Descartes is credited as the first person to use superscripts to represent exponents.

In otherwords, he wrote xxxx = x4 before anyone else

He also contributed to the field of optics, by identifying laws of reflection and

refraction, and identifying that a rainbow's radius is 42.
However, Descartes is probably most famous for his work in analytical geometry.
The coordinate plane is commonly referred to as the Cartesian Coordinate because
Descartes was so instrumental in developing it.

Essentially Descartes was the first person to use algebra to describe geometry

Euler was the first to use function notation.

Function notation: f(x) = x + 3 replaced y = x + 3.

This notation states that x is a function of f(x). A simple explanation of what this
means can be taken from an analogy to a car.
Math - Input x, Output: f(x)
Car - Input: gas, Output: driving
On a more advanced level, Euler is credited with pushing forward the use of a power
series as a way to represent a number with an infinite sum.

Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Fibonacci, was a brilliant Italian mathematician who
is known by several different names: Leonard Pisano Bigollo, Leonard Pisano, and
Leonardo Bonacci.
Today, many students probably recognize the name from the famous sequence now
know as the Fibonaci numbers - a number sequence that is generated by adding the
previous two terms to create the current term.

Sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144,

233, 377, 610, ...

"Leonardo" is not credited with discovering this sequence, but it was named after
him because he shared it with the Western world in his famous book on mathematics
the Liber Abaci, which translates to Book of Calculation.

Gauss was also studying prime tables and came up with a different estimate
(perhaps first considered in 1791), communicated in a letter to Encke in 1849 and
first published in 1863.
pi(x) is approximately Li(x) (the principal value of integral of 1/log u from u=0 to
u=x).

Gauss discovered a method for computing the planet's orbit using only three of the
original observations and successfully predicted where Ceres might be found.The
prediction catapulted him to worldwide acclaim.
The heptadecagon (17-sided polygon), Gauss' first mathematical triumph

Pythagorean Theorem. One of the most well known geometric formulas, a2 + b2 = c2,
bears his name. The theorem relates the sides of a right triangle .

The hypotenuse is important because it is the c value.

Pascal's triangle has many interesting mathematical connections, but Pascal

discovered its connection to the binomial coefficients. Each number is generated by
adding the two numbers above it