and Poisson. After eight years,
members began to support the work of other scientists and gradually Laplace's influence diminished. Laplace's corpuscular
theory was challenged by Fresnel's wave theory of light. His caloric theory of heat was at odds with the work of Petit and of
Fourier. Laplace never conceded that his theories were wrong, writing papers on these topics into his seventies.
Laplace died on March 5, 1827. His last words were, "What we know is not much; what we do not know is immense."
Simon Denis
Poisson
1781-1840
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Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace
There is a special
plaque in honor of
Laplace on the facade
of the Eiffel Tower.
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Joseph Louis Lagrange
Issued by France on
February 15, 1958, as part
of a series to honor French Joseph Louis Lagrange was born in Turin on January 25, 1736. He may have
scientists.
been the only one of Giuseppe Francesco Lodovico Lagrangia and Teresa
Grosso's eleven children to survive after birth. His father was the Treasurer
for the Office of Public Works and Fortifications in Turin, and his mother
was the only daughter of a doctor. Both parents were wealthy. Sadly, this
wealth was squandered by Lagrange's father on unsuccessful financial
speculation. With no wealth to inherit, Lagrange later claimed, "If I had been
rich, I probably would not have devoted myself to mathematics."
Edmond Halley
1656-1742
Lagrange's family had French connections on his father's side, and Lagrange
always leaned toward his French ancestry. He even used the French form of
his family name, despite being born an Italian. Lagrange's father had planned
for his son to be a lawyer, so he sent him to the College of Turin. Classical
Latin became Lagrange's favorite subject. He became interested in
mathematics upon reading Halley's work on the use of algebra in optics. In
mathematics, he was largely self-taught. He had no opportunity to work with
leading mathematicians in his youth.
There is some disagreement regarding the age Lagrange was when he was
appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Artillery School in Turin.
According to one account he was sixteen, but another claims he was actually
nineteen. Regardless, he was quite young---younger than most of the
students he taught.
Leonhard Euler
1707-1783
In 1756, Lagrange sent Euler his results on applying the calculus of

variations to mechanics. Euler was sufficiently impressed and sought a
greater position for Lagrange in Prussia. However, Lagrange turned the offer
down, preferring to devote his time to mathematics rather than prestigious
positions.
When Frederick II invited him to become a member of the Berlin Academy,
he again refused the offer, this time because he thought he could contribute
nothing more than could Euler, who was then Director of Mathematics of the
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Academy. Later, upon learning that Euler would be stepping down from this
position, Lagrange accepted a very generous offer from Frederick to join the
Academy. He succeeded Euler as Director of Mathematics at the young age
of 30. Many Academy members were not pleased to see such a young man
in this prestigious position. Since he disliked disputes, Lagrange kept to
himself. Soon most members warmed to him.
Shortly after his arrival in Berlin, Lagrange married his cousin, Vittoria
Conti. It was a happy marriage, but they produced no children. Lagrange
nursed his wife when she became ill and was heartbroken when she died. He
himself suffered from poor health, due mostly to overwork and not taking
There is a special plaque
care of himself. After Frederick II died, his position at the Academy became
in honor of Lagrange on
unpleasant. He entertained offers to return to Italy but instead chose to
the facade of the Eiffel
became a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, since the offer
Tower.
included a clause that Lagrange did not have to teach. This appealed to
Lagrange since he could devote more time to his mathematics.
His greatest work, Mecanique analytique, which he had written in Berlin,
was published in 1788 soon after he moved to Paris. It summarized all the
work done in the field of mechanics since the time of Newton and is notable
for its use of the theory of differential equations.
Lagrange appeared to have no fear for his own life, but was deeply dismayed
by the cruelties he witnessed during the Revolution. This dismay left him
with little faith in human nature and common sense. His depression was
About 300
lasting, yet he continued to work. His most important contribution to
mathematicians have
mathematics during this period was his leading role in perfecting the metric
system of weights and measures.
them. Lagrange is one of
them.
Still lonely and despondent despite all of his interesting work, Lagrange
attracted the attention of a young woman forty years his junior. She was
touched by his unhappiness and insisted upon marrying him. She was the
daughter of his astronomer friend Lemonnier. They married when Lagrange
was 56, and the union was ideal for both. His wife made it her life to draw
her husband out and reawaken his desire to live. She succeeded, and he was
so taken with her that he gladly went out of his way to please her. He even
accompanied her to balls. He still desired no children, and they produced
none. Of all his successes, the one he prized most highly was "having found
so tender and devoted a companion as his young wife."
Before his death at the age of 76, he wished he had had a wife less good, less
eager to revive his strength, one who would let him end gently. He knew his
death would devastate her, yet he was very, very ill and rather looking
forward to death. He died early in the morning on April 10, 1813.
Leonhard Euler
Issued by the Soviet

Union on April 17, 1957
to commemorate the
250th anniversary of
Euler's birth.
Leonhard Euler was born on April 15, 1707 in Basel, Switzerland to Paul
Euler and Marguerite Brucker. His father, a former theology student at the
University of Basel, counted Jacob and Johann Bernoulli as his friends. Paul
Euler had some mathematical training and was able to teach his son
elementary mathematics. The first school Euler attended was in Basel, but it
was rather poor. Euler learned no mathematics during his tenure at the
school, but he read mathematics texts on his own to continue his learning.
Issued by the German
Democratic Republic on
September 6, 1983 on the
200th anniversary of his
death.
Euler's father wanted his son to join him in the religious life and sent him to
the University of Basel to prepare for the ministry. Leonhard entered the
University in 1720, at the age of 14. He was to obtain a general education
before going on to more advanced studies. Leonhard was still interested in
mathematics, and he sought out and was tutored by Johann Bernoulli. Euler
completed his Master's degree in philosophy in 1723 and began studying
theology later that year. Euler's enthusiasm for mathematics far outweighed
his interest in theology, and with the help of Johann Bernoulli he eventually
persuaded his father to let him pursue mathematics.
Euler completed his studies at the University of Basel of 1726. His next task
was to find an academic position. One became available at the St. Petersburg
Academy of Science upon the death of Nicholaus Bernoulli, and it was
offered to Euler. Euler accepted the position and joined the Academy two
years after it had been founded by Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great.
Euler's original appointment was to the physiology division, but he was
Issued by the German transferred to the mathematical-physical division through the requests of
Democratic Republic on Daniel Bernoulli and Jakob Hermann.
June 7, 1957 as part of a Euler served as a medical lieutenant in the Russian navy from 1727 to 1730.
famous scientist series. During this time he lived with Daniel Bernoulli, who held the senior chair in
mathematics. Euler became a professor of physics at the academy in 1730.
This allowed him to become a full member of the Academy, so he was able
to give up his navy post. Bernoulli left St. Petersburg in 1733, and Euler was
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Leonhard Euler
appointed to the vacant senior chair. The higher salary allowed Euler to
marry, and on January 7, 1734 he wed Katharina Gsell, a painter's daughter.
They had 13 children, although only five survived past infancy.
Euler on a Swiss bank

note.
Euler suffered from a severe fever in 1735; he almost lost his life. He began
to have problems with his vision around this time. He lost sight in his right
eye shortly after this fever, and eventually a cataract dimmed the light in his
left eye as well.
Euler shared the Grand Prize of the Paris Academy in 1738 and 1740. These
awards strengthened his reputation and helped earn him a position in Berlin.
Initially Euler intended to remain in St. Petersburg, but political turmoil
eventually changed his mind. Euler accepted an improved offer from
Frederick the Great and went to join the new Academy of Science.
Euler spent 25 years in Berlin, and during this time he wrote approximately
380 articles along with books on the calculus of variations, planetary orbits,
artillery and ballistics, and shipbuilding and navigation. In 1759 Euler
About 300
assumed the leadership of the Berlin Academy, after the previous president
mathematicians have
(Maupertuis) died. He did not receive the title of "President," however,
because he was no longer on good terms with Frederick. Euler knew it was
them. Euler is one of
time to move on when Frederick offered the Presidency of the Academy to
them.
Jean d'Alembert in 1763.
Euler returned to St. Petersburg in 1766, greatly angering Frederick. Shortly
after his return, Euler became almost entirely blind after an illness. A fire in
1771 destroyed his home. A brave servant carried Euler through the flames,
saving his life. His mathematical manuscripts were also rescued. Despite his
handicap, he was able to continue his work on optics, algebra, and lunar
motion because of his remarkable memory. He received help from his sons,
Johann and Christoph, and two other Academy members: W. L. Krafft and
A. J. Lexell. Almost half of his total works were produced when he was
completely blind.
Euler was the most prolific mathematical writer of all time. He published
886 books and papers in his lifetime, on various subjects. He made
contributions to geometry, calculus, and number theory and introduced beta
and gamma functions and integrating factors for differential equations. He
integrated Leibniz's differential calculus and Newton's method of fluxions
into mathematical analysis. He studied continuum mechanics, lunar theory,
the three-body problem, elasticity, acoustics, the wave theory of light,
hydraulics, and music. He laid the foundation of analytical mechanics.
Euler died on September 18, 1783 after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He left
so much unpublished work that it took the St. Petersburg Academy almost
50 years after his death to finally publish it all.
Leonhard Euler
Simeon Dennis Poisson

in honor of Poisson on the
facade of the Eiffel Tower Poisson's father was a private soldier who was later given an administrative
position in his village of Pithviers. When the revolution broke out, he had
little time for his son and left him in the care of a nurse. It is recorded that
she often left him alone suspended by a small cord tied to a nail driven into
the wall. She was concerned that the animals running wild might attack him
otherwise. Poisson liked to tell his friends that his swinging back and forth
from this nail led to his later interest in studying the pendulum.
Poisson was educated by his father. When it was time for Poisson to decide
on a career, his uncle offered to teach the young Poisson the art of becoming
a doctor. Poisson's father readily agreed. Poisson began this first career by
About 300
mathematicians have learning to prick the veins of cabbage leaves with a lancet. Not finding this a
lunar craters named after very agreeable profession, he entered the cole Polytechnique at the age of
them. Poisson is one of 17. His abilities quickly caught the interests of two of his
teachers---Lagrange and Laplace, who became his life-long friends. At the
them.
age of 18, he wrote a paper on finite differences that so impressed Legendre
that it was published in the Recueil des savants trangers. Upon graduation
he stayed on as a lecturer. He wrote between 300 and 400 papers during his
career.
Toward the end of his career, he discovered what is now called the Poisson
distribution. It is believed that the first application of this distribution
showed that the variance in jury decision affected the inferences that could
be made about the probability of conviction in the French courts. It was later
used to describe the number of deaths in the Prussian army due to horse
kicks.
He had always intended to write a book that would cover all of his work in
mathematical physics, but he died before he could accomplish this.
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Simeon Dennis Poisson
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Adrien-Marie Legendre
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

1717-1783
This stamp was issued by
France on June 13, 1959
as part of a series
dedicated to famous
Adrien-Marie Legendre was born on September 18, 1752 in Paris, France.
Frenchmen.
Very little is known about his early life. We know that his family was very
wealthy and gave him a top quality education in mathematics and physics at
the College Mazarin in Paris, where he defended his thesis at the age of 18.
Legendre had no need for employment and concentrated on research while
living in Paris. From 1775 to 1780 he taught with Laplace at cole Militaire.
Jean d'Alembert had helped him secure this appointment. He won his first
prize after writing an essay on projectiles in response to a task offered by the
Berlin Academy. This brought him some fame and launched his research
career.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
1777-1855
He filled Laplace's vacancy at the Academy of Science in 1783. There he

studied the attraction of ellipsoids, developing the Legendre functions, which
are used to determine the attraction of an ellipsoid at any exterior point. He
also worked on celestial mechanics, number theory, and the theory of elliptic
functions.
He lost his wealth during the French Revolution, as well as his job at the
Academy. He then married and later praised his wife for helping him to put
his affairs in order and for providing him with the tranquility he needed to
continue his research and writings.
In 1794, Legendre published Elements de geometrie, which was the leading
elementary text on the topic for around 100 years. The Academy was
reopened and renamed (Institut National des Sciences et des Arts) in 1795.
In 1803 Napoleon reorganized the Institut to include a geometry section, the
section Legendre was appointed to.

