Reported by: James Daniel D.

Swinton

Peter Gustav Dirichlet

 Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was born in Düren, Germany on February 13,
1805. From an early age, he was fascinated by mathematics and spent his
allowance on mathematics texts. Dirichlet’s parents, recognizing his extraordinary
intelligence and hoping to steer him toward a career in law, sent him to excellent
schools in Bonn and Cologne where he obtained a classical education.
 After completing his Abitur examination at the age of sixteen—well before his
contemporaries—Dirichlet left Germany for Paris. Dirichlet attended lectures at the
Faculté des Sciences and the Collége de France. In June 1825, at the age of twenty,
Dirichlet presented his first mathematical paper to the French Academy of Sciences.
Entitled Mémoire sur l’impossibilité de quelques équations indéterminées du
cinquième degré, the paper addressed problems in number theory devised by the
ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus in about 250 a.d.
 Following General Fay’s death in 1825, Dirichlet returned to Germany, married,
and obtained a post as professor of mathematics at the University of Berlin. His
lectures, delivered during his twenty-seven years at the University of Berlin, and his
many scientific papers had considerable impact on the development of mathematics
in Germany. Dirichlet’s proof that certain specific types of functions are the sums of
their Fourier series elevated work in this field from a simple manipulation of formulas
to genuine mathematics, as we understand the term today.
 Among his most influential works were memoirs published in 1837 and 1839,
wherein he applied analysis to the theory of numbers, with spectacular results.
 Dirichlet’s understanding of the nature of a function, that is, that for each value of x
there is a unique value of y, was another important contribution to modern
mathematics.
 In 1855, Dirichlet left the University of Berlin for the University of Göttingen,
where a prestigious position had been left vacant by the death of Carl Gauss.
Dirichlet taught at Göttingen for three years, until suffering a heart attack in
Switzerland. He had traveled to Switzerland in the summer of 1858 to speak in
tribute to Gauss, but barely survived the journey back to Germany. He died at
Göttingen in May 1859, at the age of 54.

Niels Henrik Abel

 Niels Henrik Abel was born August 5th, 1802 in Finnoy Norway. He like many
other famous mathematicians was dirt poor all his life. Abel was discovered to have
a great knowledge of mathematics by his teacher Bernt Holmboe. After his father's
death, Abel was able to attend the University of Christiania in 1821. This could have
only happened due to Hobbies help in obtaining a scholarship. One year after he
started his studies he graduated from the University, but he had already
accomplished so much.
 Niels Henrik Abel had many great contributions to the evolution of mathematics.
Even though Abel only lived 27 short years he had many new discoveries. At the
age of 16, Abel gave a proof of the Binomial Theorem valid for all numbers not only
Rationals, extending Euler's result.
 At age 19 he showed that there was not an algebraic equation for any general
Polynomial of degree greater than four. To do this, he invented an important part of
 mathematics known as Group Theory, which is invaluable for many areas of
mathematics, and physics as well.
 In 1823 at the age of 21, Abel published papers on functional equations and
integrals. In this paper, Abel gives the first solution of an integral equation. He then
proved one year later, the impossibility of solving the general equation of the fifth
degree algebraically and published it at his own expense hoping to obtain
recognition for his work.
 After returning to Norway heavily in debt, he became very ill and was informed
he had tuberculosis. Despite his bad health and poverty, he continued writing papers
on equation theory and elliptic functions. This continued work had major importance
in the development of the whole theory of elliptic functions. Abel revolutionized the
understanding of elliptic functions by studying the inverse of these functions.

Georg Cantor

 Georg Cantor is a German mathematician who founded set theory and

introduced the mathematically meaningful concept of transfinite numbers, indefinitely
large but distinct from one another.
 Cantor’s mathematical talents emerged prior to his 15th birthday while he was
studying in private schools. eventually, After briefly attending the University of
Zürich, Cantor in 1863 transferred to the University of Berlin to specialize in
physics, philosophy, and mathematics. There he was taught by the
mathematician Karl Weierstrass, whose specialization of analysis probably had the
greatest influence on him.
 An important exchange of letters with Richard Dedekind, mathematician at the
Brunswick Technical Institute, who was his lifelong friend and colleague, marked the
beginning of Cantor’s ideas on the theory of sets. Both agreed that a set,
whether finite or infinite, is a collection of objects (e.g., the integers, {0, ±1, ±2,…})
that share a particular property while each object retains its own individuality. But
when Cantor applied the device of the one-to-one correspondence (e.g., {a, b, c} to
{1, 2, 3}) to study the characteristics of sets, he quickly saw that they differed in the
extent of their membership, even among infinite sets. (A set is infinite if one of its
parts, or subsets, has as many objects as itself.) His method soon produced
surprising results.
 In 1895–97 Cantor fully propounded his view of continuity and the infinite,
including infinite ordinals and cardinals in his best-known work,  Contributions to the
Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. This work contains his conception of
transfinite numbers, to which he was led by his demonstration that an infinite set
may be placed in a one-to-one correspondence with one of its subsets.

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

 Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician who co-founded

the theory of elliptic functions. A child prodigy, Jacobi developed an affinity for
mathematics from a young age. He received his early education in mathematics
from his uncle Lehman who home schooled him. His remarkable abilities and
excellence at the subject reflected at an early age—at twelve, he was ready for
university level of studies. However, due to age restrictions, he entered Berlin
University, at the age of 16, in 1821.
 Attaining his doctorate degree, Jacobi took up the profile of a university
professor, a position which he served for the better part of his life. It was while
serving as a mathematics professor that he made fundamental contributions to
elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations and number theory.
 In 1823, he was qualified as a secondary school teacher for the subjects,
mathematics, Greek and Latin. Subsequently, he was offered a position at the
Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin but he declined it to pursue a university
position. In 1825, he secured a doctorate degree in philosophy. His thesis
provided an analytical discussion on the theory of fractions.
 Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi died due to small pox on February 18, 1851. He
was buried in Berlin. Due to his eminence as a great German mathematician, his
grave has been preserved at a cemetery in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, the
Friedhof I der Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchengemeinde (61 Baruther Street).

