Mathematics reveals its secret only to those who approach it with pure love, for its own beauty. Archimedes
Math helps us understand our world better as it explains most of what goes on around us. As such, it is considered to be a critical component of our lives. Often, people call it the dialect of our world, given how beneficial it is to the society. Math impacts us positively from the working of satellites to the operations of home appliances. It is essential in our lives, and that is why a lot of credit goes to the exceptional mathematicians whose achievements have made life easy for us. These historical figures are the pillars of the great success that we enjoy and it is only just that we honor their work.
Many people have often expressed their opinions as to how they think of Pythagoras as the man who brought Math to life. Others even call him the father of this vast field. Born in Greece in 570BC, he rose to be one of the greatest scientists in the world, and by the time of his death in 495BC, his mark on the earth could get seen clearly.
One of his most significant achievements was the introduction of the Pythagorean Theorem which has gotten used for centuries in the field of geometry. Measurements became less cumbersome, and the world of angles opened up as a result of his discoveries.
Girolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath. He worked as a doctor and during his active days in science, he wrote more than a hundred books. Other than his interest in science, Girolamo also loved gambling. During his gaming activities, he developed a passion for math, more so in the field of probability. His gambling habit got him to do research, and soon enough he realized he could win more if he previously expressed the likelihood of chance events using numbers. His discoveries led to the coming up of the probability theory which gave way to the development of statistics.
When people talk about the most prolific mathematicians of all time, Euler is the name that pops into their heads. During the period of his work, he wrote hundreds of books. Unfortunately, Euler lost his sight when in his fifties. However, this incident only worked to increase his math skills, and he went ahead to come up with formulae still in use to date. Thanks to his work, we can now create games like Sudoku.
Leonardo Bigollo, widely known as Leonardo Fibonacci, is among the best-known mathematicians of the middle ages. He gets credit for having come up with the Fibonacci series which he then introduced to the Western people. Also to his name are his achievements in Indian math as well as his contributions to the Arabic numbering. People often think of the Fibonacci series and forget about his past works before that fantastic discovery.
It is not every day that a cryptanalyst gets recognition as one of the best mathematicians that ever existed. As a computer scientist, he came across different challenges which prompted him to think of ways in which his work and the lives of others could be made simple.
It was not until the Second World War broke out that he discovered a scientific manner to go about code. This discovery was instrumental in the decrypting of encryptions that would have affected the result of the war as well as the period taken.
Bernhard’s humble beginnings in life did not deter him from working his way to being a great mathematician. He had a great mind which enabled him to perceive things differently from those around him, a feature which saw him make contributions to the geometry field. He came up with a way to figure out the distribution of prime numbers, an area where other great minds still work on in a bid to expand the sector and make discoveries. His achievements saw many theorems get named after him, showing just how great they were.
Carl discovered his gift in Math while he was a teenager and by the time he was twenty-one, he had a book to his name. As a young man, many people took notice of how amazing his mind was, and he ended up getting a scholarship from the duke to study among other great brains. He did well in the school and graduated at twenty-two.
From then on, he devoted his energy to scientific discoveries, and he is known for his achievements in prime numbers. Other great minds in Math include Andrew Wiles, Georg Cantor, and Terry Tao who all worked tirelessly in search of the theorems and formulas which positively impact our lives today. We can only hope to get more great minds in the future to come as we still have a long way to go regarding development.