in honor of Legendre on A dispute with Gauss over who discovered the least squares method left
the facade of the Eiffel Legendre bitter, and he fought for many years to have his priority of the
Tower.
work recognized. Gauss, while acknowledging that the least squares method
appeared first in Legendre's book, continued to claim priority for himself,
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Adrien-Marie Legendre
prompting Legendre to later write, "This excessive impudence is

unbelievable in a man who has sufficient personal merit not to have need of
appropriating the discoveries of others."
Legendre's attempt to prove the parallel postulate extended over 30 years.
All attempts failed due to his reliability on the Euclidean point of view.
Much of his work became obsolete upon publication due to the work of
Jacobi and Abel.
About 300
His unfortunate choice to refuse to vote for the government's candidate in
mathematicians have
1824 prompted the suspension of his pension. He died in poverty on January
10, 1833. He was 81.
them. Legendre is one of
them.
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Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Jacobi is one of
them.
Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was born on December 10, 1804 in Potsdam, Prussia, the second son
of a prosperous banker. Due to his family's wealth, he received a good education at the
University of Berlin, but his knowledge of mathematics was a result of self-study since the
university had no programs to offer the ambitious student.
After earning his degree, he lectured at the University of Berlin and soon became one of the
most inspiring math teachers of his time. His teaching talents soon secured him a position at the
University of Knigsberg. One year later, his research in the theory of numbers caught the
attention of Gauss, who was not an easy man to excite. The Ministry of Education promptly
promoted Jacobi over the heads of his colleagues to an assistant professorship. This was quite
admirable for a man of twenty-three.
Eight years after his father's death, Jaocbi's prosperity ended when the family fortune was lost
in 1840. He had to support his mother, wife, and seven children, and for the first time in his life
found employment necessary.
The loss of wealth apparently had no effect on his mathematics; he continued to work as
assiduously as ever. In 1842, Jacobi met William Hamilton during the British Association at
Manchester meeting. One of his greatest glories was to continue Hamilton's work in dynamics.
Soon after completing this task, he suffered a complete breakdown due to overwork. The
generous King of Prussia, Jacobi's benefactor, encouraged him to vacation for several months.
The king fully appreciated the honor that Jacobi's research conferred on the kingdom.
Jacobi, on the foolish advice of a physician, began to dabble in politics in an effort to benefit his
nervous system. It was a huge mistake. He ran for political office, became a laughingstock in
the process, and failed abysmally in the election. The king terminated his allowance, and Jacobi
was left penniless. A friend took in his wife and children while Jacobi retired to a dingy hotel
room to continue his research. Once his situation came to the attention of friends, they assisted
in procuring him a position at the University of Vienna, in addition to coaxing the king into
becoming his benefactor once again.
His great discovery in Abelian functions is by far his most original contribution to mathematics.
This discovery was to nineteenth century analysts what Columbus' discovery of America was to
fifteenth century geography.
Jacobi succumbed to small pox on February 18, 1851, in his 47th year.
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William Rowan Hamilton
Issued by Ireland on
November 15, 1943 to
commemorate the
William Rowan Hamilton is known as one of Ireland's greatest and most eloquent mathematicians. He was born on August 3,
discovery of quaternions 1805 in Dublin, Ireland, the youngest of three boys and one girl. His father was employed as a solicitor. From his father,
by Hamilton.
Hamilton inherited exuberant eloquence, religious zeal, and conviviality. His extraordinary intellectual brilliance was probably
inherited from his mother, Sarah Hutton, who came from a family well known for its intelligence.
His parents had little to do with his upbringing. At the age of three he was under the tutelage of his Uncle James, an expert
linguist. His mother died when he was twelve, his father two years later. By thirteen William was able to brag that he had
mastered one language for each year he had lived.
William Wordsworth
1770 -1850
He learned calculating skills from an American child genius, Zorah Colburn, who frankly exposed all of his tricks to William.
William, in turn, improved upon what he had been shown. At seventeen, he discovered an error in Laplace's Mechanique
celeste, and as a result of this, he came to the attention of John Brinkley, the Astronomer Royal of Ireland, who said: "This
young man, I do not say will be, but is, the first mathematician of his age." At eighteen, he enrolled in Trinity College, his first
formal schooling. One year later he fell madly in love with Catherine Disney. Since he was not in a position to marry, having
three years of study left, she instead married a clergyman fifteen years her senior. This was a decision they both regretted until
their deaths. Hamilton entered a deep depression and turned to writing poetry. This new interest later led to a meeting with
William Wordsworth, who gently but firmly informed him that his gift was in science, not poetry.
Hamilton accepted the post of Astronomer Royal at the Dunsink observatory. This was a poor choice since he soon lost interest
in astronomy and spent all his time on mathematics. Aside from Catherine, he seemed quite fickle with women. He finally
settled on Helen Maria Bayly for a wife when he was 28. Their bland marriage produced two sons and one daughter. Helen
became an invalid soon after they married, leaving the household to fall into disrepair. The Hamilton family lived in squalor
throughout the remainder of William's life.
Hamilton's discovery of quaternions in 1843 proceeded his succumbing to alcoholism. The disease became worse through the
years since brief interludes with Catherine left Hamilton to despair even further over losing the love of his life to another.
He died September 2, 1865 after a severe attack of gout, shortly after receiving the news that he had been elected the first
About 300
mathematicians have foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
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William Rowan Hamilton
them. Hamilton is one of

them.
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Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier

in honor of Fourier on the
facade of the Eiffel
Joseph Fourier was born the son of a tailor in Auxerre, France. He was the ninth of twelve children from his father's second
Tower.
wife. Fourier's parents died within one year of each other, leaving Joseph an orphan before his tenth birthday. With the influence
of caring neighbors, he was sent to the Benedictine-run cole Royale Militaire. It was here that young Joseph first demonstrated
his genius. At the age of twelve, Fourier wrote sermons for the church dignitaries of Paris that they passed off as their own.
Fourier was involved in local politics throughout his life. He joined Napoleon's army in 1798 and was a member of the Legion
of Culture that attempted to civilize Egypt. Fourier returned to France in 1801, two years after Napoleon abandoned his army in
Cairo. He was appointed the Prefect of the Department of Isre by Napoleon and traveled to Grenoble to undertake his new
duties.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Fourier is one of
them.
His responsibilities as Prefect were varied. The two tasks for which he is most remembered include draining the swamps of
Bourgoin and managing the construction of a highway from Turin to Grenoble. It was while he lived in Grenoble that Fourier
developed his work on the theory of heat. Fourier ended his career as Secretary of the Acadmie des Sciences.
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Garrett Birkoff
George David
Birkhoff
1884 - 1944
Garrett Birkhoff had a special introduction to mathematics through his father,

George David Birkhoff (1884-1944), a Harvard mathematician of enormous
international reputation. Although it is often hard to be recognized in one's own
right when born of a famous parent, Garrett made his way quickly in the world of
mathematics. By the time he was 29, his Lattice Theory was published in the
Colloquium Series of the American Mathematical Society. His popular
undergraduate textbook, A Survey of Modern Algebra, written with Saunders
Mac Lane, is still available today.
Birkhoff was pleased by the fact that he had no Ph.D. He was one of the first
Junior Fellows, an elite society of young scholars founded by the Harvard
president in the early 1930s as a meta-Ph.D. During the war, he worked for
Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Navy and specialized in shaped charges and
John von Neumann underwater ballistics. After the war he focused mostly on applied problems,
1903-1957
which raised many eyebrows. His research covered a wide area of pure and
applied mathematics including modern algebra, fluid mechanics, numerical
analysis, and nuclear reactor theory. He tied his work closely to that of John von
Neumann.
SIAM President
1967-1968
Many people remember him as a snappy dresser. He usually dressed in tweeds,

dark flannels, shined loafers, and the ever-present bow tie. He carried his notes in
a leather attach and often looked askance at colleagues who lectured without a
jacket.
Garrett Birkhoff served the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
(SIAM) as its president from 1967 to 1968 and gave the prestigious von
Neumann lecture in 1981. In the words of Werner Rheinboldt, a member of the
von Neumann lecture committee, this was "a long overdue tribute to a most
distinguished mathematician and firm friend of SIAM."
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John Louis von Neumann
Eugene Paul Wigner

1902-1995
John Louis von Neumann was born in Budapest on December 28, 1903. Although his birth name was Jnos, he was called
Jancsi as a child. He became Johnny when he went to the United States. His father, Max Neumann, worked as a banker and
despite his Jewish heritage raised his children with a mixture of Jewish and Christian traditions. Max Neumann purchased a title
in 1913 that permitted him to add "von" to his name, but it was his son who first added the article.
Von Neumann demonstrated his mathematical skills even as a child. When he was six years old, he could divide eight-digit
numbers in his head. He was also able to memorize pages of telephone numbers, a trick his parents demonstrated at parties. His
mathematical prowess was noticed at his first school, the Lutheran Gymnasium. He was given special tuition along with his
schoolmate, Eugene Wigner.
Theodore von Krmn

1881-1963
In 1921 von Neumann completed his education at the Lutheran Gymnasium, and he published his first paper (written jointly
with Fekete, his tutor at the University of Budapest) in 1922. Max Neumann was concerned that mathematics would not supply
his son with much money, so he encouraged Theodore von Krmn to speak to John and convince him to pursue a business
career. As a compromise, John agreed to study chemistry instead, despite earning entrance to the University of Budapest to
study mathematics.
Von Neumann entered the University of Berlin in 1921 and studied chemistry there until 1923. He then went to Zrich, where
he took the examinations given in mathematics at the University of Budapest. His results were outstanding, despite the fact that
he had not attended a single lecture. Von Neumann earned a degree in chemical engineering from the Technische Hochschule in
Zrich and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest, both in 1926. His mathematical thesis was on set
theory. The definition of ordinal numbers that he published when he was 20 is still in use today. From 1926 to 1929, von
Neumann lectured at Berlin. He lectured at Hamburg from 1929 to 1930. His Rockefeller fellowship allowed him to pursue
postdoctoral studies at the University of Gttingen; it was there that he studied under David Hilbert from 1926 to 1927.
David Hilbert
1862-1943
Oswald Veblen invited von Neumann to lecture on quantum theory in Princeton in 1929. Before he went to the United States,
von Neumann traveled to Budapest to marry Marietta Kovesi. The two went to Princeton University in 1930, where von
Neumann became a full professor in 1931. He was one of the original six mathematics professor at the newly founded Institute
for Advanced Study, a position he retained for the rest of his life.
Von Neumann's marriage produced a daughter, Marina, in 1936 but ended in divorce the following year. In 1938 von Neumann
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John Louis von Neumann
married Klra Dn, whom he met during visits to Europe. She was also from Budapest.
During and after World War II, von Neumann served as a consultant to the armed forces. He was a member of the Scientific
Advisory Committee at the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in 1940, a member of
the Navy Bureau of Ordnance from 1941 to 1955, and a consultant to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1943 to 1955.
He was also a member of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project in Washington, D.C. President Eisenhower appointed him
to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1955.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. von Neumann is
one of them.
Von Neumann built a solid framework for quantum mechanics. He also worked in game theory and was one of the pioneers of
computer science. His awards are too numerous to list but include two Presidential Awards, the Bcher Prize, the Medal for
Merit in 1947, and the Medal of Freedom in 1956. He also received the Albert Einstein Commemorative Award and the Enrico
Fermi Award in 1956.
John von Neumann died on February 8, 1957 from an incurable cancer.
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David Hilbert
Johann Peter Gustav

Lejeune Dirichlet
1805-1859
David Hilbert was born January 23, 1862 in Knigsberg, Prussia. It is believed that his inclination for mathematics came from
his mother. He attended the University of Knigsberg from 1880-1884 and received his Ph.D. in 1885.
Hilbert's first work was on invariant theory. In 1888, he proved his famous Basis Theorem. Hilbert's work in geometry had the
greatest influence in that area after Euclid.
Hilbert's famous 23 Paris problems continue to challenge mathematicians of today. These problems include the continuum
hypothesis, the well ordering of the reals, Goldbach's conjecture, the transcendence of powers of algebraic numbers, the
Riemann hypothesis, the extension of Dirichlet's principle, and many more. It was a major event in mathematics each time a
problem was solved. They were delivered in Hilbert's famous speech before the International Congress of Mathematicians at
Paris in 1900.
Karl Theodor Wilhelm