Bhramagupta

 Brahmagupta was a highly accomplished ancient Indian astronomer and

mathematician who was the first to give rules to compute with zero.
 He is best remembered as the author of the theoretical treatise
‘Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta. His ‘Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta’ is the first book that
mentions zero as a number and also gives rules for using zero with negative and
positive numbers.
 He also wrote the book Khaṇḍakhādyaka. In this book, he described what a
cyclic quadrilateral is and gave its area.
Augustin Cauchy

 Augustin-Louis Cauchy was a French mathematician. He was famous for the

countless contributions he made to the domain of mathematics. He made special
contribution to mathematical analysis and the theory of substitution groups.
 For a brief period, he served as a military engineer for Napoleon’s English
invasion fleet. He wrote many books that cover a wide area of mathematics and
mathematical physics. His paper on definite integrals acted as the basis of the
theory of complex functions. Due to his praiseworthy contribution to wave
propagation, which is an important part of hydrodynamics, he received the
prestigious grand prix from the Institute of France.
 Cauchy was the first mathematician who developed definitions and rules for
mathematics. He introduced the definitions of the integral and rules for series
convergence.
Arthur Cayley

 Arthur Cayley, born on August 16, 1821 is an English mathematician and leader
of the British school of pure mathematics that emerged in the 19th century.
 Although Cayley was born in England, his first seven years were spent in St.
Petersburg, Russia, where his parents lived in a trading community affiliated with
the Muscovy Company. On the family’s permanent return to England in 1828 he was
educated at a small private school in Blackheath, followed by the three-year course
at King’s College, London. Cayley entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1838 and
emerged as the champion student of 1842, the “Senior Wrangler” of his year.
 Cayley practiced law in London from 1849 until 1863, while writing more than
300 mathematical papers in his spare time. In recognition of his mathematical work,
he was elected to the Royal Society in 1852 and presented with its Royal Medal
seven years later.
 Cayley made important contributions to the algebraic theory of curves and
surfaces, group theory, linear algebra, graph theory, combinatorics, and elliptic
functions. He formalized the theory of matrices. Among Cayley’s most important
papers were his series of 10 “Memoirs on Quantics” (1854–78). A quantic, known
today as an algebraic form, is a polynomial with the same total degree for each term
Emmy Noether

 Emmy Noether , born on March 23, 1882 is German mathematician

whose innovations in higher algebra gained her recognition as the most creative
abstract algebraist of modern times.
 Noether was certified to teach English and French in schools for girls in 1900,
but she instead chose to study mathematics at the University of Erlangen. At that
time, women were only allowed to audit classes with the permission of the instructor.
She returned to Erlangen in 1904 when women were allowed to be full students
there. She received a Ph.D. degree from Erlangen in 1907, with a dissertation on
algebraic invariants. She remained at Erlangen, where she worked without pay on
her own research and assisting her father, mathematician Max Noether.
 In addition to research and teaching, Noether helped edit the Mathematische
Annalen. From 1930 to 1933 she was the center of the strongest mathematical
activity at Göttingen. The extent and significance of her work cannot be accurately
judged from her papers. Much of her work appeared in the publications of students
and colleagues; many times, a suggestion or even a casual remark revealed her
great insight and stimulated another to complete and perfect some idea.
 When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Noether and many other
Jewish professors at Göttingen were dismissed. In October she left for the United
States to become a visiting professor of mathematics at Bryn Mawr College and to
lecture and conduct research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New
Jersey.
 She died suddenly of complications from an operation on an ovarian cyst.
Einstein wrote shortly after her death that “Noether was the most significant creative
mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.”

Pythagoras of Samos

 Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) was an early Greek Pre-

Socratic philosopher and mathematician from the Greek island of Samos.
 He was the founder of the influential philosophical and religious movement or
cult called Pythagoreanism, and he was probably the first man to actually call
himself a philosopher (or lover of wisdom). Pythagoras (or in a broader sense
the Pythagoreans), allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato.
 Unfortunately, little is known for sure about him, (none of his original writings
have survived, and his followers usually published their own works in his name) and
he remains something of a mysterious figure. His secret society or brotherhood had a
great effect on later esoteric traditions such as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.
 In mathematics, Pythagoras is commonly given credit for discovering what is
now known as the Pythagorean Theorem (or Pythagoras' Theorem), a theorem in
geometry that states that, in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the
side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two
sides. Although this had been known and utilized previously by
the Babylonians and Indians, he (or perhaps one of his students) is thought to have
constructed the first proof.
 He also believed that the number system (and therefore the universe system)
was based on the sum of the numbers one to four (i.e. ten), and that odd
numbers were masculine and even numbers were feminine.
 He discovered the theory of mathematical proportions, constructed from three to
five geometrical solids, and also discovered square numbers and square roots. The
discovery of the golden ratio (referring to the ratio of two quantities such that the sum
of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one
and the smaller, approximately 1.618) is also usually attributed to Pythagoras, or
possibly to his student, Theano.

References

http://www.larsoncalculus.com/etf6/content/biographies/dirichlet-peter-gustav/

http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/Men/abel.html

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/carl-gustav-jacob-jacobi-6029.php

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/brahmagupta-6842.php

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/augustin-cauchy-588.php

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Cayley

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emmy-Noether

https://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_pythagoras.html