Way back in our ancient history, math becomes the language and important tool in explaining and proving the natural phenomena that occurs in our surroundings. The building of pyramids, the manipulation of abacus, the invention of wheel, and the use of money in business transactions are the main reasons why math is rapidly changing and evolving until today.
Aside from that, many prominent mathematicians had made a relevant contributions that change the way of life of the people in our society. Archimedes, who popularized the word, "Eureka" in his buoyancy principle; Pythagoras, who formulated the Pythagorean Theorem in solving triangular equations; Albert Einstein, who discovered the theory of relativity; Euclid, the father of geometry, who used his important laws and theories in engineering drawing, and many more.
Since you all knew the mentioned mathematicians above, let's explore more as we face the face of the top 7 multi-talented and extraordinary math geeks which we don't know how they bring life to math.
1. Evariste Galois (1811-1832, France)
Evariste Galois was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The ingenious mathematician died young; he lived a tragic but inspirational life. Regarded all over the world as the ‘Pioneer of Modern Algebra’, he laid the foundations of group theory, and continuously worked on abstract algebra, breaking numerous conventions to solve a long-standing, 350-year-old problem relating to polynomials. Possessing tremendous caliber and formidable brilliance, it is really unfortunate that he met his end at the young age of 20 in a duel. Known as a hopeless romantic, with a republican political background, his work was often met with resistance and was never acclaimed until after his death. Some considered him simply a political agitator and many of his caretakers and professors failed to understand his acuity and considered many of his theories incomprehensible. Yet perseverance led him on;with determination he proved the possibility of solving general quintic equations and polynomial equations of higher degree. His mastery in research and logical reasoning has consolidated his position in the field of mathematics.
2. Srivanasa Ramanujan
(1887-1920, India)
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who made significant contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, and continued fractions. What made his achievements really extraordinary was the fact that he received almost no formal training in pure mathematics and started working on his own mathematical research in isolation. Born into a humble family in southern India, he began displaying signs of his brilliance at a young age. He excelled in mathematics as a school student, and mastered a book on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney by the time he was 13. While in his mid-teens, he was introduced to the book ‘A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics’ which played an instrumental role in awakening his mathematical genius. By the time he was in his late-teens, he had already investigated the Bernoulli numbers and had calculated the Euler–Mascheroni constant up to 15 decimal places. He was, however, so consumed by mathematics that he was unable to focus on any other subject in college and thus could not complete his degree. After years of struggling, he was able to publish his first paper in the ‘Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society’ which helped him gain recognition. He moved to England and began working with the renowned mathematician G. H. Hardy. Their partnership, though productive, was short-lived as Ramanujan died of an illness at the age of just 32.
3. Kurt Gödel (1906-1978,
Austria-USA)
Kurt Friedrich Gödel (b. 1906, d. 1978) was one of the principal founders of the modern, metamathematical era in mathematical logic. He is widely known for his Incompleteness Theorems, which are among the handful of landmark theorems in twentieth century mathematics, but his work touched every field of mathematical logic, if it was not in most cases their original stimulus. In his philosophical work Gödel formulated and defended mathematical Platonism, the view that mathematics is a descriptive science, or alternatively the view that the concept of mathematical truth is objective. On the basis of that viewpoint he laid the foundation for the program of conceptual analysis within set theory (see below). He adhered to Hilbert's “original rationalistic conception” in mathematics (as he called it); and he was prophetic in anticipating and emphasizing the importance of large cardinals in set theory before their importance became clear.