Weierstrass
1815-1897
Dirichlet's principle, which was used in boundary value problems, had been discredited by Weierstrass's criticism. Hilbert
salvaged Dirichlet's principle by proving it in 1904.
He died on February 14, 1943.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Hilbert is one of
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David Hilbert
them.
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Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
1789-1857
Peter Dirichlet was born in Dren, part of the old French Empire that is now
Germany. He taught at the University of Breslau in 1827. From 1828 to
1855, he taught at the University of Berlin. He then attained Gauss's chair at
Gttingen.
Dirichlet's most famous works are his papers on the conditions for the
convergence of trigonometric series and the use of the series to represent
arbitrary functions. Fourier had previously used these series to solve
differential equations. Earlier work by Poisson on the convergence of
About 300
Fourier series was shown to be nonrigorous by Cauchy. Dirichlet proved
mathematicians have Cauchy's work to be erroneous. Dirichlet is considered the founder of the
lunar craters named after theory of Fourier series for this work.
them. Dirichlet is one of
Dirichlet was extremely absentminded. He reportedly was so preoccupied
them.
that when his first child was born, he forgot to tell his in-laws. His
father-in-law, when he finally learned the news, complained that Dirichlet
could have at least written to them and said that "2 + 1 = 3."
Dirichlet died in 1859 at Gttingen.
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Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Issued by France on
November 10, 1989, to
celebrate Cauchy's 200th
birthday.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy was born in Paris on August 21, 1789. He was the oldest of two sons and four daughters. When Cauchy
was four year old, his father moved the family to his country home in Arcueil after the French Revolution in an effort to evade
the guillotine. There wasn't much food available during their stay in Arcueil, and as a result Cauchy was undernourished. He
remained sickly until he reached his early twenties.
Cauchy was educated at home until he was thirteen. He began to win academic prizes as soon as he entered school and even
won the national prize in humanities. By the age of 21 he received a degree in civil engineering; his first commission was to be a
military engineer for Napoleon at Cherbourg. Cauchy brought four books with him to Cherbourg: Laplace's Mcanique cleste,
Lagrange's Trait des fonctions analytiques, Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis, and a collection of Virgil's Latin works.
Religion was very important to Cauchy, and his staunch Catholic beliefs occasionally got in the way of his mathematics.
Twenty-one year-old William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) visited Cauchy and planned to discuss mathematics, but Cauchy spent the
in honor of Cauchy on the
time trying to persuade his young visitor to join the Catholic church.
facade of the Eiffel
Tower.
At the age of sixty-seven, Cauchy developed bronchial trouble. He went to the country to recuperate, but while there he
contracted a fever from which he never recovered. He died on May 23, 1857. He published an astounding 789 papers during his
career.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Cauchy is one of
them.
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Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass
Sofia Kovalevskaya
1850-1891
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass has been called the father of modern
analysis. He was born on October 31, 1815 to Wilhelm Weierstrass and
Theodora Forst in the district of Muenster, Germany. He was the oldest of
four children. His father was a tax inspector employed by the French.
The Weierstrass family were devout Catholics. Karl's mother died when he
was eleven, and his father remarried a year later. There is speculation that
Karl's mother felt restrained aversion toward her husband and was quite
disgusted with her marriage. Other possible causes of the discord in the
natural sociability of the children were their father's uncompromising
righteousness, domineering authority, and Prussian pigheadedness. He
exerted his control over his children even after they had become adults.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy None of the children ever married.
1789-1857
Weierstrass unknowingly rebelled by failing to earn the degree his father had
insisted upon. The elder Weierstrass sent Karl to the University of Bonn,
where he was to master law and finance. Bored, he spent most of his days
fencing. He reserved his evenings for drinking true German beer. During this
period he researched the work of Laplace and Jacobi for his own
gratification.
Upon returning home after four years without a degree, his father was
furious. Karl was looked upon as a failure. A family friend convinced his
father to send him away to earn a degree in secondary education, an
important stepping stone to his later mathematical eminence, but at the time
Karl seemed totally defeated.
Leopold Kronecker
1823-1891
Under the instruction of Christof Gudermann, Weierstrass finally blossomed

mathematically. He made the theory of power series---Gudermann's
inspiration---the center of all his work in analysis. During his probationary
year as a teacher at the Gymnasium in Muenster, Weierstrass wrote a
memoir on analytic functions. It was in this memoir that he arrived
independently at Cauchy's integral theorem---the so-called fundamental
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theorem of analysis. Weierstrass did not claim priority on this and many of
his other discoveries, but he used them as a foundation for his life's work on
Abelian functions.
One particular item of interest to note about Weierstrass is his aversion to
music. It is well known that many mathematicians have a natural affinity for
music, but Weierstrass could not tolerate music in any form. He attempted
music lessons at the urging of his sisters, but quickly lost interest. Concerts
bored him and he fell asleep during opera performances.
About 300
mathematicians have
Around 1850 Weierstrass began to suffer from severe dizzy spells. Frequent
attacks over the next twelve years made it difficult for him to work. He once
them. Weierstrass is one
fainted while lecturing and never again trusted himself to write on the
of them.
blackboard. He enlisted the aid of his students to write for him while he
dictated his formulas. These attacks may have been caused by anxiety; the
exact cause was never determined. His lectures attracted students from all
over the world and his classes were packed---sometimes with fifty students
in a room designed for thirty.
He enjoyed a professional rivalry with Kronecker, who taught along with

him at the University of Berlin. Their rivalry came to an uncomfortable head
in 1877 when Kronecker opposed the work of Cantor, causing a serious rift
between the two men. It was so serious that Weierstrass considered leaving
Berlin for Switzerland, although he did remain in Berlin. Despite their
occasional disagreements, Weierstrass and Kronecker did remain cordial to
each other.
Of the many students who benefited from Weierstrass' teaching, one in
particular stands out: Sofia Kovalevskaya. She had a gift for mathematics,
but she was refused entrance to the university, even at Weierstrass'
recommendation. He therefore taught her on his own time, meeting with her
every Sunday afternoon in his home. It was through his efforts that she
received an honorary doctorate from Gttingen and a post in Stockholm.
They corresponded for over twenty years. Upon learning of her premature
death, Weierstrass burned all of her letters.
Weierstrass deserves his title of "the father of modern analysis." He devised
tests for the convergence of series and contributed to the theory of periodic
functions, functions of real variables, elliptic functions, Abelian functions,
converging infinite products, and the calculus of variations. He also
advanced the theory of bilinear and quadratic forms.
During the last three years of his life, Weierstrass was confined to a
wheelchair, immobile and dependent. He died of pneumonia in 1897. He
was eighty-two.
Leopold Kronecker
Ernst Eduard Kummer

1810-1893
Leopold Kronecker, the son of prosperous Jewish parents, was born on December 7, 1823. His father owned a flourishing
mercantile business and had an unquenchable thirst for philosophy, which he passed on to his son. Leopold's brother, Hugo, was
born seventeen years later. His upbringing became the loving responsibility of Leopold, and Hugo later became a distinguished
physiologist and professor at Berne.
Leopold was a genius at friendships early on, forming lasting bonds with men who had risen in the world or were to rise and
would be helpful to him in either business or mathematics. He was uniformly brilliant at school in the classics, and his
mathematical talent appeared early under the expert guidance of Ernst Eduard Kummer (from whom he received special
instruction). He did not overly concentrate on mathematics, preferring a well-rounded education. In addition to his formal
studies, he took music lessons and became an accomplished pianist and vocalist. Music, he declared when he was an old man, is
Felix J. Mendelssohn the finest of all the fine arts, with the possible exception of mathematics, which he likened to poetry. His home in Berlin later
1809-1847
became a meeting place for musicians, among them Felix Mendelssohn.
He entered the University of Berlin in the spring of 1841 and was taught by Dirichlet, Jacobi, and Steiner. Dirichlet's influence
brought about Kronecker's talent in applying analysis to the theory of numbers. Jacobi gave him a taste for elliptic functions
which he was to cultivate with striking originality and brilliant success, chiefly in novel applications of magical beauty to the
theory of numbers. It appears that Steiner had no influence on him at all.
Kronecker was blessed with a rich uncle in the banking business who also controlled extensive farming enterprises. All of this
became Kronecker's inheritance upon his uncle's death. For the next eight years Kronecker managed these properties with great
thoroughness and financial success. To manage the land efficiently he even mastered the principles of agriculture.
Johann Peter Gustav

Lejeune Dirichlet
1805-1859
During his eight years in business, Kronecker produced no mathematics. He did dabble in it as a hobby so as not to stagnate
during this period. He married the daughter of his deceased uncle in 1848. They had six children and a very happy marriage. He
is the rare mathematician who could properly be called a businessman. He did so well for himself by the time he was thirty that
he could thereafter devote himself to mathematics in considerably greater comfort than most mathematicians can afford.
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Leopold Kronecker
The climax of Kronecker's career in mathematics was his prolonged mathematical war with Karl Wilhelm Theodor Weierstrass.
Physically they were opposites: Weierstrass a large imposing figure while Kronecker was quite short and compact. The former's
work was in geometry and analysis; the latter was a born algebraist. The two were well known to be gentlemanly, however, and
remained friends throughout their scientific battles.
Kronecker never recovered from his wife's death. A few months after she passed away, he died of a bronchial illness in Berlin
on December 29, 1891. He was sixty-nine.
Karl Gustav Jacob

Jacobi
1804-1851
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Ernst Eduard Kummer
Pierre de Fermat
1601-1665
Ernst Eduard Kummer was born on January 29, 1810 in Sorau, Brandenburg,
Prussia, which is now Germany. His father was a physician who died when
Eduard was only three, leaving his mother to raise Eduard and his older brother.
Eduard was sent to the University of Halle to study Protestant theology and
received mathematics teaching as part of his degree. This was supposed to
provide a firm foundation to the study of philosophy. His lecturer, H. F. Scherk,
was so inspirational that Kummer was soon studying mathematics as his main
subject.
Kummer was awarded a doctorate on the strength of one prize-winning essay. He
was appointed a teaching post at Liegnitz, a position he held for 10 years. He
taught mathematics and physics with great ability to inspire, as his two most
Leopold Kronecker famous students (Kronecker and Joachimsthal) would attest to. While teaching,
1823-1891
Kummer himself was undertaking his own researches and published a paper on
hypergeometric series (a continuation of Gauss's work), a copy of which he sent
to Jacobi. Soon he caught the attention of Dirichlet, who corresponded with
Kummer on mathematical topics. On Dirichlet's recommendation, Kummer was
elected to the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1939, although he was still a
schoolteacher. At this point Jacobi began actively seeking a university
professorship for Kummer.
William Rowen
Hamilton
1805-1865
In 1840, Kummer married a cousin of Dirichlet's wife. The marriage lasted only
eight years and ended with his wife's death in 1848. With the support of Jacobi
and Dirichlet, he secured a full professorship at the University of Breslau. He
quickly established himself as an outstanding teacher and began his research in
number theory.
Kummer was appointed to the chair left vacant by Dirichlet at the University of
Berlin in 1855. Kronecker was already established there, and Weierstrass was
soon appointed to Berlin. The three soon established the university as one of the
leading mathematical centers in the world.
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Ernst Eduard Kummer
In 1843 Kummer attempted to restore the uniqueness of factorization of integers

by introducing ideal numbers to restore efforts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
This important contribution allowed ring theory and abstract algebra to develop.
During his geometric period, he devoted himself to studying the same ray
systems as Hamilton, but he treated the problems algebraically. He also
discovered the fourth-order surface, now named after him, based on the singular
surface of the quadratic line equation.
He received numerous honors in his long career, chief among them membership
to the Paris Academy of Sciences and fellowship of the Royal Society of
London.
Karl Theodor
Wilhelm Weierstrass Kummer died on May 14, 1893 in Berlin, Germany.
1815-1897
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Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor
Leopold Kronecker
1823 - 1891
Georg Cantor was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He spent the first eleven years of his life there, before his father moved the
family to Germany. Both of his parents loved music and the arts and passed this love to their son; Georg was an excellent
violinist.
Although his father wanted him to become an engineer, Georg was determined to study mathematics. He began his studies at the
Eidgenossische Polytechnikum Zrich but transferred to the University of Berlin after his father died in 1863.
Cantor did marry and have six children, but his personal life was not entirely happy. He suffered bouts of depression; his first
documented attack occurred in May of 1884. At the time his peers felt his depression was brought on by resistance to his
mathematical theories, but this is no longer felt to be true. Today it is believed that his professional worries were increased
because of his illness but were not the cause of it.
William Shakespeare
1564 - 1616
The work that his colleagues resisted dealt with infinite sets. Cantor's ideas questioned the validity of modern mathematics,
which was what mathematicians like Kronecker were working on. The uproar over Cantor's controversial work kept him from
obtaining a position at the University of Berlin, which he longed for.
When in his depressed state, Cantor turned from mathematics and focused his energy on philosophy and literature. In particular,
he was convinced that Francis Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare's plays, and he published several pamphlets stating his
beliefs in 1896 and 1897.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Cantor is one of
them.
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Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor
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Arthur Cayley
Trinity College
Arthur Cayley's gift for advanced mathematics first became apparent when he was about fourteen years old. His mathematics
teacher encouraged his father to allow Arthur to pursue mathematics rather than join the family business as a merchant.
In 1842 Arthur graduated as Senior Wrangler from Trinity College. He won a Cambridge Fellowship and taught there for four
years, all the while contributing to the Cambridge Mathematical Journal. When the fellowship ended, Arthur turned to law in
order to make a living. Arthur worked as a lawyer for fourteen years while continuing to practice mathematics at night.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Cayley is one of
them.
In 1863 Arthur became the Sadlerian professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge. Although retiring from the law meant a
drastic reduction of his finances, Arthur was happy to devote all of his time to mathematics. He went on to publish more than
900 papers, and in 1881 he gave a course of lectures at Johns Hopkins University.
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Pafnuty Lvovish Chebyshev
Example of Chebyshev
Fractal
Chebyshev was interested in and had an impact on many different areas of

mathematics. Although he is mainly remembered for his work in number
theory, he also worked with prime numbers and integrals. He was interested
in mechanics.
He wrote on many topics including quadratic forms, probability theory,
orthogonal functions, construction of maps, and the calculation of geometric
volumes.
Andrei Andreyevich
Markov
1856-1922
He had appointments at the University of St. Petersburg and the Institut de

