THIS LIST IS ARGUABLE.

1. PYTHAGORAS

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Greek Mathematician Pythagoras is considered by some to be one of the first great mathematicians. Living around 570 to 495 BC, in modern day Greece, he is known to have founded the Pythagorean cult, who were noted by Aristotle to be one of the first groups to actively study and advance mathematics. He is also commonly credited with the Pythagorean Theorem within trigonometry. However, some sources doubt that is was him who constructed the proof (Some attribute it to his students, or Baudhayana, who lived some 300 years earlier in India). Nonetheless, the effect of such, as with large portions of fundamental mathematics, is commonly felt today, with the theorem playing a large part in modern measurements and technological equipment, as well as being the base of a large portion of other areas and theorems in mathematics. But, unlike most ancient theories, it played a bearing on the development of geometry, as well as opening the door to the study of mathematics as a worthwhile endeavor. Thus, he could be called the founding father of modern mathematics.

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Source https://10lista.com/greatest-mathematicians-of-all-time/843/

https://www.listsworld.com/15-famous-people-who-made-failure-work-for-them/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/apr/11/the-10-best-mathematicians

2. LEONHARD EULER

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Euler is the true king of mathematics, a Swiss mathematician, astronomer, logician, and physicist. At the same time, he is considered as most famous mathematicians and pioneering contributor. Euler was born on 15 April 1707 in Basel, Switzerland. Furthermore, His influential works in several branches of mathematics like topology, graph and analytical number theory, infinitesimal calculus. However, His most famous work is symbol pi which refers to the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter.

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3. CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS

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great work named Disquisitiones Arithmeticae at just the age of 21 made him ‘Prince of Mathematics.’ He wasn’t a prolific writer. However, this enormous talent was born on 30 April, Brunswick in Germany. The local Duke of Brunswick could recognize this genius and send to Collegium Carolinum, one of the prestigious universities for mathematics. Eventually, He had contributed to the major area of elementary mathematics and physics. Needless to say, he had done some stunning works magnum opus, before he was 24.

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4. RENÉ DESCARTES

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French Philosopher, Physicist and Mathematician Rene Descartes is best known for his ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ philosophy. Despite this, the Frenchman, who lived 1596 to 1650, made ground breaking contributions to mathematics. Alongside Newton and Leibniz, Descartes helped provide the foundations of modern calculus (which Newton and Leibniz later built upon), which in itself had great bearing on the modern day field. Alongside this, and perhaps more familiar to the reader, is his development of Cartesian Geometry, known to most as the standard graph (Square grid lines, x and y axis, etc.) and its use of algebra to describe the various locations on such. Before this most geometers used plain paper (or another material or surface) to preform their art. Previously, such distances had to be measured literally, or scaled. With the introduction of Cartesian Geometry this changed dramatically, points could now be expressed as points on a graph, and as such, graphs could be drawn to any scale, also these points did not necessarily have to be numbers. The final contribution to the field was his introduction of superscripts within algebra to express powers. And thus, like many others in this list, contributed to the development of modern mathematical notation.

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5. G. F. BERNHARD RIEMANN

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Bernhard Riemann, born to a poor family in 1826, would rise to become one of the worlds prominent mathematicians in the 19th Century. The list of contributions to geometry are large, and he has a wide range of theorems bearing his name. To name just a few: Riemannian Geometry, Riemannian Surfaces and the Riemann Integral. However, he is perhaps most famous (or infamous) for his legendarily difficult Riemann Hypothesis; an extremely complex problem on the matter of the distributions of prime numbers. Largely ignored for the first 50 years following its appearance, due to few other mathematicians actually understanding his work at the time, it has quickly risen to become one of the greatest open questions in modern science, baffling and confounding even the greatest mathematicians. Although progress has been made, its has been incredibly slow. However, a prize of $1 million has been offered from the Clay Maths Institute for a proof, and one would almost undoubtedly receive a Fields medal if under 40 (The Nobel prize of mathematics). The fallout from such a proof is hypothesized to be large: Major encryption systems are thought to be breakable with such a proof, and all that rely on them would collapse. As well as this, a proof of the hypothesis is expected to use ‘new mathematics’. It would seem that, even in death, Riemann’s work may still pave the way for new contributions to the field, just as he did in life

