François Viète, also known as the “Father of Modern Algebraic Notation”, was born in 1540 in Fontenay-le-Comte, France. Viète attended school locally during his childhood, but decided to move to the city of Poitiers later on to further his education. Although François is considered the ninth greatest mathematician of all time, his main profession was not studying mathematics. He attended the University of Poitiers and, following in his father’s footsteps, studied law. Despite this fact, Viète is noted to have spent much of his spare time studying astronomy and mathematics because these subjects greatly interested him. In 1560, he graduated with a law degree and became a full-time lawyer. After only four years of working as a professional lawyer, …show more content…
During his time as a counsellor, Viète was well known for his ability to decipher codes in the French war against Spain. Another notable milestone for François came in 1593, when he solved a problem proposed by Andriaan Van Roomen. Roomen, a Flemish mathematician, put forth a challenge to “mathematicians all over the world” to solve an equation consisting of a 45th degree. Viète was the first mathematician to figure out the solution to the problem by realizing that there was a fundamental trigonometric function in the equation. Roomen was very fascinated by François’ response, and the two became close friends. In the following years, the two mathematicians worked together and solved/published numerous mathematical …show more content…
In his book Supplementum Geometriae, Viète introduced solutions to figure out the trisection of an angle and the duplication of a cube solely by using instruments such as a ruler or compass. The findings in this book are based off of the teachings he lectured about early on in his career. François is also credited to being the first person to calculate pi (π) to ten places successfully. He did this by using the method of Archimedes: using a polygon with 393216 sides, and the equation 6 x 216. Viète also was the earliest mathematician to identify pi as an infinite product in 1579. The method he used to configure this was by calculating the area of multiple polygons that can be inscribed in a circle with a diameter of 1. One final contribution to algebra Viète is responsible for is presenting various methods to solve equations consisting of the second, third, and fourth
Philippe Petit changed numerous peoples’ thoughts about the Twin Towers when he performed his high wire walk between them in 1974. Before Philippe Petit walked the high wire between the Twin Towers in 1974, people weren’t certain how they felt about the construction of the World Trade Center. After Philippe performed, people began to warm up to the idea of the towers. Philippe Petit walked the high wire between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974. This event prompted Andrew McMahon to write the song “Platform Fire” about this event for his band, Jack’s Mannequin. This song was not a hit for the band; however, fans of Jack’s Mannequin seem to have a special place in their heart for it.
week! He was unable to go to law school like he wanted to do, so he studied by
O'Connor, J. J., and E. F. Robinson. "Hopper Biography." MacTutor History of Mathematics. University of St Andrews, July 1999. Web. 29 Sept. 2011. .
He took his teaching duties very seriously, while he was preparing lectures for his charge on variety an of topics about science. The first scientific work dates were all from this period. It involves topics, which would continue to occupy him throughout his life. In 1571, he began publication of his track. It was intended to form a preliminary mathematical part of a major study on the Ptolemaic astronomical model. He continued to embrace the Ptolemaic (Parshall 1).
Howard, Eves. An Introduction to the History of Mathematcis. Fifth Edition. New York: The Saunders Series, 1983. Print.
Pierre de Fermat Pierre de Fermat was born in the year 1601 in Beaumont-de-Lomages, France. Mr. Fermat's education began in 1631. He was home schooled. Mr. Fermat was a single man through his life. Pierre de Fermat, like many mathematicians of the early 17th century, found solutions to the four major problems that created a form of math called calculus. Before Sir Isaac Newton was even born, Fermat found a method for finding the tangent to a curve. He tried different ways in math to improve the system. This was his occupation. Mr. Fermat was a good scholar, and amused himself by restoring the work of Apollonius on plane loci. Mr. Fermat published only a few papers in his lifetime and gave no systematic exposition of his methods. He had a habit of scribbling notes in the margins of books or in letters rather than publishing them. He was modest because he thought if he published his theorems the people would not believe them. He did not seem to have the intention to publish his papers. It is probable that he revised his notes as the occasion required. His published works represent the final form of his research, and therefore cannot be dated earlier than 1660. Mr. Pierre de Fermat discovered many things in his lifetime. Some things that he did include: -If p is a prime and a is a prime to p then ap-1-1 is divisible by p, that is, ap-1-1=0 (mod p). The proof of this, first given by Euler, was known quite well. A more general theorem is that a0-(n)-1=0 (mod n), where a is prime...
No other scholar has affected more fields of learning than Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623 in Clermont, France, he was born into a family of respected mathematicians. Being the childhood prodigy that he was, he came up with a theory at the age of three that was Euclid’s book on the sum of the interior of triangles. At the age of sixteen, he was brought by his father Etienne to discuss about math with the greatest minds at the time. He spent his life working with math but also came up with a plethora of new discoveries in the physical sciences, religion, computers, and in math. He died at the ripe age of thirty nine in 1662(). Blaise Pascal has contributed to the fields of mathematics, physical science and computers in countless ways.
His father taught his Latin but after a while saw his son’s greater passion towards mathematics. However, Andre resumed his Latin lessons to enable him to study the work of famous mathematicians Leonhard Euler and Bernoulli. While in the study of his father’s library his favorite study books were George Louis Leclerc history book and Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond Encyclopedia, became Ampere’s schoolmasters (Andre). When Ampere finished in his father’s library he had his father take him to the library in Lyon. While there he studied calculus. A couple of weeks later he was able to do difficult treaties on applied mathematics (Levy, Pg. 135). Later in life he said “the new as much about mathematics when he was 18, than he knew in his entire life. His reading...
...bsp;Using Analytic Geometry, geometry has been able to be taught in school-books in all grades. Some of the problems that are solved using Rene’s work are vector space, definition of the plane, distance problems, dot products, cross products, and intersection problems. The foundation for Rene’s Analytic Geometry came from his book entitled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason in the Search for Truth in the Sciences (“Analytic Geomoetry”).
Born in the Netherlands, Daniel Bernoulli was one of the most well-known Bernoulli mathematicians. He contributed plenty to mathematics and advanced it, ahead of its time. His father, Johann, made him study medicine at first, as there was little money in mathematics, but eventually, Johann gave in and tutored Daniel in mathematics. Johann treated his son’s desire to lea...
William Jones is a famous mathematician the created, and was the first to use, pi. William was born on a farm in Anglesey, then later moved to Llanbabo on Anglesey, then moved again after the death of William's father. He attended a charity school at Llanfechell. There his mathematical talents were spotted by the local landowner who arranged for him to be given a job in London. His job was in a merchant’s counting house. This job had Jones serving at sea on a voyage to the West Indies. He taught mathematics and navigation on board ships between 1695 and 1702. He was serving on a navy vessel which. Navigation was a topic which greatly interested Jones and his first published work was “A New Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation” It was published in 1702, the year he came back from the voyage. In his book, he applied mathematics to navigation, studying methods to calculate position at sea.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was born April 30, 1777 in Brunswick, Germany to a stern father and a loving mother. At a young age, his mother sensed how intelligent her son was and insisted on sending him to school to develop even though his dad displayed much resistance to the idea. The first test of Gauss’ brilliance was at age ten in his arithmetic class when the teacher asked the students to find the sum of all whole numbers 1 to 100. In his mind, Gauss was able to connect that 1+100=101, 2+99=101, and so on, deducing that all 50 pairs of numbers would equal 101. By this logic all Gauss had to do was multiply 50 by 101 and get his answer of 5,050. Gauss was bound to the mathematics field when at the age of 14, Gauss met the Duke of Brunswick. The duke was so astounded by Gauss’ photographic memory that he financially supported him through his studies at Caroline College and other universities afterwards. A major feat that Gauss had while he was enrolled college helped him decide that he wanted to focus on studying mathematics as opposed to languages. Besides his life of math, Gauss also had six children, three with Johanna Osthoff and three with his first deceased wife’s best fri...
Burton, D. (2011). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. (Seventh Ed.) New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
In conclusion, it is clear that while their ancient civilization perished long ago, the contributions that the Egyptians made to mathematics have lived on. The Egyptians were practical in their approach to mathematics, and developed arithmetic and geometry in response to transactions they carried out in business and agriculture on a daily basis. Therefore, as a civilization that created hieroglyphs, the decimal system, and hieratic writing and numerals, the contributions of the Egyptians to the study of mathematics cannot and should not be overlooked.
The 17th Century saw Napier, Briggs and others greatly extend the power of mathematics as a calculator science with his discovery of logarithms. Cavalieri made progress towards the calculus with his infinitesimal methods and Descartes added the power of algebraic methods to geometry. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC in Alexandria, first stated his five postulates in his book The Elements that forms the base for all of his later Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born abo...