By: Trever Hale 3 FAMOUS MATHEMATICIANS

LEONARDO `BIGOLLO' PISANO (FIBONACCI) Leonardo `Bigollo' Pisano (Fibonacci)- this guy was first person to introduce the decimal system and other new methods of arithmetic to Europe, and relayed the mathematics of the Hindus, Persians, and Arabs. He also re-introduced older Greek ideas like Mersenne numbers and Diophantine equations. Leonardo is most famous for his book Liber Abaci, but his Liber Quadratorum, provides the best demonstration of his skill. Leonardo provided Europe with the decimal system, algebra and the 'lattice' method of multiplication, all far superior to the methods then in use.

MORE LEONARDO One of Leonardo’s achievements was the noteworthy achievement where he was proving that the roots of a certain cubic equation could not have any of the constructible forms Euclid had outlined in Book 10 of his Elements. He introduced notation like 3/5; his clever extension of this for quantities like 5 yards, 2 feet, and 3 inches is more efficient than today's notation. Before the decimal system, mathematicians had no notation for zero. Histories describe him as bringing Islamic mathematics to Europe.

PICTURES OF LEONARDO

JOHANN CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS Carl Friedrich Gauss exhibited his calculative powers when he corrected his father's arithmetic before the age of three. He demonstrated his math skills at the age of twelve, when he began questioning the axioms of Euxclid. His genius was confirmed at the age of nineteen when he proved that the regular n-gon was constructible if n is the product of distinct prime Fermat numbers. Also at age 19, he proved Fermat's conjecture that every number is the sum of three triangle numbers.

MORE CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS Although he published fewer papers than some other great mathematicians, Gauss may be the greatest theorem prover ever. Gauss himself used "Fundamental Theorem" to refer to Euler's Law of Quadratic Reciprocity; Gauss was first to provide a proof for this, and provided eight distinct proofs for it over the years. Gauss proved the n=3 case of Fermat's Last Theorem for a class of complex integers; though more general, the proof was simpler than the real integer proof, a discovery which revolutionized algebra.

EVEN MORE!!! Work by Carl Friedrich led to … Fundamental Theorems in statistics Vector Analysis Function Theory Generalizations of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. He created the regular 17-gon as a teenager was actually an exercise in complex- number algebra, not geometry. Gauss was the premier number theoretician of all time.

PICTURES OF CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS

MORE PICTURES OF GAUSS HE WAS ON THE MONEY AND THE STAMS

JOAN BIRMAN Joan Sylvia Lyttle Birman is a mathematician in the braid and knot theory. She went to college at Barnard College and got her B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University. She also received her Ph.D in 1968 from the courant Institute. NYU was the institute that she received her Ph.D. Her first position was at the stevens institute of technology