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List of Famous Mathematicians and Their Contributions

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Al Khawarizmi

Al Khawarizmi was a Persian mathematician who worked in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and geography. He has been named as the father of algebra. He was responsible for spreading the Hindu-Arabic Numeral system to the Middle East and Europe.

Born 780 CE
Died After 847
Areas worked Arithmetic, algebra, astronomy

Archimedes

Archimedes was a Greek mathematician and astronomer from the city of Syracuse. He is considered as one of the greatest mathematician of all the time. Archimedes worked on many geometrical theorems like the area of circle, surface area and volume of sphere, area of an ellipse, area under a parabola and the area of spiral. His very famous Archimedes Principle has been universally accepted.

Born 287 BC
Died 212 BC
Birth Place Syracuse, Italy
Famous for Archimedes Principle

Aryabhata

Aryabhata was an Indian mathematician and astronomer in Gupta era. He worked on topics such as finding of square and cube roots, mensuration, arithmetic progression, quadratic equations, linear and indeterminate equations. He calculated the value of π upto 4 decimal places.

Born 476 CE
Died 550 CE
Birth Place Pataliputra, Gupta Empire

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician in the 17th century. He worked on Probability and conic sections when he was teenager only. Later he introduced a tabular representation of binomial coefficients which is now known as pascal’s triangle.

Born 19 June 1623
Died 19 August 1662
Birth Place Paris, France
Areas worked Probability, Conic sections
Famous for Pascal triangle

Carl Freidrich Gauss

Carl Freidrich Gauss was a German mathematician and considered as the most influential mathematicians of the history. He started solving many problems of maths since his early childhood. Many terms in algebra, geometry, number theory and physics are after his name.

Born 30 April 1777
Died 23 February 1855
Birth Place Brunswick, Germany

Euclid

Euclid was of Greek origin and is also known as father of geometry. Euclid’s birthdate is unknown and 325 BCE – 265 BCE is an estimated time period of his life. He is one of the most influential mathematician in history of mathematics due to his written work on fundamentals of geometry in Elements.

Born 325 BCE
Died 265 BCE
Birth Place Greece
Areas worked Geometry
Famous for Elements

Fancios Vitea

Fancios Vitea was a French mathematician who worked on algebra who first created symbolic algebra. He was a lawyer by trade though.

Born 1540
Died 23 February 1603
Birth Place France
Famous for Viète’s formula

George Rheticus

George Rheticus was born in Austria and is known for his trigonometric tables.

Born 16 February 1514
Died 4 December 1574
Birth Place Austria
Areas worked Trigonometry

Heron or Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexendria is also known as Heron of Alexendria and was Greek mathematician and worked in the field of physics also. He worked most of his life in his native city Alexendria. He is remembered for his known Heron’s formula to find the area of a triangle from length of its sides.

Born 10 AD
Died 70 AD
Birth Place Alexendria, Egypt
Areas worked Mathematics, Physics
Famous for Heron’s Formula

Pierre De Fermat

Pierre De Fermat was a French mathematician who researched into the number theory and has played a significant role in early developments of infinitesimal calculus. He is known for his Fermat’s last theorem in number theory.

Born 1607
Died 12 January, 1665
Birth Place France
Areas worked Number Theory
Famous for Fermat’s last theorem

Pierre Simon Laplace

Pierre Simon Laplace was a French mathematician and a polymath who worked in the fields of mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy and philosophy. He formulated Laplace’s equation and have been famous for his Laplace transform. He is honored as the greatest scientist of all time.

Born 23 March 1749
Died 5 March 1827
Birth Place France
Famous for Laplace transform

Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and known abouts his life are ambiguous but as per little knowledge to known his birth place is Samos. He is well remembered for his historical discovery in mathematics and is famous for Pythagoras Theorem.

Born 495 BC
Died 510 BC
Birth Place Greece
Areas worked Mathematics
Famous for Pythagoras Theorem

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes was a French mathematician, a philosopher and scientist. He introduced Cartesian geometry or Coordinate geometry which is a widely used branch in mathematics.

Born 31 March 1596
Died 11 February 1650
Birth Place France
Areas worked Geometry and Algebra

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who contributed to number theory, infinite series and continued fractions in his short span of life only. He was the youngest to receive Fellows of the Royal Society and elected as Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Born 22 December 1887
Died 26 April 1920
Birth Place India

Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and is known as Father of Science. He is much famous for his theorems that the diameter of a circle subtends a right angle at any point on the circle and the well known Basic Proportionality Theorem.

Born 626 BC
Died 548 BC
Birth Place Greece
Areas worked Geometry
Famous for Thales Theorem
Last updated on: 08-01-2025

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