Famous Math People

Famous Math People

Rene Descartes: Rene Descartes was born on March 3, 1596 in France. An extremely famous French thinker and philosopher, Descartes was also known for his contributions in the field of mathematics. He is credited from providing the base for the modern-day calculus. He created analytical geometry, a field of mathematics combining both geometry and algebra. Descartes spent his final days in Sweden and died on February 11, 1650.

Fibonacci: Born in 1170 in Pisa, Italy, Leonardo of Pisa was popularly known as Fibonacci for his sequential Fibonacci series. He was quite popular for developing Fibonacci numbers, which is a number sequence that is generated by adding the previous two numbers to create a current number. For example: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8… and so on. However, he is not credited with discovering this sequence, but it was named after him because he shared it with the western world.

Albert Einstein: The perpetrator of the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein is considered one of the most intelligent people in the history of mathematics and physics. Born into a Jewish family in Germany on March 14, 1879, Einstein spent most of his years in Italy, Switzerland and United States. His immense contributions in the field of physics and mathematics is evident with his theory of relativity and the famous E=MC2 equation. 

Blaise Pascal: Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. He was a great mathematician known for his contributions to probability. Well, poker players owe him a lot as he is initiated the development of expected value, a theory used in professional poker and gambling games. Pascal was himself interested in gambling and so he developed this theory. His probability theories have also helped many economists and acturarial scientists.