4. Paul Erdős (1913-1996, Hungary)
Erdös (pronounced "air-dish") structured his life to maximize the amount of time he had for mathematics. He had no wife or children, no job, no hobbies, not even a home, to tie him down. He lived out of a shabby suitcase and a drab orange plastic bag from Centrum Aruhaz ("Central Warehouse"), a large department store in Budapest. In a never-ending search for good mathematical problems and fresh mathematical talent, Erdös crisscrossed four continents at a frenzied pace, moving from one university or research center to the next. His modus operandi was to show up on the doorstep of a fellow mathematician, declare, "My brain is open," work with his host for a day or two, until he was bored or his host was run down, and then move on to another home.Erdös first did mathematics at the age of three, but for the last twenty-five years of his life, since the death of his mother, he put in nineteen-hour days, keeping himself fortified with 10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin, strong espresso, and caffeine tablets. "A mathematician," Erdös was fond of saying, "is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." When friends urged him to slow down, he always had the same response: "There'll be plenty of time to rest in the grave."
5. Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles was born on April 11, 1953, in Cambridge, England. His father, Maurice, was the Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. Since he was a young child, Andrew was always interested in mathematics. He would finish all of his schoolwork only to make up new math problems that he solved on his own. He also rented out books from the library near him, which he used to find new math problems that would challenge and teach him.Wiles has done a number of interviews about his proof and he has even been featured on several different television shows. Some of the awards he has been given include the Schock Prize in 1995, the Royal Medal in 1996, the King Faisal Prize in 1998, the Pythagoras Award in 2004 and the Shaw Prize in 2005. Today, Andrew Wiles is living in the United Kingdom, which is where he is a citizen. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and he spends a lot of time traveling. Andrew married before he found proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem and is currently still married with two children.
6. Grogori Perelman (born 1966, Russia)
Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman's parents are Yakov Perelman, an electrical engineer, and Lubov Lvovna, who was a teacher of mathematics at a technical college. They were Jewish, which would present their son with some problems in a country where it was feared that those of Jewish descent had divided loyalty. Grigori Yakovlevich, their first child, is often known by the name Grisha. As a young child Grisha was taught to play the violin both by his mother and by a private tutor. His father also had a major influence in developing his son's problem solving skills.On 11 November 2002, Perelman put his paper The Entropy Formula for the Ricci Flow and Its Geometric Applications on the web. Although he did not claim in the paper to be able to solve the Poincaré Conjecture, when experts in the subject read it they realized that he had made the breakthrough necessary to solve the Conjecture. Quickly he received invitations to visit the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began making plans for the visits and, before setting off, he posted a second paper Ricci flow with surgery on three-manifolds on the web continuing his proof. He arrived in the United States in April 2003 and went first to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he gave talks on his work for most days in the two weeks he was there. He spent two similar weeks at Stony Brook followed by visits to Columbia University and Princeton University where he gave lectures. He turned down all offers of professorships that were made to him, becoming annoyed at the pressure some put on him to accept.
Terence Tao is known to his friends and colleagues as Terry Tao. His father, Billy Tao, is a Chinese-born pediatrician who has undertaken research on educating gifted children and on autism. Terry's mother, Grace, was born in Hong Kong and has a university degree in physics and mathematics. Billy and Grace met while they were studying at the University of Hong Kong and they emigrated to Australia in 1972. Grace Tao taught physics, chemistry, science and mathematics in various secondary schools in Hong Kong before she emigrated to Australia and, once in Australia, also taught in secondary schools there. Terry, the subject of this biography, is their eldest child, having two younger brothers Trevor and Nigel.
Terence Tao is a mathematical prodigy and Fields medalist. Tao is one of the only 2 children who achieved a SAT score greater than 700. As of this writing, he remains the youngest participant of the International Mathematics Olympiad, winning bronze at the age of 10, silver at the age of 11, and gold at the age of 13. He received his PhD in mathematics and at the age of 20.
He is known for his work his combinatorics, harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, and analytic number theory. He proved the Green-Tao theorem.
To know more about him, please click this video link:
To know more about him, please click this video link:
Sources:
- http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Perelman.html
- http://famous-mathematicians.org/andrew-wiles/
- http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-man.html
- http://www.google.com
- http://mathandmultimedia.com/2012/06/20/7-extraordinary-mathematicians/
- http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/variste-galois-423.php
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/
- http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/srinivasa-ramanujan-503.php
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