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6. SIR ISAAC NEWTON

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This famous mathematicians list will be incomplete without mentioning the name of Isaac Newton. Hence, all-round genius Sir Isaac Newton was born on the charismas day, 25 December in Woolsthorpe Manor England. He was an English genius, not just a mathematician but also an astronomer, author, theologian, and physicist. Though he is widely known for his great “Law of universal gravitation,” but he contributed on some major area on mathematics.

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7. GIROLAMO CARDANO

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Italian polymath for whom the term Renaissance man could have been invented. A doctor by profession, he was the author of 131 books. He was also a compulsive gambler. It was this last habit that led him to the first scientific analysis of probability. He realised he could win more on the dicing table if he expressed the likelihood of chance events using numbers. This was a revolutionary idea, and it led to probability theory, which in turn led to the birth of statistics, marketing, the insurance industry and the weather forecast.

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Very soon my name will include....

8. PAUL ERDÖS

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Erdös lived a nomadic, possession-less life, moving from university to university, from colleague's spare room to conference hotel. He rarely published alone, preferring to collaborate – writing about 1,500 papers, with 511 collaborators, making him the second-most prolific mathematician after Euler. As a humorous tribute, an "Erdös number" is given to mathematicians according to their collaborative proximity to him: No 1 for those who have authored papers with him; No 2 for those who have authored with mathematicians with an Erdös No 1, and so on.

9. SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN

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Srinivasa Ramanujan is not just one of the great mathematicians of India, but also a prominent mathematician ever lived. However, he was born in a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar in Erode, India. Surprisingly, he had any formal education or training in mathematics.

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10. GRIGORI PERELMAN

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Perelman was awarded $1m for proving one of the most famous open questions in maths, the Poincaré Conjecture. But the Russian recluse has refused to accept the cash. He had already turned down maths' most prestigious honour, the Fields Medal in 2006. "If the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed," he reportedly said. The Poincaré Conjecture was first stated in 1904 by Henri Poincaré and concerns the behaviour of shapes in three dimensions. Perelman is currently unemployed and lives a frugal life with his mother in St Petersburg.

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11. FIBONACCI

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Fibonacci One Of The Middle Ages Top Mathematicians, Born Pisa, Italy. He Is Also Known Leonardo Pisano Blgollo, Leonardo Bonacci Or Leonardo Fibonacci. Fibonacci was The First Person Who Introduced Most Famous Fibonacci Series. However, most of the People don’t know; He Was contributed greatly In the Arabic Numbering System. At the same time, he was the major player who introduced Hindu–Arabic Numeral System to the World. But His Most Famous Work Was Fibonacci Series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, and 377.

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12. GEORGE CANTOR

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Of all the great mathematicians, Cantor most perfectly fulfils the (Hollywood) stereotype that a genius for maths and mental illness are somehow inextricable. Cantor's most brilliant insight was to develop a way to talk about mathematical infinity. His set theory lead to the counter-intuitive discovery that some infinities were larger than others. The result was mind-blowing. Unfortunately he suffered mental breakdowns and was frequently hospitalised. He also became fixated on proving that the works of Shakespeare were in fact written by Francis Bacon.

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13. TERENCE TAO

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An Australian of Chinese heritage who lives in the US, Tao also won (and accepted) the Fields Medal in 2006. Together with Ben Green, he proved an amazing result about prime numbers – that you can find sequences of primes of any length in which every number in the sequence is a fixed distance apart. For example, the sequence 3, 7, 11 has three primes spaced 4 apart. The sequence 11, 17, 23, 29 has four primes that are 6 apart. While sequences like this of any length exist, no one has found one of more than 25 primes, since the primes by then are more than 18 digits long.

