Who and why?

Im going with Leibniz because from what I heard, not only did he invent calculus and design a bunch of other shit, but he was also a man whore. I bet he got way more action than Newton ever did.

Euler. He was incredibly prolific, doing half of it while totally blind.

Riemann and Cartan are prolific geometers, and, as I'm a huge fan of geometry, they're my heroes in maths. Riemann's most famous contribution to geometry is that of curved spaces and that of the complex plane. For Cartan it's groups and differential geometry, for example he was a big influence in the study of Lie groups and initiated the study of differential forms, the geometry of moving frames and spinors.

[This message has been edited by icantthinkofaname (edited 03-07-2006).]

I'm gonna have to go with Pythagerous(sp?) because I like geometry/trig. Plus the name just sounds cool

probably russel and godel, for the profound impact their work had on the foundations of mathematics.

Gaolios.

He had a pretty rough life so its almost a vote out of sympathy. The French government were plotting to kill him for ages; one of his friends got sniped in the head [the shot was meant for him] right in front of him.

Then the French government planned him to fall in love with a french mistress in an affair. The husband of which was the finest shot in all of France, who didn't hesitate challenge him to a duel.

Seeing as all duel's are at midnight; Gaolios had to sum up his life's work in one evening. Hurrying to write it all down. He was shot and died. He died at 20 had only been studing maths for 5 years.

Poor sod; one of the greatest mathmatical minds ever conceived. He gave theories on the "group theory".

opps I'm waffling. my apologies

Euler: An imaginary number to the power of an imaginary number equals a real number? Pure genius.

I suppose one does really have to be thinking outside of the box to come up with imaginery numbers.

Lets suppose you can take the root of -1 and spend years contemplating it further.

Leibniz or Newton

For the whole calculus thing. I have no idea how they thought about that shit... Genius!

Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris?
Does he do math with his beard, an UZI, an MP5 between his teeth, while riding a snowmobile down Mt. Everest after destroying the terrorist "secret" nuclear weapon production facility, and while fucking a chick who was rescued from King Kong?

I think thats more along the lines of Einstein actually.

Mine is Euclid.

Why? Complex simplicity of math, Geometry to be more exact.

Srinivasa Ramanujan. He had unparalleled raw mathematical talent. With limited formal training, he independently rederived much of modern mathematics, and then some.

"The limitations of his knowledge were as startling as its profundity. Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems... to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was... beyond that of any mathematician in the world, who had found for himself the functional equation of the Zeta function and the dominant terms of many of the most famous problems in the analytic theory of numbers; and yet he had never heard of a doubly periodic function or of Cauchy's theorem, and had indeed but the vaguest idea of what a function of a complex variable was..."
-G.H. Hardy

Richard Feynman

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Originally posted by jsaxton14:
Srinivasa Ramanujan. He had unparalleled raw mathematical talent. With limited formal training, he independently rederived much of modern mathematics, and then some.

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yeah, that guy was a freak! he was rumored to have come up with complex expansions for pi right of the top of his head, then he would set out to prove them... freak!

Definatly Newton. When he was studying the planets and found that he couldn't figure out what the hell was going on using the math at the time, did he give up? No, he invented calculus!

EDIT: yeah that indian guy was really smart. He made a series that predicted 8 more correct digits of pi for each new term!

[This message has been edited by Sentinel (edited 03-14-2006).]

Andrew Wiles for proving Fermat's last theorem.

Gauss

wolfgang groebner, b/c groebner bases own your ballz.

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Originally posted by HandicapParking:
Chuck Norris

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For advancements in the Newtonian mechanics of directing foot into face.

John Von Neumann- he did it all. Conceived and implemented the basic computer architecture still in use today. Formulated mathematical principles relating infinite dimensional space used in quantum mechanics. Significantly advanced the Manhatton Project. Steadily contributed to both classical and applied mathemetics. During his short life, he moved the world. His brilliance is renowned.

I didn't think of Neumann, good one.

i don't really have one.

I always had a soft spot for da vinci (if hes even a mathmatician, more of an inventor), but this is moslty because the leader of the ninja turtles was named for him.

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Curves/Curves.html http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Full_Chron.html http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/BiogIndex.html http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.html

Einstein.