France and was a member of the Royal Society. One of his most famous
students was Andrei Andreyevich Markov.
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Andrei Adnreyevich Markov
Pafnuty Lvovich
Chebyshev
1821-1894
Andrei Markov was born on June 14, 1856 in Ryazan, Russia. He attended
school at St. Petersburg, where he had difficulty with all subjects except
mathematics. Markov attended the Petersburg University in 1874, where he
studied under Pafnuty Chebyshev. Upon completing his studies in 1878,
Markov received a gold medal from the university and was offered a
professorship.
In 1886, Markov was elected to be a member of the St. Petersburg Academy
of Science (founded by Chebyshev). By 1896 he was a full member. He
retired from the Petersburg University in 1905, although he continued to
teach.
About 300
mathematicians have
Markov focused on number theory early in his career, although he is best
remembered for his study of Markov chains. This work on Markov chains
them. Markov is one of
led to the development of stochastic processes.
them.
Poetry interested Markov, and he studied poetic style. He was also
somewhat of a rebel, which caused friction with his government and peers.
In 1907, he renounced his membership of the electorate when the
representative parliament was dissolved.
Markov had one son who also became a renowned mathematician. Markov
died on July 20, 1922 in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
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Andre-Louis Cholesky
Andr-Louis Cholesky was born on October 15, 1875. At the age of 20 he entered the
cole Polytechnique. He joined the artillery branch upon graduation, and by June
1905 he was a member of the Geodesic Section of the Geographic Service.
Beginning in November 1907, Cholesky and two other officers spent three months in
Greece doing preliminary surveying of the island of Crete. Cholesky remained on the
island at the end of those three months to execute the triangulation. He completed his
work on June 15, 1908.
From September 1909 to September 1911 Cholesky was obligated to carry out a tour
of duty as a Battery Commander; he returned to the Geodesic Section upon
completion of the tour. He then went to Algiers to take measurements on behalf of the
Governor General of Algeria and the Regency of Tunis.
Cholesky was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1913. He was put in
charge of the Topographical Service of the Regency of Tunis. He did not have much
time to demonstrate his abilities in this position, however, since war broke out soon
after his appointment.
Cholesky understood the importance of geodesy and topography in the organization of
artillery firing, and his technical prowess resulted in his being sent on a mission with
the Geographical Service of the Romanian Army in October 1916. He returned in
February 1918.
Cholesky died on August 31, 1918 in battle.
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Richard Courant
Courant Institute of
Mathematical
Sciences
Richard Courant was born on January 8, 1888 in Lublinitz, Prussia. He obtained his doctorate from Gttingen in 1910 under
David Hilbert's supervision. He taught mathematics at Gttingen until the start of World War I. A few years later, he founded
the university's Mathematics Institute, where he served as director from 1920 until 1933.
Courant was expelled from Gttingen when the Nazis came to power in 1933. He left for England and then America where he
built an applied mathematics research center at New York University, based on the Gttingen style. He served as director of the
New York institute until 1958.
In the years before World War II, numerous mathematicians who were forced to leave Germany were given help by Courant to
obtain positions in the U.S. During WWII, Courant's research group, consisting of Kurt O. Friedrichs, James J. Stoker, and a
few faculty members, became the nucleus of an expanded group that undertook mathematically challenging problems arising
from various war projects, under the sponsorship of the office of Scientific Research and Development. After the war, support
from the Office of Naval Research and other government agencies maintained the group and encouraged its growth.
Kurt Friedrichs
1901-1982
Courant's most important work was in mathematical physics. He published papers in variational problems, finite difference
methods, minimal surfaces, and partial differential equations. Kurt O. Friedrichs said of his longtime friend and colleague, "One
cannot appreciate Courant's scientific achievements simply by enumerating his published work. To be sure, his work was
original, significant, beautiful; but it had a very particular flavor: it never stood alone; it was always connected with problems
and methods of other science, drawing inspiration from them and in turn inspiring them."
Courant is perhaps best known for his scientific organizing and leadership talents, which culminated in renaming the Institute
for him in 1965. He died on January 27, 1972 in New Rochelle, New York.
David Hilbert
1862-1943
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Ernst Fischer
Paul Albert Gordan

1837-1912
Ernst Sigismund Fischer was born July 12, 1875 in Vienna, Austria. He is best
known for the Riesz-Fischer Theorem in which the space of all square-integrable
functions is complete, in the sense that Hilbert space is complete, and the two
spaces are isomorphic by means of a mapping based on a complete orthonormal
system. This theorem is one of the greatest achievements of the Lebesque theory
of integration.
Emmy Amalie
Noether
1882-1935
Beginning in 1894 Fischer studied in Vienna under Franz Mertens and then at
Zurich and Gttingen with Hermann Minkowski. He became a professor at the
University of Brunn in the early 1900s. From 1911 until 1920 he was a professor
at Erlangen, replacing the retiring Paul Gordan, known then as the "invariant
king." Emmy Noether had been studying under Gordan but continued working
under Fischer's supervision. He influenced her away from Gordan's constructivist
style, dominated by forms and formulas, toward Hilbert's more axiomatic and
abstract style, characterized by existence proofs. She subsequently became a
world-class algebraist.
From 1920 he was a professor at Cologne. He died on November 14, 1954.
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Hermann Minkowski
Although he was born in Russia, Minkowski attended and later taught at the
Universities of Berlin and Knigsberg. He eventually accepted a chaired
The characteristic feature position at the University of Gttingen.
of the
Hermann Minkowski accomplished a great deal in a very short lifetime. To
Einstein-Minkowski
the three dimensions of space, he added the concept of a fourth: time. His
Spacetime is the Light
concept developed from the 1905 theory of relativity developed by Albert
Cone.
Einstein. Minkowski's work in turn became the framework of Einstein's
theory of general relativity (1916).
He was also interested in investigating quadratic forms. His most original
achievement is believed to be his "geometry of numbers."
Hermann Minkowski died suddenly at the age of 44 from a ruptured
appendix.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Minkowski is one
of them.
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Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
Julius Wilhelm
Richard Dedekind
1831-1916
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius was born on October 26, 1849, in Berlin, Prussia
(now Germany). He received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1870
after working under Karl Weierstrass. His first teaching position was at
Eidgenssische Polytechnikum Zrich. In 1892, he returned to Berlin to become
professor of mathematics.
Frobenius is best known for his work in group theory. He combined results from
the theory of algebraic equations, geometry, and number theory, which led him
to the study of abstract groups. He collaborated with Issai Schur in representation
theory and character theory of groups.
William Burnside
1852-1927
In 1896, he presented one of his most important papers on group characters to the
Berlin Academy, having derived many of his ideas through correspondence with
Richard Dedekind. Frobenius was able to construct a complete set of
representations by complex numbers.
Frobenius learned of Theodor Molien's work in 1897 and subsequently
reformulated his work in terms of matrices. He then showed that his characters
are the traces of irreducible representations. William Burnside later used this
character theory with great effect.
Frobenius's representation theory for finite groups later found important
applications in quantum mechanics.
He died on August 3, 1817.
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Issai Schur
Ferdinand Georg
Frobenius
1849-1917
Issai Schur was born on January 10, 1875 in Mogilyov, Belarus. At age thirteen
he went to Latvia, where he attended the Gymnasium in Libau (now called
Liepaja).
He entered the University of Berlin in 1894 to study math and physics. One of
his teachers was Frobenius, who had a great influence over Schur and would later
direct his doctoral studies. Schur learned the foundations of the theory of
representations of groups as groups of matrices, of which Frobenius was a
founder along with William Burnside.
William Burnside
1852-1927
In 1901 Schur obtained his doctorate with his thesis on rational representations of
the general linear group over the complex field. Functions that he introduced in
his thesis are today called S-functions, where the S stands for Schur. In 1903 he
became a lecturer at the University of Berlin, and from 1911-1916 he was
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bonn. He returned to the
University of Berlin in 1916 and built his famous school. In 1919 he was
promoted to full professor in Berlin. He was elected to the Prussian Academy in
1922.
Schur is most famous for his work on the representation theory of groups, but he
also worked in number theory, analysis, reducibility, location of roots, and the
construction of the Galois group of classes of polynomials.
By the early thirties his life had become miserable. April 1, 1933 was the
so-called Boycott Day where Germans carried signs with the message, "Germans
defend yourselves against Jewish atrocity propaganda: buy only at German
shops." On this day, Jewish professors were banned from the university. One
week later, the Nazis passed a law stating that civil servants of non-Aryan
descent must retire.
Schur saw himself as a German and not a Jew and could not comprehend the
persecution and humiliation he suffered under the Nazis. Somehow, his dismissal
(retirement) was revoked and he was able to carry out some of his duties for a
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Issai Schur
while. He declined all invitations to the United States and Britain, stubbornly
refusing to leave his native land. Finally, the Nazis officially dismissed him from
his chair at Berlin in 1935. Incredibly, Schur still continued to work there,
suffering great hardships and difficulties. He was not even allowed simple access
to the library; friends had to get the information for him.
After being pressured to resign from the Prussian Academy, he finally made the
decision to go to Palestine in 1939, completely broken in mind and body. The
final humiliation was to find a sponsor to pay the "Reichs flight tax" to allow him
to leave Germany. He was also forced to sell his beloved academic books in
order to have sufficient funds to live in Palestine. He died two years later on his
66th birthday.
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J. Wallace Givens
Oswald Veblen
1880-1960
Givens developed an interest in and ability for mathematics early in life.
Born in Alberene, Virginia, he graduated from high school at the age of 14
and from Lynchburg College cum laude at the age of 17.
He completed his graduate work at the Universities of Kentucky and
Virginia, and completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1936. At
Princeton, he spent three years assisting Oswald Veblen in the Institute for
Advanced Study.
He began his lifelong teaching career in 1937 at Cornell University, where
he was appointed Instructor of Mathematics. He then became professor at
James Hardy Wilkinson Northwestern University. He also taught at the University of Tennessee and
Wayne State University. Givens served as Director of the Applied
1919-1986
Mathematics Division at Argonne National Laboratory beginning in 1964.
SIAM President
1969-1970
Before the term "mathematical software" was invented, Givens advocated

implementing state-of-the-art algorithms and making them readily available
for use by scientists and engineers. He and Wilkinson initiated a project for
translating these algorithms into Fortran programs. Thus, he was
instrumental in creating the environment for the first of the ANL
mathematical software PACKs.
The name of Givens is known to numerical analysts mainly because of the
Givens rotations---plane rotation matrices that arise in eigenvalue
computations. His method was the first roundoff error analysis of matrix
computations that was deliberately made in the "backward" mode. Although
never published in an archival journal, his seminal paper did land in the right
hands. James Wilkinson went on to show that floating-point computation
was easier to analyze than fixed-point computation.
Dr. Givens was President of SIAM from 1969 to 1970. He will be
remembered as one of the pioneers who created the field of matrix
computations, as a creative administrator who advocated support of basic
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J. Wallace Givens
research, and as a friend who helped many individuals launch their careers.
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Hermann Grassmann
Giuseppe Peano
1858-1932
Hermann was one of 12 children in the Grassmann family. Although he did not
marry until he was 40, he had 11 children of his own.
He spent three years in Berlin studying philology and theology, but he never had
any university training in mathematics. He often sought a university position but
spent his life as a schoolteacher. It is written that he anticipated much of the work
perfected by Giuseppe Peano and Richard Dedekind. However, although his
work is acknowledged, his name is not linked to these accomplishments.
Richard Dedekind
1831-1916
He wrote many papers that were important contributions to physics and

mathematics, but his mathematical achievements were not recognized until a
century later. He essentially prophesized this in the 1862 preface to his
Ausdehnungslehre (Theory of Extension).
I remain completely confident that the labour I have expended on
the science presented here and which has demanded a significant
part of my life as well as the most strenuous application of my
powers, will not be lost. But I know and feel obliged to state (though
I run the risk of seeming arrogant) that even if this work should
again remain unused for another seventeen years or even longer,
without entering into the actual development of science, still that
time will come when it will be brought forth from the dust of
oblivion and when ideas now dormant will bring forth fruit. I know
that if I also fail to gather around me (as I have until now desired in
vain) a circle of scholars, whom I could fructify with these ideas,
and whom I could stimulate to develop and enrich them further, yet
there will come a time when these ideas, perhaps in a new form, will
arise anew and will enter into a living communication with
contemporary developments.
Grassmann is remembered primarily for his development of a general calculus
for vectors. He also wrote a Sanskrit dictionary that is still used today.
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Giuseppe Peano
'
Hermann Grassmann
1808-1887
Giuseppe Peano was born to a poor farming family in Spinetta, Italy. He and his
brother had to walk five kilometers each way to attend school in Cuneo. He was
an excellent student and moved to Turin to stay with his uncle and finish his
primary schooling.
Although he initially entered the University of Turin to study engineering, he
switched to mathematics. He joined the staff at the University of Turin and
published his first paper at the age of 22. He discovered an error in a standard
definition two years later. In 1888 Peano published the book Geometrical
Calculus; this explained with great clarity the ideas of Hermann Grassmann and
contained the first definition of a vector space with modern notation and style.
Gottfried Wilhelm
von Leibniz
1646-1716
Peano was very skilled in seeing that theorems were incorrect by spotting
exceptions. He pointed out such errors on many occasions, which did not endear
him to his colleagues. Having suffered from Peano's mathematical rigor, Corrado
Segre commented that the moment of discovery was more important than a
rigorous formulation. Peano is said to have countered with "I believe it new in
the history of mathematics that authors knowingly use in their research
propositions for which exceptions are known, or for which they have no proof."
One of Peano's greatest interests was in finding an artificial language based on
Latin but stripped of all grammar. His ideas were based on Leibniz's suggestion
of a universal language a century earlier. Because of Peano's work in this area,
his mathematical work almost stopped and his career declined. Professors
objected to his insistence that he teach all his students mathematics and that he
give no exams. His students objected to learning the universal language and all of
its symbols, which they would never use in real life. He was forced to resign in
1901.
In spite of this, Peano had a happy life. He was married in 1887 but had no
children. He became active in politics in his later life and supported a cotton
workers' strike. He died of a heart attack at the age of 74.
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Jacques Hadamard
Charles mile
Picard
1856-1941
Jules Tannery
1848-1910
Jacques Hadamard was born on December 8, 1865 in Versailles, France. He was good at all subjects except mathematics
through the seventh grade, when a good mathematics professor set him on a successful path to math and science. He placed
first in his entrance exams to the cole Polytechnique and cole Normale Suprieure. He chose the latter and studied under
Jules Tannery and mile Picard.
Hadamard taught school while studying for his doctorate. He wrote his thesis on functions defined by Taylor series and
received his doctorate in 1892. In that same year he also received the Grand Prix des Sciences Mathematique for his work in
entire functions. Hadamard's major contribution to mathematics occurred in 1896, when he proved the prime-number theorem.
This theorem states that as n approaches infinity, the limit of the ratio of (n) and n/ln n is 1, where (n) is the number of positive
prime numbers not greater than n. The theory was conjectured in the eighteenth century, a time when the available tools were
insufficient to prove the theorem. Years later, Hadamard proved it (independent of Charles de la Valle Poussin) using
complex analysis. Hadamard also contributed to the theory of integral functions and singularities of functions represented by
Taylor series, and he introduced the word "functional."
He served as a professor at the Collge de France (1897-1935), the cole Polytechnique (1912-1935), and the cole Centrales
des Arts et Manufactures (1920-1935), all in Paris.
Hadamard was active in politics, moving markedly to the left in between WWI and WWII in response to the Nazi rise to
power. He suffered a great tragedy when two of his sons were killed in WWI. He himself escaped France when it fell in 1940
and went to the United States. He returned to Paris in 1944 and campaigned actively for peace. As a result he had to rely on
the strong support of mathematicians in the United States to allow him to enter the country for the International Congress in
Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1950. He was made honorary president of the Congress.
He died October 17, 1963 in Paris.
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Charles Hermite

1804-1851
Charles Hermite was born in Lorraine, France, on December 24, 1822. His mathematical ability was most likely inherited
from his father, who had studied engineering. Hermite's father did not particularly like engineering, so he became a cloth
merchant instead and married his employer's daughter, Madeleine Lallemand. She was a very domineering woman but ran the
business well, aided by her husband.
Charles was the sixth of seven children. He was born with a deformity in his right leg, which saved him from any career
associated with the army. He was forced to walk with a cane during all of his life. Because the family business absorbed all of
his parents' time, he was packed off to boarding school at the age of six. Moving on to university at age 18, Hermite always
struggled with examinations, but his professor never gave up on him. Professor Richard recognized his genius for mathematics
despite Hermite's poor test taking skills. In his private studies, Hermite read Gauss, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, mastering
all of their work. As an algebraist, he was brilliant, but he struggled with elementary mathematics.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy Hermite prepared for several years to enter the cole Polytechnique. He passed the entrance exams, but only as 68th in order
1789-1857
of merit. This quite humiliated him. After a year of study, he was thrown out because of his lameness. According to the ruling
authorities, his deformity barred him from any of the positions open to successful students.
He began corresponding with Jacobi on Abelian functions while at the same time seeking a teaching career. Influential friends
helped him pass the certification exams---one of these friends was Joseph Bertrand. Hermite later married Bertrand's sister,
Louise, in 1848.
Ironically, one of Hermite's first academic successes was his appointment in 1848 as examiner for admissions to the very
Polytechnique that almost failed to admit him and, in fact, kicked him out. A few months later he was appointed quizmaster at
the same institution. Having finally placed himself in a niche where no examiner could get at him, he settled down to become
a great mathematician. His life was peaceful and uneventful.
Up to the age of forty-three, he was an agnostic like many French scientists of his time. When he fell seriously ill in 1856, his
evangelistic friend, Cauchy, convinced him to convert to Roman Catholicism. From that point on he was a devout Catholic
and the practice of his religion gave him much satisfaction.
Despite his reputation as a creative mathematician, he was 47 before he was appointed professor at the cole Normale.
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Charles Hermite
Stamp of Henri Poincar

(1854 - 1912) issued by
France on October 18,
1952 honoring famous
French people of the 19th
century.
Finally, one year later in 1870, he was appointed professor at the Sorbonne, a position he held until retirement. During his
tenure he trained a whole generation of French mathematicians. Henri Poincar was to become the most famous among his
students.
Some of his most noteworthy contributions to mathematics include his work in the theory of functions, in particular the
application of elliptic functions to the general equation of the fifth degree, the quintic equation. In 1873 he published the first
proof that e is a transcendental number. He is known for a number of mathematical entities that bear his name: Hermite
polynomials, Hermite's differential equation, Hermite's formula of interpolation, and Hermitian matrices.
He died on January 14, 1901.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Hermite is one of
them.
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Ludwig Otto Holder
Karl Theodor
Wilhelm Weierstrass
1815-1897
Ludwig Otto Hlder was born December 22, 1859 in Stuttgart, Germany. He
studied engineering at the polytechnic in Stuttgart for a year and then went on to
the University of Berlin. He attended the lectures of Weierstrass, Kronecker, and
Kummer. His interest in algebra came partly through the influence of Kronecker.
He presented his thesis at the University of Tbingen in 1882 on analytic
functions and summation procedures by arithmetic means.
Hlder became a lecturer at Gttingen in 1884 and began his work on the
convergence of the Fourier series. He soon discovered the inequality named after
him. While at Gttingen, he became interested in group theory.
In 1889 he was offered a post at Tbingen, but he suffered a mental collapse. The
faculty kept their confidence in him and Hlder made a steady recovery. He gave
Leopold Kronecker his inaugural lecture a year later.
1823-1891
His contributions to group theory include clarification of the notion of a factor
group and the Jordan-Hlder theorem, which proves the uniqueness of the factor
groups in a composition series. He introduced the concepts of inner and outer
automorphisms.
Hlder died August 29, 1937 in Leipzig, Germany.
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Robert J. Hooke
Gregorian Reflecting
Telescope
Robert Hooke is most well known for the law of elasticity that bears his name,
but he was influential in many other areas as well. His interests included
chemistry, astronomy, biology, physics, and geology. He was also a noted
architect who helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666.
Hooke had an antagonistic relationship with one of his contemporaries, Sir
Isaac Newton. Hooke wrote to Newton in 1679 about a possible inverse square
law of gravitation, which Newton later proved. Hooke claimed the theory as
his. The argument grew bitter, and as a result Newton removed all references to
Hooke in his Principia.
Some of Hooke's inventions include the microscope, conical pendulum,
Gregorian reflecting telescope, balance spring watch, and marine barometer.
The invention of the microscope led to Hooke's 1665 book Micrographia. This
book contains pictures of objects Hooke studied through his microscope, most
Cover of Micrographia notably slices of cork.
1665
Hooke's drawing of
cork
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Alston S. Householder
Alston Householder, Olga

Taussky-Todd, and John
Todd at a Gatlinburg
Symposium.
Alston Scott Householder was born on May 5, 1904 in Rockford, Illinois.
The family moved to Alabama shortly after he was born; Householder
spent his childhood there.
Householder earned a BA in Philosophy from Northwestern University of
Evanston, Illinois in 1925. From there he went to Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, where he received his MA (also in philosophy) in 1927.
James Hardy Wilkinson

1919-1986
Householder then taught mathematics at many different places. This

experience interested him so much that he went back to school at the
University of Chicago. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1937 for his
thesis on the calculus of variations. His interests moved toward
mathematical applications, particularly applying mathematics to biology.
After receiving his degree he joined the Committee for Mathematical
Biology at the University of Chicago. He worked with the committee until
1944, when he became involved in the war effort. Householder joined Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in 1946 after the war ended. He started the
ORNL Division of Mathematics and served as the first director, a post he
held until 1969.
It was during his time at Oak Ridge that Householder trained himself in
numerical analysis. Householder published The Theory of Matrices in
Numerical Analysis, one of his most important books, in 1964. This book,
still in print today, was one of the first ones to organize this field.
Magnus R. Hestenes
SIAM President
1964.
Householder will be remembered for more than his research. During his
time at Oak Ridge, many distinguished mathematicians visited him. They
included James H. Wilkinson, Alexander Ostrowski, Wallace Givens,
Magnus Hestenes, Olga Taussky-Todd, and John Todd. Together they did
much to advance numerical analysis and machine computation.
Householder was concerned with worldwide collaboration among
numerical analysts. To achieve a unified effort in this direction, he
organized the Gatlinburg Symposium on Numerical Linear Algebra, the
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Alston S. Householder
first of which was held in 1961. After the fourth conference, the
Householder Prize was established to be awarded to the author of the best
thesis in numerical linear algebra. Although the meetings were eventually
held in places other than Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the name "Gatlinburg
Meeting" was kept for about 20 years. The meetings were later renamed
"Householder Symposium" to honor a pioneer of this area of research.
Long active in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, he
served as its president in 1964.
Householder died on July 4, 1993 of a massive stroke. Just two weeks
before his death, he had attended the 12th Gatlinburg meeting.
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Olga Taussky-Todd
Olga Taussky-Todd and

John Todd
Olga Taussky-Todd was born in Czechoslovakia, which was part of the

Austro-Hungarian empire. She enjoyed writing and grammar when she was
younger, and even wrote poetry and music. Science first drew her attention
in high school; it was her interest in astronomy that led her to mathematics.
Olga received her Ph.D. in 1930 and spent the next several years at various
positions.
John Todd, Olga's

husband
Shortly after receiving her degree, she accepted a position to work as

Richard Courant's assistant at the Mathematisches Institut in Gttingen,
helping with the publication of the first volume of the collected works of
David Hilbert. Later in her career she worked with Emmy Noether at Bryn
Mawr College.
She met her husband and fellow mathematician, John (Jack) Todd, while
working at the University of London. According to Olga, they met when
Jack asked her for help on a technical mathematical question, which she was
initially unable to supply. Their 1938 marriage didn't slow them down, and
they continued to travel throughout their careers.
Emmy Amalie Noether

1882-1935
Being a woman, Olga faced additional career challenges. During one

interview she was asked whether she was the senior or junior author on
jointly authored papers, an improper question that another member of the
interviewing committee told her not to answer. Also, the senior woman
mathematician at one of Olga's positions would not allow women to work on
their theses with Olga, since she felt it was detrimental to a junior
mathematician's career to have a female supervisor.
Despite her early obstacles, Olga was widely recognized for her
achievements. Among the many citations she received are the Ford Prize;
the Austrian Gold Cross of Honor, First Class, for Science and Art; and the
Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award. In addition to being a great
mathematician, she was an inspiring teacher, colleague and friend to many.
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John Todd
John E. Littlewood
1885-1977
John Todd was born in Northern Ireland to schoolteacher parents. His father was
an expert chess player. John attended Methodist College in Belfast, where he
worked in engineering. He completed his undergraduate studies at Queen's
University, which is also in Belfast. His graduate work was completed at St.
John's College in Cambridge; his supervisor was J. E. Littlewood.
Todd taught at Queen's University for four years before joining King's College in
the University of London. He stayed in London for twelve years, some of which
included military service. His position as the youngest in the department meant
that he got all the chores to do; a fortunate one led to his meeting Olga Taussky,
whom he married in 1938.
Olga Taussky-Todd, One result of his war service was a change in his interests from modern real
John's wife
variable theory to numerical mathematics, table making, and computers. The
1906-1995
Todds were invited to the National Bureau of Standards to help set up National
Applied Mathematics Laboratories at UCLA and NBS in Washington, DC.
Since teaching was still in their blood, the couple went to Caltech in 1957, where
John was a Professor and Olga a Research Associate. Olga conducted seminars
and supervised theses, and in 1971 she was granted the rank of Professor. John
spent some of his free time at Caltech playing on their cricket team.
John Todd has continued to serve the mathematical community through his
research papers, books and services to societies such as the American
Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
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Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan
Stamp of Evariste Galois

1811-1832
Issued by France on
November 10, 1984.
Galois died in a duel at
the age of 21.
Camille Jordan was born in Lyon, France on January 5, 1838. He studied
mathematics at the cole Polytechnique. In 1870, Jordan published Treatise
on Substitutions and Algebraic Equations, a work which won him the
Poncelet Prize of the Acadmie des Science. Beginning in 1873, he taught at
the cole Polytechnique and at the Collge de France.
He was greatly influenced by the work of Evariste Galois and systematically
developed the theory of finite groups and arrived at the concept of infinite
groups.
Jordan's contemporaries thought highly of his work in algebra and group
theory. He is best remembered today for his work involving curves. Jordan
proved that a simple closed curve divides the plane into exactly two parts, a
simple theorem requiring a difficult proof.
Some attribute him with being the greatest exponent of algebra in his day.
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Immanuel Kant
Pierre-Simon Laplace
1749-1827
Immanuel was the fourth of nine children born to Johann George (a harness maker) and Anna Regina Kant. The family was
very pious, and a concern for religion touched all aspects of their lives.
In 1740 Kant began his studies at the University of Knigsberg. He was interested in philosophy, mathematics, and the natural
sciences. His father's early death required Kant to work as a private tutor for seven years to earn enough money to help support
the family. During this time he published several important papers, one of which anticipated Laplace's hypothesis (developed
more than 40 years later).
Kant was barely 5 feet tall. He was very thin and never had very good health. He always attributed his longevity to an unvaried
routine. After he woke up, he drank a cup of tea, smoked a pipe, and meditated for an hour. From 6:00-7:00 he prepared the
lectures that he gave from 7:00-9:00. He worked until 1:00 in his study. He invited friends for very long dinners (his one meal
each day) and then took a walk from 4:00-5:00. He was so punctual at this that people began to set their watches by him. After
his walk he read until he went to bed at 10:00.
Kant became increasingly antisocial and bitter as he aged. He was saddened at the loss of his memory and his ability to work.
He was totally blind when he died in 1804.
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Aleksei Nikolaevich Krylov
Pafnuty Lvovich
Chebyshev
1821-1894
Aleksei Nikolaevich Krylov was born on August 15, 1863 in Visyaga,

Simbirskoy (now Ulyanovskaya), Russia. He attended the Maritime High
School in St. Petersburg from 1878 to 1884. After he graduated, he joined
the compass unit of the Main Hydrographic Administration.
In 1880, Krylov joined the St. Petersburg Maritime Academy in the
department of ship construction. He learned mathematics from A. N.
Korkin, one of Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev's students. After graduating in
1890, Krylov taught at the Academy for almost 50 years.
Krylov received a doctorate in applied mathematics from Moscow
University in 1914. He was the director of the Physics - Mathematics
Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences from 1927 to 1932.
Leonhard Euler
1707-1783
Leonhard Euler had earlier described Krylov's field of study as "naval

science." This science studies the theories of buoyancy, stability, rolling and
pitching, vibrations, and compass theories. Compass deviation was a topic
Krylov worked on throughout his career.
In 1943, Krylov was awarded a state prize for his compass theory work. He
was made a hero of socialist labour. He died on October 26, 1945 in
Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia) at the age of 82.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Krylov is one of
them.
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Cornelius Lanczos
Albert Einstein
1879-1955.
This stamp was issued by
Nicaragua in 1971 to
celebrate Einstein's
Theory of Relativity.
Cornelius Lanczos was born on February 2, 1893 near Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family. He was the oldest of five
children. His father was a well-known lawyer and a highly cultured man. The family was fluent in French, Hungarian, and
German. Education was a priority for all the children. Cornelius attended a Catholic secondary school where he received a
high-level education. This is where he first began to excel in mathematics. In 1911, he was admitted to the Faculty of Arts at
the University of Budapest where he studied physics, mathematics, and philosophy.
His younger years coincided with the development of the theory of relativity. He chose to write his Ph.D. thesis on
quarternionic formulation of the theory of special relativity.
Richard Courant
1888-1972
Lanczos left Hungary for Germany in 1920 due to anti-Semitic laws that limited the number of university positions for Jews.
His first position in Germany was at the University of Freiburg, where he assisted the university's leading physicist, Franz
Himstedt. He then moved on to the University of Frankfurt where he was to work along with Richard Courant, Bernhard
Baule, and Erich Bessel-Hagen.
He spent one full year as an assistant to Albert Einstein, in Berlin, Germany. He declared many times that this year was the
most decisive period of his life. His task was to study the equations of motion of the general theory of relativity.
He married his first wife, Maria Rupp, in the Fall of 1929, but she soon became ill with tuberculosis and spent much of her
time is Swiss sanatoriums. Much of Lanczos' salary was spent on her care.
Lanczos was offered a position in the United States at Purdue University in 1932 as Professor of Physics. His wife could not
accompany him due to her illness. He traveled to Europe every six months to be with her. It was a stressful time for him
because his new job in America required that he teach. This meant that he had to quickly master English since his success
relied heavily on how good a teacher he was. He also contributed to the cultural scene at Purdue, performing at several piano
recitals and participating in the Cosmopolitan Club, an organization for international students.
Lanczos made his first significant impact in numerical analysis in 1938 with the publication of his paper, Trigonometric
Interpolation of Empirical and Analytical Functions. He combined advantages of the power series with the Fourier series
and derived a very effective approximation method for both empirical and analytical functions. It became widely known in
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Cornelius Lanczos
the literature as the Tau method because of the coefficient
in the error term.
In the early 1940s, Lanczos's personal life was in turmoil. After his wife died in Europe, he brought his son Elmar to the
United States where he raised him on his own. His position at Purdue became uncertain when a new department head took
over. He decided to leave Purdue to work at Boeing in 1946, his first industry position. In 1949 he joined the Institute for
Numerical Analysis of the National Bureau of Standards, and he published his first textbook, The Variational Principles of
Mechanics, in 1949. The book was reprinted four times and became a standard university text.
During the McCarthy period, many staff members of the INA experienced unjustified security investigations, which affected
the morale of the entire institution. Thus, Lanczos welcomed an invitation to become Senior Professor of Theoretical Physics
of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland. This position allowed him to return to the study of the theory of
relativity and he was quite happy. He had married a highly educated German lady, Ilse Hildebrand, and they were like foster
parents to many scholars who attended the institute.
In the last years of his life he returned to his native Hungary for several visits with leading scientists. During one of these
visits he suffered a massive heart attack and died on June 25, 1974 at the age of eighty-one. He was buried in Budapest close
to his birthplace.
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Henri Lebesgue
Jean-Baptiste Joseph
Fourier
1768-1830
Henri Lebesgue was born in Beauvais, Oise, Picardie, France on June 28, 1875. He attended the cole Normale Suprieure and
taught in the Luce at Nancy from 1899 to 1902. He then went to the University of Rennes, where he was a lecture master until
1906. From Rennes he went to Poitiers, where he was promoted from an assistant lecturer to a professor.
Lebesgue is best remembered for his definition of the definite integral, which he gave in 1902. The Lebesgue integral greatly
expands the scope of Fourier analysis and is one of the great achievements of modern real analysis.
Lebesgue passed away on July 26, 1941, in Paris. His two major books were Lessons on Integration and Analysis of Primitive
Functions (1904) and Lessons on the Trigonometric Series (1906). He was awarded the Prix Saintour in 1917.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Lebesgue is one of
them.
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Gottfried William von Leibniz
Blaise Pascal invented the

Calculating Machine to free
his father, a tax collector,
from a tedious task. There
are about 50 machines still
in existence today.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz was born at Leipzig on July 1, 1646. His father was a professor of moral philosophy and died
when Leibniz was only six. His mother, Catherine Schmuck, the daughter of a lawyer, raised him. Although formally schooled,
he taught himself to be fluent in the classical languages of Greek and Latin, which was probably motivated by his desire to read
his father's books.
He became a master of all trades; mathematics was only one area in which he excelled. The brilliant young Leibniz entered
university at fourteen and received his law degree by age twenty. He was to become a diplomat, historian, philosopher, and
mathematician, performing enough work in each field to fill one ordinary working life. Gauss is known to have said that Leibniz
squandered his splendid talent for mathematics on a diversity of subjects in which no human being could hope to be supreme,
whereas (according to Gauss) Leibniz had in him supremacy in mathematics.
Sir Isaac Newton
1642-1727
After receiving his doctorate in law, he accepted a position to revise some of the local legal codes and serve on several
commissions. He became secretary to the Nuremberg alchemical society and took up residence in the courts of Mainzo in an
effort to improve Roman civil law code.
One of his more ambitious, yet futile projects as a diplomat involved reuniting the Catholic and Protestant churches. When that
failed, he attempted to unite the two Protestant factions of the day. That too failed.
One of his earlier mathematical achievements was inventing an improvement to Pascal's calculating machine. Leibniz's version
went beyond simple addition and subtraction; it could multiply, divide, and extract roots as well.
While visiting Paris as a diplomat, he met Christian Huygens, who was primarily a physicist with a lot of mathematics
knowledge. He agreed to teach Leibniz the newer mathematics, and after several years Leibniz discovered many of the formulas
of calculus as well as the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. This led to a long dispute with Newton, who failed to publish his
own results years prior to Leibniz's discovery. Thus he, and many of his followers, accused Leibniz of plagiarism.
Christian Huygens
1629-1695
Leibniz's other great achievements in mathematics included his development of the binary system of arithmetic and his work on
determinants, which arose from his developing methods to solve systems of linear equations.
The remaining forty years of his life were spent as a librarian for the Brunswick family, cataloging the exact history of the
family's existence, an extremely complex task that he was unable to complete.
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Gottfried William von Leibniz
Diplomacy was Leibniz's main livelihood, and it provided him with a venue to pursue his zeal for mathematics. When he died at
the age of seventy it is said that only his secretary attended his funeral. This is rather perplexing for one who had secured a
nominal amount of fame and a secure position in life, but the controversy about who discovered calculus was still very fresh.
After careful study it appears that Newton made the first great strides in calculus, while Leibniz developed the notation we use
today, due in part to Newton being quite unwilling to share his own material.
About 300 mathematicians

have lunar craters named
after them. Leibniz is one
of them.
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Wassily Leontief
Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910
Wassily Leontief was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on August 5, 1906. His
father was a professor of economics. Young Wassily spent his youth in St.
Petersburg (now Leningrad) and remembered his country mourning the death of
Leo Tolstoy, the whistling bullets of the February Revolution, and Vladimir
Lenin addressing a mass meeting in front of the Winter Palace.
Leontief entered the University of Leningrad in 1921, where he studied
philosophy, sociology, and economics and received his degree of Learned
Economist in 1925. He continued his studies at the University of Berlin,
Leontief won the
receiving his Ph.D. in 1928. From 1927 to 1930 he served as member of the staff
Nobel Prize in
of the Institute for World Economics at the University of Kiel. In 1929 he went
Economic Science in
China to serve as advisor to the Ministry of Railroads. In 1931, Leontief moved
1973.
to New York and served at the National Bureau of Economic Research, moving
on to Harvard's Department of Economics in 1932, where he was appointed
Professor of Economics in 1946. While there, he organized the Harvard
Economic Research Project (1948) and served as its Director until 1973. From
1975 until his death on February 5, 1999, he was a Professor of Economics at
New York University and was named Director of the school's Institute for
Economic Analysis in 1978.
He married Estelle Marks, a poet, in 1932. They had one daughter.
Leontief is best known for his input-output analysis theory. In 1973, he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in input-output tables. This
grid-like table shows what individual industries buy from and sell to one
another. With the addition of government, consumers, foreign countries, and
other elements, a general outline of the goods and services circulating in a
national economy emerges. This system is used in various forms by a large
number of industrialized countries for both planning and forecasting. One of the
more recent developments of this method is its extension to include residuals of
the production system---smoke, water pollution, scrap, etc, and the further
processing of these. In this way the effects of the production on the environment
can be studied.
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Wassily Leontief
Leontief is also known for having developed linear programming, a

mathematical technique for solving complex problems of economic operations.
The phenomenon called Leontief Paradox succeeded economists' prior theory,
which held that a country's exports reflect the commodity most abundant in that
country, such as labor or capital. However, Leontief pointed out that although
the United States has more capital than most other nations, the majority of its
exports were of labor-intensive goods; conversely, the majority of U.S. imports
were of capital-intensive goods.
Leontief's major publications include The Structure of the American Economy
1919-1929: An Empirical Application of Equilibrium Analysis (1941) and
Input-Output Economics, 2nd ed. (1986).
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Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier
John Couch Adams

1819 - 1892
Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier was born on March 11, 1811 at Saint-L in
Normandy. He attended the cole Polytechnique to prepare for his career as
a scientist. Leverrier's early interest was chemistry, but he took a teaching
post in astronomy when it became vacant.
Leverrier dealt with celestial mechanics, the mathematical analysis of the
planetary motions. According to the rules of this science, planets move
around the sun in orbits that are basically elliptical. Deviations to the orbit
tend to be due to attractions by the rest of the planets. Although the
computations were very complicated, at this time scientists had sufficiently
explained the orbits of all planets except Uranus.
Stamp issued by
Nicaragua on May 15,
1971 to celebrate
Einstein's general theory In 1845 Leverrier began to study the orbit of Uranus. He and John Couch
of relativity.
Adams independently concluded that the irregular orbit was probably caused
an unknown planet. Through a process of detailed calculations, he estimated
the location of this unknown planet. Neptune was discovered on September
23, 1846, less than one degree from the spot suggested by Leverrier. As one
of his colleagues noted, Leverrier "...discovered a star with the tip of his pen,
without any instruments other than the strength of his calculations alone."
The work Leverrier did that led to this discovery was hailed as one of the
outstanding scientific achievements of all time. He received much
recognition for his work. He was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal
Society of London, and in France he became an officer in the Legion of
Honour.
Leverrier became director of the Paris Observatory in 1854. He proved
unpopular and was removed from the post in 1870. His successor died in
1873, and the post was again offered to Leverrier, but this time a council
supervised him and greatly restricted his authority.
Leverrier discovered a slight anomaly in Mercury's orbit in 1855 and
postulated either an asteroid belt so close to the sun as to be invisible or a
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Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier
planet (which he called "Vulcan") closer to the sun than Mercury. He was
not able to prove the existence of either, and the mystery wasn't solved until
1915, when Einstein's general theory of relativity explained the orbit of
Mercury without the need for perturbing bodies.
Leverrier died in Paris on September 23, 1877.
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George Ohm
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Ohm is one of them.
Born in Erlangen, Bavaria, Georg Ohm was raised by a locksmith father
who cared about the sciences and philosophy. Although poor, his father
managed to get Georg and his brother, Martin, into a preparatory school.
There they studied and excelled for five years, Georg in the area of science
and Martin in mathematics.
After their education at the preparatory school ended, they got into the
University of Erlangen because of their abilities. Georg's education was
interrupted when he was exiled to Switzerland over a family disagreement.
He eventually returned to receive a degree in 1811 and teach mathematics.
He later went to the Jesuit College in Cologne for almost ten years.
Ohm was intensely interested in electricity and its effects and relationships
between different properties that acted upon it. With his interest in the area,
his skill with mechanics that he learned from locksmithing, and his intellect
in mathematics and science, he eventually was responsible for what is now
called Ohm's Law. His work was initially received with very little
enthusiasm, and he resigned his position at Cologne.
It was not until 1841 that his work was recognized by the Royal Society. He
was awarded the Copley Medal that same year.
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Roger Penrose
An example of the
Penrose tile.
Stephen Hawking
Roger Penrose was born August 8, 1931 in Colchester, Essex, England. He

was raised in a family with strong mathematical interests. His mother was a
doctor and his father a medical geneticist. One brother became a
mathematician, the other a chess champion. Roger was originally also
interested in medicine, but he decided to pursue mathematics when
scheduling conflicts at school forced him to choose between the two. He
studied at University College in London. After obtaining his doctorate in
algebraic geometry from Cambridge, he was professor at Birkbeck College
in London from 1966 to 1973, and then moved to Oxford University.
Roger and his father are the creators of the famous Penrose staircase and the
impossible triangle known as the tribar. Both creations have provided
inspiration for the famous graphic artist, M.C. Escher.
Penrose is very well known for formulating some of the fundamental

theorems that describe black holes, including the singularity theorems,
which he developed jointly with English physicist Stephen Hawking. These
theorems state that once the gravitational collapse of a star has proceeded to
a certain degree, singularities (which form the center of black holes) are
Maurits Cornelius Escher inevitable. He accomplished most of this work in the 1960s.
1898-1972
Penrose has also proposed a new model for the universe. He holds that all
calculations about both the macroscopic and the microscopic worlds should
use complex numbers, requiring reformulation of the major laws of physics
and of space-time. His proposed universe model uses basic building blocks
called "twistors."
In 1994, Penrose was knighted for his outstanding contributions to
mathematics. His passion, however, is recreational mathematics. He is
fascinated with a field of geometry known as tessellation, the covering of a
surface with tiles of a prescribed shape. With only notebook and pencil,
Penrose set about developing sets of tiles that produce quasi-periodic
patterns; at first glance the patterns seem to repeat regularly, but upon closer
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Roger Penrose
One of Penrose's popular examination this is not so. After years of research and careful study, he
titles.
found that two shapes successfully cover a surface, one of a large bird and
one of a small bird. While this all sounds somewhat trivial, it soon became
obvious that certain chemical substances (crystals) form in a quasi-periodic
manner. This finding has a useful application: such crystals make an
excellent nonscratch coating for frying pans.
Roger Penrose is currently the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Oxford, the Gresham Professor of
Geometry, Gresham College, London, and he has a part time appointment as
Francis and Helen Pentz Distinguished Professor of Physics and
Mathematics at Penn State University. Penrose has received a number of
awards including the 1988 Wolf Prize which he shared with Stephen
Hawking for their understanding of the universe, the Dirac Medal, and the
Albert Einstein Prize. His 1989 book, The Emperor's New Mind, became a
best seller and won the 1990 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.
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Oskar Perron
Carl Louis
Ferdinand von
Lindemann
1852-1939
Oskar Perron was born on May 7, 1880 in Frankenthal, Pfalz, Germany. He had a
classic early education and studied mathematics in his spare time. Perron's father
wanted him to continue the family business, but Perron wanted to continue his
education. He prevailed and entered the University of Munich in 1898. He also studied
at universities in Berlin, Tbingen, and Gttingen. His doctoral thesis on geometry was
directed by Carl Lindemann.
Perron was appointed a lecturer at Munich in 1906; he then accepted a post as
extraordinary professor at Tbingen in 1910. By 1914 Perron was a professor at
Heidelberg. Perron's career at Heidelberg was interrupted by World War I in 1915. He
won the Iron Cross for his work during the war. When the fighting was over, he
returned to Heidelberg, where he remained until 1922. He then accepted a chair at
Munich.
Perron retired in 1951, although he continued to teach some courses at Munich until
1960. Even after he stopped teaching he still continued to do research; he published 18
papers between 1964 and 1973. In addition to his love of mathematics, Perron enjoyed
mountain climbing. He climbed one 2200-meter peak more than 20 times, the last time
when he was 74. He died on February 22, 1975 in Munich.
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Giuseppe Piazzi
Carl Friedrich Gauss

1777-1855
Giuseppe Piazzi was first and foremost a Theatine monk, secondly a professor of
mathematics at the Academy of Palermo, and thirdly a great astronomer. He set
up an observatory at Palermo in 1789 from which he published a catalog of 7646
stars.
In 1801 he was observing the sky for a new catalog when he noticed a small,
star-like object that was not on any of his star maps. He recorded the movement
over the next six weeks and noticed that it was moving relative to the background
stars. Its rapid movement indicated it was not a star but an object in the solar
system. The first asteroid had been discovered!
Piazzi had discovered Ceres because Gauss had recently developed the
mathematical techniques that allowed the orbit to be calculated. The 1000th
asteroid to be discovered was named Piazzia in Giuseppe's honor. Asteroid
discoveries were rare from that point until 1891, when photographic methods
were introduced. More than 3000 asteroids have been discovered to date, and
astronomers estimate that there are another 100,000 still to be found.
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Erwin Schrodinger
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig

Planck
1858-1947
Erwin Schrdinger was born on August 12, 1887 in Vienna, Austria. His
father, Rudolf, ran a small linoleum factory. His mother, Emily Bauer, was
half-English, which led to Schrdinger's fluency in English as well as
German.
Schrdinger had a private tutor at his home until he was 10 years old. He
then entered the Akademisches Gymnasium in the autumn of 1898, where he
remained until he graduated in 1906. Schrdinger entered the University of
Vienna that same year, where he studied theoretical physics. He received his
doctorate on May 20, 1910; his dissertation was titled On the conduction of
electricity on the surface of insulators in moist air.
Albert Einstein
1879-1955
At the beginning of World War I, Schrdinger was summoned to duty at the

Italian border. He was able to continue his theoretical research during his
time in Italy, and he even submitted a paper for publication from the front.
He was transferred to Hungary in 1915, where he submitted another paper.
When he was sent back to the Italian front, Schrdinger received a citation
for outstanding service for commanding a battery during battle.
The spring of 1917 found Schrdinger back in Vienna, where he taught a
course in meteorology. He remained in Vienna after the war, and from 1918
to 1920 he made substantial contributions to color theory. He also worked on
radioactivity in Vienna; he proved the statistical nature of radioactive decay.
He was offered an associate professorship at Vienna in January 1920 on the
basis of his work. At this time Schrdinger was looking to marry, so he
declined the associate professorship since it would not support him and an
unemployed wife.
Paul Adrien Maurice

Dirac
1902-1984
Schrdinger married Annamaria Bertel on March 24, 1920, around the time
he accepted an assistantship in Jena. The newlyweds were in Jena for a short
time before Schrdinger accepted a chair in Stuttgart. Another rapid move
found the couple in Breslau, where Schrdinger had accepted another chair.
It was their third move in eighteen months. Their rapid travel was not over
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Erwin Schrodinger
yet, as Schrdinger accepted the chair of theoretical physics at Zrich in late

1921. His years at Zrich (1921-1927) were the most productive of his
career.
In 1926 Schrdinger published his revolutionary work relating to wave
mechanics and the general theory of relativity in a series of six papers. He
proposed wave mechanics in these papers, which are the second formulation
of quantum theory. These papers were highly regarded, and Schrdinger
received praise from colleagues such as Max Planck and Albert Einstein.
Schrdinger shared the

1933 Nobel Prize in
Physics with Paul Dirac. Schrdinger was offered Planck's chair of theoretical physics in Berlin when
it became vacant, a position he accepted. He assumed the post on October 1,
1927. Schrdinger was a Catholic, but he disagreed with the persecution of
Jews in Berlin, so he decided to leave Germany in 1933. After spending the
summer in South Tyrol, he went to Oxford. It was here where Schrdinger
heard he was to share the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac.
He was offered posts at Princeton University and the University of
Edinburgh, but in 1936 he accepted a position at the University of Graz in
Austria, where the Nazi regime again entered his life. After the Anschluss,
the Nazis controlled Graz. Schrdinger was advised to write a letter to the
About 300
mathematicians have University Senate apologizing for his earlier desertion of Germany. He
lunar craters named after regretted writing this letter for the rest of his life and explained to Einstein "I
them. Schrdinger is one wanted to remain free --- and could not do so without great duplicity." The
letter did not soothe the Nazis, and in August 1938 he was dismissed from
of them.
his post for "political unreliability."
Schrdinger and Anny left Germany and fled to Rome, and then to Oxford.
They spent a year in Gent after Schrdinger was offered a one-year visiting
professorship at the University of Gent. When that position ended
Schrdinger went to Dublin and joined the Institute for Advanced Studies as
Director of the School for Theoretical Physics. This was a position he held
until his retirement. He published a new unified field theory in January 1947
without the benefit of critical analysis; this new theory proved to be nothing
of merit. Schrdinger was devastated when he read Einstein's opinion of his
latest work.
Other topics besides a unified field theory interested Schrdinger during his
time in Dublin. He published two works during these years, What is life
(1944) and Nature and the Greeks (1954). He retired to a position of honor
in Vienna in 1956 and published his last book, Meine Weltansicht, in 1961.
Schrdinger died in Vienna on January 4, 1961 after a long illness. He
fathered three daughters with three different women, none of whom was his
wife.
Erwin Schrodinger
Herman Amandus Schwarz
Eduard Kummer
1810-1893
Herman Schwarz was born on January 25, 1843 in Hermsdorf, Poland (now
Germany). He originally studied Chemistry at Berlin, but he switched to
mathematics due to the influence of Eduard Kummer and Karl Weierstrass.
Weierstrass supervised Schwarz's doctorate, which he received from the
University of Berlin in 1864. Schwarz was appointed to chairs at Zrich (1869)
and Gttingen (1875). He taught at Berlin from 1892 to 1917, succeeding
Weierstrass.
Not all of Schwarz's life was devoted to mathematics. He was the captain of the
local Voluntary Fire Brigade, and he aided the stationmaster at the local railway
station.
Karl Theodor
Schwarz married Kummer's daughter. He died on November 30, 1921 in Berlin.
Wilhelm Weierstrass
1815-1897
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Takakazu Seki Kowa
Although he was born into a samurai warrior family, Takakazu was later adopted by a
noble family whose name he bears. A servant introduced him to mathematics when he
was nine and Seki Kowa continued to teach himself. He collected a library of
mathematics books and soon became known as an expert in the field.
No specific accomplishments are attributed to him due to the secrecy surrounding the
schools in Japan at the time but it is known that he worked on determinants prior to
Leibniz and what came to be called Bernoulli numbers before Jacob Bernoulli.
He was a rigorous mathematician who was well liked by his students.
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James J. Sylvester
Arthur Cayley
1821-1895
James Joseph Sylvester was born to Jewish parents on September 3, 1814. He was the youngest of several children. Between the
ages of six and fourteen, he attended private schools, where his mathematical genius began to show itself. The last half of his
fourteenth year was spent at the University of London, where he studied under De Morgan.
In 1829 Sylvester entered the Royal Institution at Liverpool. At the end of his first year, he was so far ahead of his fellow
students in mathematics that he was placed in a special class by himself. He won two prizes during his two years at this school.
Sylvester's days at the Royal Institution were not happy ones. Because he did not hide his religion, he suffered persecution from
some of his Christian schoolmates.
Florence Nightengale
1821-1910
Sylvester entered St. John's College in Cambridge in 1831 when he was 17. Sylvester did not graduate from this institute
because he would not sign a religious oath to the Church of England. Because of this refusal he was eligible for neither a Smith's
prize nor a Fellowship. Eventually the college stopped requiring its students to sign this oath. As soon as this change occurred in
1871, Sylvester promptly received his degrees.
Beginning in 1838, Sylvester taught physics at the University of London. He spent three years at this school, which was one of
the few places that did not ban him due to his religion. De Morgan was one of his colleagues.
At the age of 27 Sylvester was appointed to a chair in the University of Virginia. During his few months in the United States, he
used a stick to strike a student who had insulted him. The student collapsed, causing Sylvester to (incorrectly) believe he had
killed the young man. Sylvester fled to New York and boarded the first available ship to England.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Sylvester is one of
them.
Once back in England, Sylvester worked as an actuary and a lawyer. He also tutored in mathematics; Florence Nightingale was
one of his students. During his time at the London courts he encountered Arthur Cayley, who was also a lawyer with an interest
in mathematics. The two discussed their shared interest in their spare time and became life-long friends. It was during these
discussions that Sylvester first became interested in matrix theory.
In 1854, when he was 40, Sylvester applied for the professorship of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich.
He did not receive it until the following year, when the original recipient passed away. Sylvester held the position at Woolwich
for 16 years. His mandatory retirement came when Sylvester was 55. It was thought that Sylvester would retire from
mathematics with his retirement from Woolwich, and this belief was reinforced by the 1870 publication of Sylvester's only
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James J. Sylvester
book, The Laws of Verse. It was on poetry.

Sylvester rejoined his mathematical life in 1876, when he accepted a chair at Johns Hopkins University. He founded the
American Journal of Mathematics, the first mathematical journal in the United States, the following year.
In 1883, the 68-year-old Sylvester was appointed to the Savilian chair of Geometry at Oxford. He remained in this position until
his eyesight and memory began to fail. He continued to work on mathematics until he suffered a paralytic stroke early in March
of 1897. He died on March 15, 1897 at the age of 83. He never married.
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Otto Toeplitz
The Enjoyment of
Math is still available
Otto Toeplitz was born on August 1, 1881 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw,
today.
Poland). He was appointed professor at Bonn, but the Nazis dismissed him in
1935 because of his Jewish background.
He began his academic career after studying under Hilbert at Gttingen. His
scientific work centered on the theory of integral equations and the theory of
functions of infinitely many variables. He made lasting contributions to these
fields.
In the 1930s he developed a general theory of infinite dimensional spaces.
Hans Rademacher
1892-1969
Toeplitz thoroughly enjoyed the history of mathematics. He wrote an excellent

book on the history of calculus, The Calculus: A Genetic Approach, which
published in 1949 in German. In 1963, the English version appeared; both
versions were published posthumously.
His other very famous book was a joint effort with Hans Rademacher, The
Enjoyment of Math, which is still available today. This was originally published
in German in the early 1930s. The English version was published in the
mid-1950s, also posthumously.
Toeplitz moved to Jerusalem in the spring of 1939 and died less than a year later
on February 19, 1940.
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John Wilder Tukey
James W. Cooley
John Tukey's parents were both teachers. They realized when he was quite
young that he had great potential and decided to keep him under their wing
and home-school him. His formal education began at Brown University
where he studied chemistry and mathematics. He later went on to Princeton
University where he received his Ph.D. in mathematics.
Tukey stayed on at Princeton as an instructor and later joined the Fire
Control Research office where he began his work in statistics. After the war,
he returned to Princeton as a professor of statistician the mathematics
department. He had so much energy that he joined AT&T Bell Labs at the
same time.
In 1965 Tukey and James W. Cooley laid out a scheme that sped up one of
the most common activities in scientific and engineering practice-the
computation of Fourier transforms. Their algorithm, which soon came to be
called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is widely credited with making many
innovations in modern technology feasible. Its impact extends from
biomedical engineering to the design of aerodynamically efficient aircraft.
Tukey has made substantial contributions to the analysis of variance and the
problem of making simultaneous inferences about a set of parameter valued
from a single experiment. His colleague and co-author Fred Mosteller has
said of him, "John loves to work with others, and many have had the
pleasure in participating in his genius. Variety and breadth mark his
accomplishments. He works successfully on both large- and small-scale
problems and on both practical and theoretical problems. . . . He is always
eager to respond to new questions, and he gives generously of his time and
ideas."
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Richard von Mises
Probability,
Statistics and
Truth, written Richard von Mises was born April 19, 1883 in Lemberg, Austria (now Lviv, Ukraine).
by von Mises, is He studied at Vienna and became professor at the University of Strassburg in 1909. He
still in print. moved to Germany in 1920 when he was appointed to direct the Institute for Applied
Mathematics at Berlin, a position he kept until the Nazis forced him out in 1933. Von
Mises first went to Istanbul and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he taught
at Harvard University.
His scientific and mathematical contributions are diverse. His first interest was fluid
mechanics, particularly in relation to aerodynamics and aeronautics. Here he made
fundamental advances in boundary-layer-flow theory and airfoil design. In 1915 he
built an aeroplane for the Austrian military and became a pilot for the Austrian Army
in World War I.
John Venn
1834-1923
His primary work in statistics involved the theory of measure and applied
mathematics. He also made considerable progress in the area of frequency analysis
started by John Venn. His association with the Viennese school logical positivism
drew him to probability theory. Eventually he came to the conclusion that a
probability cannot be simply the limiting value of a relative frequency, and added the
proviso that any event should be irregularly or randomly distributed in the series of
occasions in which its probability is measured.
In 1951 von Mises wrote a philosophical book, Positivism: A Study in Human
Understanding, where he summarized his views on science and life.
He died on July 14, 1953 in Boston.
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Hermann Weyl
David Hilbert
1862-1943
Hermann Weyl (known as Peter to his close friends) was born on November 9, 1885 in Elmshorn, Germany. He was educated at
the universities of Munich and Gttingen before winning his doctorate from the latter in 1908. David Hilbert served as Weyl's
supervisor at Gttingen, and it was here that Weyl began his teaching career.
From 1913 to 1930 Weyl held the chair of mathematics at Zrich Technische Hochschule, where he counted Albert Einstein as
one of his colleagues. Weyl then moved to Gttingen, where he held the chair of mathematics from 1930 to 1933. After leaving
Gttingen in 1933 to escape the Nazi regime, Weyl moved to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where he remained
until his retirement in 1952.
One of Weyl's outstanding qualities was his ability to join previously unrelated subjects. In Die Idee der Riemannschen Flche
(1913), Weyl united analysis, geometry, and topology, thereby creating a new branch of mathematics.
Albert Einstein
1879-1955
Weyl also published works on philosophy, logic, and the history of mathematics. He passed away on December 8, 1955, in
Zrich, Switzerland.
About 300
mathematicians have
them. Weyl is one of
them.
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Hermann Weyl
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Helmut Wielandt
Issai Schur
1875-1941
Helmut Wielandt was born in Niedereggenen, Lrrach, Germany, on December 19,
1910. In 1929 he entered the University of Berlin, where he studied mathematics,
physics, and philosophy. He was awarded a doctorate in 1935; his dissertation was
on permutation groups. During his time in Berlin, he was greatly influenced by
Erhard Schmidt and Issai Schur.
Wielandt worked on the editorial staff of Jahrbuch ber die Fortschritte der
Mathematik in Berlin from 1934 to 1938. He then went to be an assistant at
Tbingen; it was here that he submitted his habilitation thesis in 1939. World War
II interrupted Wielandt's career at Tbingen in 1939, although he was formally still
part of the staff until 1946.
Erhard Schmidt
1876-1959
The end of World War II brought Wielandt to the University of Mainz, where he
was appointed an associate professor. He stayed at Mainz until 1951; he then went
to the University of Tbingen as an Ordinary Professor. Wielandt remained at
Tbingen until he retired in 1977. He held a number of visiting positions at
different universities, including the University of Wisconsin, Madison; the
University of Warwick, England; and the University of Brazil. He was the editor of
Mathematische Zeitschrift from 1952 to 1972.
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David M. Young
Garrett Birkhoff
1911-1996
David M. Young, Jr. is a leader in the field of computational mathematics. He
became involved in this field when he was a graduate student at Harvard in the
late 1940s. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1950 under the direction of Garrett Birkhoff.
He is best known for the development of theoretical analysis associated with the
successive overrelaxation (SOR) method. This material is now considered
classical analysis and appears in most textbooks on numerical analysis.
David Kincaid
Young is former director of the Computation Center at the University of Texas at

Austin. While serving in this post he acquired two large computer systems that
helped establish the university as the leader in scientific computing---the Control
Data 1604 computer in 1961 and the Control Data 6600 in 1966. He left the
Computation Center in 1970 to become director of the Center for Numerical
Analysis.
Young has worked extensively on the numerical solution of partial differential
equations, emphasizing the use of iterative methods for solving large sparse
systems of linear algebraic equations. He and David Kincaid are providing the
infrastructure for scientists in a wide variety of disciplines to use high performance
computers in their research. Young and Kincaid specialize in developing
algorithms for using supercomputers in solving scientific problems. "Large sparse
systems arise in many applications-reservoir simulation in petroleum engineering,
heat and groundwater flow in fluid mechanics, computer and telecommunications
networks in computer science, reactor modeling in nuclear engineering; to
mention a few," explains Young.
Young has been at the University of Texas at Austin since 1958. He is currently an
Ashbel Smith Profesor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences. He is the author
of several books, including Iterative Solution of Large Linear Systems, A Survey of
Mathematics with R. Gregory, and Applied Iterative Method with L. Hageman. He
is still active in both research and teaching and he plays tennis regularly!
http://www.siam.org/html2pdf/html/young.htm (1 of 2) [4/25/2000 10:31:47 AM]

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Index

Neumann, John Louis von

2000, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

file:///P|/TEX/BOOKS/MeyerC/HTML/index.htm (1 of 2) [5/9/2000 9:15:37 AM]

Eugenio Beltrami was born November 16, 1835 in Cremona, Lombardy,

http://www.siam.org/html2pdf/html/belltram.htm (1 of 2) [4/25/2000 10:31:12 AM]

Johann Bernoulli III

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Friedich William Bessel

Stamp of Bessel issued by

In 1809 he was appointed director of the Knigsberg Observatory and

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Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

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Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace

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Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace

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Joseph Louis Lagrange

In 1756, Lagrange sent Euler his results on applying the calculus of

http://www.siam.org/html2pdf/html/lagrange.htm (1 of 3) [4/25/2000 10:31:16 AM]

Joseph Louis Lagrange

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Joseph Louis Lagrange

http://www.siam.org/html2pdf/html/lagrange.htm (3 of 3) [4/25/2000 10:31:16 AM]

Issued by the Soviet

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Euler on a Swiss bank

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Simeon Dennis Poisson

There is a special plaque

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Simeon Dennis Poisson

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Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

He filled Laplace's vacancy at the Academy of Science in 1783. There he

There is a special plaque

prompting Legendre to later write, "This excessive impudence is

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Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

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Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

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William Rowan Hamilton

William Rowan Hamilton

them. Hamilton is one of

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Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier

There is a special plaque

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Garrett Birkhoff had a special introduction to mathematics through his father,

Many people remember him as a snappy dresser. He usually dressed in tweeds,

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John Louis von Neumann

Eugene Paul Wigner

Theodore von Krmn

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John Louis von Neumann

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Johann Peter Gustav

Karl Theodor Wilhelm