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14. EUCLID

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Euclid was a Greek mathematician distinguishes as “Father of Geometry.” But unfortunately, there is no certain document about his life. But this remarkable contribution on geometry gives him immortality. The Magnum Opus – Elements is considered as a notable leading book till the 20th century. During the reign of Ptolemy I, He was lived in Alexandria.

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15. GOTTFRIED W. LEIBNIZ

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Amongst his many contributions to a variety of fields, he independently invented Calculus and it is his notation that we learn today in school. His notation was so much more powerful than Newton's that because of their furious dispute, the British refused to adopt it and thus fell behind the rest of Europe in math over the next century. This is why after Newton, you don't hear about any great mathematician from England. The next wave of math geniuses came from France and Germany and other countries in the persons of Laplace, Lagrange, Gauss, Euler, etc, etc.

He independently invented Calculus, but his notation was way better than Newton's. Leibniz's notation is used world wide. He also invented many other things like the binary system and also the first fully functional mechanical and electrical calculator.

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Aryabhatta? where is he? without him list is not Credible

Zimri:
1. PYTHAGORAS

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Source https://10lista.com/greatest-mathematicians-of-all-time/843/

https://www.listsworld.com/15-famous-people-who-made-failure-work-for-them/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/apr/11/the-10-best-mathematicians

rationalhuman:
Aryabhatta? where is he? without him list is not Credible

Infact, there is no credible list anywhere

Bro! If we should start listing all those that are suppose to be on this list. I no go comot for nairaland today.

A top 100 or top 1000 will cover some yet not all of them

Question of the day.

Where are the names of the Mathematics lecturers dem wey dey form god for us for campus?

How come no single Virgina people is in ur list they are coming for u

Do physicist next please?
I am sure in this modern times there are lots of very good female mathematicians and inventors

danilmo:
How come no single Virgina people are in ur list they are coming for u

Probably learning English, something you should consider- you didn’t make the list either.

Virginia kor, Tennessee ni!

Goood

Nice compilation, Op.

Reading about that Grigori of a man, I am tempted to agree that truly this life no balance...

Samcent:
Nice compilation, Op.

Reading about that Grigori of a man, I am tempted to agree that truly this life no balance...

And our views about life

what a man can do, a woman can do better.
I no see one here oo.

16. MARYAM MIRZAKHANI

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Iranian-born Maryam Mirzakhani was one of the greatest mathematicians of her generation, making exceptional contributions to the study of the dynamics and geometry of mathematical objects called Riemann surfaces.

She was a professor at Stanford University and held a Ph.D from Harvard University. In 2014, she was the first woman, and first Iranian, to be awarded a Fields Medal (also known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics) for “her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.

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Source https://thirdspacelearning.com/blog/famous-female-mathematicians/

17. SOFIA KOVALEVSKAYA

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Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya made monumental contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer and icon for females in mathematics and STEM subjects everywhere.

The first woman to obtain a doctorate in mathematics, she went on to gain global recognition in the mathematical community due to her paper on partial differential equations and was awarded the Prix Bordin from the French Academy of Sciences, a prize given to the best solution of a specific mathematical problem.

Sofia’s impact: Despite scrutiny and doubts from her male counterparts and society as a whole, Sofia refused to give up academia and has paved the way for other famous females mathematicians to follow in her footsteps!

Zimri:
Question of the day.

Where are the names of the Mathematics lecturers dem wey dey form god for us for campus?

cc: Dr Williams

This man will never solve difficult questions. He will let you know that it's your problem, not his.

Why are people making nairaland toxic with gender biasness and unnecessary tribalism?

Imagine people bringing gender into this?☹️☹️

Epositive:



cc: Dr Williams

This man will never solve difficult questions. He will let you know that it's your problem, not his.

Na so dem dey do...

This list is completely rubbish without Simeon Pierre Laplace and Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier