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Topic ClosedThe Greatest Mathematician?
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Poll Question: mathematiciWho is the greatest an of all time?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
3 [10.00%]
3 [10.00%]
11 [36.67%]
0 [0.00%]
2 [6.67%]
3 [10.00%]
0 [0.00%]
1 [3.33%]
7 [23.33%]
0 [0.00%]
This topic is closed, no new votes accepted

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cuncuna View Drop Down
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Points: 4318 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 16 2007 at 10:49
It should be me... I reached places in math that changed the facial expression of my teachers all over the school days...
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Points: 15784 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 16 2007 at 20:42
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Georg Cantor is definitely missing on the list. Bertrand Russel should be on the list too, in my opinion.
By the way, Einstein is better known for his contributions to physics, but he had to invent a great part of the mathematics needed for his General Theory of Relativity himself.
I must admit though that the beauty of e i *pi + 1 = 0 has never ceased to amaze me. The 5 most important numbers in the world combined into one formula, two of them being irrational, two others the most basic numbers in the world (and the neutral elements of addtion and multiplication), and one the square root of -1.
 
The first two mentioned were in my mind when making the list, but as I said I wished it to be brief and ultimately I decided to place Fermat and Fourier on the list instead of those two. Einstein crossed my mind however despite being a large idle of mine he wasn't exactly a master mathematician. He said of his General Relativity theory, "Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore."
 
I understand there's a strong element of humor there, but regardless you get the point I'm making.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 16 2007 at 20:57
Newton - not a pure but applied mathematics - surely the most useful kind Wink
What?
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Points: 55 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 20:18
I went with my favourite, Leonard Euler.  I found out that he helped develop modern function notation e.g f(x).
I couldn't vote for Fermat solely because I had to do a presentation on his "Last Theorem" for my Math: Logic and Reasoning class.
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Points: 11682 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 21:18
Gauss is the man. Although the statistician in my is wondering why Bernoulli isn't up there.
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Points: 8844 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:15
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Georg Cantor is definitely missing on the list. Bertrand Russel should be on the list too, in my opinion.
By the way, Einstein is better known for his contributions to physics, but he had to invent a great part of the mathematics needed for his General Theory of Relativity himself.
I must admit though that the beauty of e i *pi + 1 = 0 has never ceased to amaze me. The 5 most important numbers in the world combined into one formula, two of them being irrational, two others the most basic numbers in the world (and the neutral elements of addtion and multiplication), and one the square root of -1.


Actually, three of them are irrational.  i cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers. 

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Points: 8844 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:16
I gotta go with Euler.  He did so much in a huge variety of fields, from proto-calculus to geometry.  

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Points: 11682 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:18
Originally posted by rileydog22 rileydog22 wrote:

Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Georg Cantor is definitely missing on the list. Bertrand Russel should be on the list too, in my opinion.
By the way, Einstein is better known for his contributions to physics, but he had to invent a great part of the mathematics needed for his General Theory of Relativity himself.
I must admit though that the beauty of e i *pi + 1 = 0 has never ceased to amaze me. The 5 most important numbers in the world combined into one formula, two of them being irrational, two others the most basic numbers in the world (and the neutral elements of addtion and multiplication), and one the square root of -1.


Actually, three of them are irrational.  i cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers. 

Doesn't a number have to be real in order to be considered irrational, though? not sure myself.
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Points: 7744 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:20
George Orwell. And I quote,

"Two plus two equals five."
"No, actually, two plus two equals four."
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Points: 166178 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:21
Newton.
 
Euler close behind.
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Points: 8844 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 12 2008 at 23:23
Originally posted by Shakespeare Shakespeare wrote:

George Orwell. And I quote,

"Two plus two equals five."
"No, actually, two plus two equals four."


I don't know why anybody would even bother trying to solve an unsolved question in math (except for the million bucks), as their solution would be doomed to be less awesome than Orwell's elegant proof there. 

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Points: 3613 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 14 2008 at 14:17
I chose Euler. Another notable not on the list but worth mentioning is Johannes Kepler.
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Points: 31169 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 14 2008 at 14:24
From the list, Euler.

For one of, if not the greatest mathematicians of all time, my recommendation is Henri Lebesgue.
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Points: 31169 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 14 2008 at 14:26
Originally posted by moreitsythanyou moreitsythanyou wrote:

Originally posted by rileydog22 rileydog22 wrote:

Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Georg Cantor is definitely missing on the list. Bertrand Russel should be on the list too, in my opinion.
By the way, Einstein is better known for his contributions to physics, but he had to invent a great part of the mathematics needed for his General Theory of Relativity himself.
I must admit though that the beauty of e i *pi + 1 = 0 has never ceased to amaze me. The 5 most important numbers in the world combined into one formula, two of them being irrational, two others the most basic numbers in the world (and the neutral elements of addtion and multiplication), and one the square root of -1.


Actually, three of them are irrational.  i cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers. 

Doesn't a number have to be real in order to be considered irrational, though? not sure myself.


You are correct.  The irrationals are a subset of the reals, and i is not a real number.
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Points: 10261 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 14 2008 at 15:09
Originally posted by NaturalScience NaturalScience wrote:

Originally posted by moreitsythanyou moreitsythanyou wrote:

Originally posted by rileydog22 rileydog22 wrote:

Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Georg Cantor is definitely missing on the list. Bertrand Russel should be on the list too, in my opinion.
By the way, Einstein is better known for his contributions to physics, but he had to invent a great part of the mathematics needed for his General Theory of Relativity himself.
I must admit though that the beauty of e i *pi + 1 = 0 has never ceased to amaze me. The 5 most important numbers in the world combined into one formula, two of them being irrational, two others the most basic numbers in the world (and the neutral elements of addtion and multiplication), and one the square root of -1.


Actually, three of them are irrational.  i cannot be expressed as the quotient of two integers. 

Doesn't a number have to be real in order to be considered irrational, though? not sure myself.


You are correct.  The irrationals are a subset of the reals, and i is not a real number.

i is NOT an irrational number. Imaginary numbers and real numbers exist side by side, the only difference between them being that the imaginary number is a real number being multiplied with i. For each and every real number there exists an imaginary number and vice versa. And then there are the complex numbers, which consist of a sum of a real number and an imaginary number. A complex number has the form a + b*i, with a and b being real numbers. Interestingly complex numbers can be displayed in a coordinate system, with the real part of the number being the x-coordinate and the imaginary part the y-coordinate (this correlation is arbitrary, by the way, and could as well have been chosen the other way round). (2;3), for example, would mean the complex number 2 + 3*i. Instead of giving the Cartesian coordinates it is often very useful to give the polar coordinates of an imaginary number, which show the distance from the center of the coordinate system and the angle to a certain ray (usually given in radians) when dealing with complex numbers, especially when using roots.


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Points: 31169 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 14 2008 at 15:24
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:


i is NOT an irrational number.


I know, that's what I said.
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Points: 6336 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 19 2008 at 12:27
Originally posted by cuncuna cuncuna wrote:

It should be me... I reached places in math that changed the facial expression of my teachers all over the school days...


Ermm...wow
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Points: 2779 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 19 2008 at 17:01
math sucks

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Points: 129 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 25 2008 at 00:39
Lets hear it for Archimedes!       PI ROCKS!
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Points: 413 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 26 2008 at 11:35

I go for Euler.

Where's Laplace?


Edited by Philip - May 23 2008 at 17:17
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