Mount Rushmore: Mathematicians

[Passacaglia]

Just trying to sense some public opinion. Since I study math, I don't really know which mathematicians are more well-known than others. So, to gauge this popularity, I figured I'd make it into a Mount Rushmore thang!

[Honolulu_Blue]

Euclid
Pythagoras
Russel Crowe from a "Beautiful Mind"
"Good" Will Hunting.

[QuikSand]

Here's one stab at this:

Pythagoras
Newton
Descartes
Einstein


Isolating people as mathematicians might be tough -- as far as the general populace is concerned, it's probably difficult to separate from people who made great achievements that involved math, which might be a slightly different list than you're seeking here.

[QuikSand]

Leaving off Euclid was an error on my part, not a deliberate decision. He belongs, for certain.

[BrianD]

I would think Pascal would need to be on the list....and maybe Euler?

[Mustang]

Fermat
Pythagoras
Archimedes
Count von Count

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Here's one stab at this:

Pythagoras
Newton
Descartes
Einstein


Isolating people as mathematicians might be tough -- as far as the general populace is concerned, it's probably difficult to separate from people who made great achievements that involved math, which might be a slightly different list than you're seeking here.

That's a valid point, and one that maybe I should have made clear from the beginning. I'm definitely looking for people who, when you read their names, you think, "oh, yeah...math." In my case, I'm working on a list of 8 or 9 myself, and it has Descartes, but not Einstein. But I agree, it's a difficult distinction to make.

[QuikSand]

Newton's greatest achivements aren't considered mathematical at their core -- but he did, essentially, invent an entire branch of mathematics to best express his notions of physics. A parallel argument can be made for Einstein, I think, though perhaps less compelling. I'd boot Al from my list for Euclid, given a second chance, but I'd keep Ike.

[rowech]

Can't include Einstein. He's more science...Newton's a similar argument but he invented/created/discovered arguably the most important math ever.

My selections:

Euclid
Newton

After that, the other two would come from:

Pythagoras
Archimedes
Pascal
Descartes
Euler
Fibanocci
Gauss

[Grammaticus]

The guy who invented the Abacus.

[Celeval]

Originally Posted by Mustang

Count von Count

Four! Four famed mathematicians... ha ha ha.

[panerd]

Euclid
Decartes
Newton/Leibniz
Pythagoras

[Bee]

The first four that came to my mind were:

Euclid
Descartes
Archimedes
Pythagoras

I don't really associate Newton with math but more with physics, but that is just my point of view.

edit:
Man, I can't spell worth a crap...

[Surtt]

From everything I have read Einstein was week in mathematics.


Newton
Euler
Euclid
Gauss

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Surtt

From everything I have read Einstein was week in mathematics.


Newton
Euler
Euclid
Gauss

Thanks Surtt, I don't feel so bad about my spelling now.

[TredWel]

Euclid
Pascal
Euler
Gauss

Euclid is a shoe-in for inventing Geometry, and Euler and Gauss have to be put on there for the sheer number of contributions they gave the mathematical world. Pascal is the wild card, I could have just as easily gone with Archimedes.

[Grammaticus]

Top 4:

1. Carl F. Gauss
2. Sir Isaac Newton
3. Leonhard Euler
4. Archimedes of Syracuse

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Just trying to sense some public opinion

Okay, to take an IWS-style stab at it:

Pythagoras
Nash
Newton
Einstein

Of course, I'm not sure if any of these guys would consider themselves true mathematicians, but I would figure that public sentiment would gravitate towards these names.

[Surtt]

Originally Posted by Bee

Thanks Surtt, I don't feel so bad about my spelling now.

Well....
It made it through my spell checker. I need a usage checker.
(or maybe just proof read)

[Vegas Vic]

Newton
Einstein
Lefty Rosenthal
Stu Ungar

[judicial clerk]

Newton would be on a mount rushmore for humans generally

[st.cronin]

I am a big fan of Roger Boscovich. He's probably too obscure for a Rushmore nomination, though.

[dixieflatline]

Originally Posted by Surtt

From everything I have read Einstein was week in mathematics.


Newton
Euler
Euclid
Gauss

I like this list. I like it a lot. I think I would put them in this order: Euclid, Euler, Gauss (all close togather then a gap) Newton.

While I don't think any of these names should be in the top 4 they deserve to be discussed and I hadn't seen them listed before:
Cauchy
Fourier
Hilbert
Laplace
Poincare' (who's conjecture appears to be finally solved for a cool million)
Riemann (is his hypothesis the hardest problem in math unsolved?)

[Glengoyne]

Who was that guy in Good Will Hunting?

[yabanci]

Grigory Perelman

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by yabanci

Grigory Perelman

If someone had asked me to describe how a mathematician should look, I would have described a mirror image of this guy.

[Glengoyne]

Off the top of my head I came up with

Pythagoras(sp?)
Euclid
Fibonacci(sp?) --probably not in the same class, but I like his numbers.
My Wife --The only mathematician that I've ever gotten into my bed.

[yabanci]

Originally Posted by Groundhog

If someone had asked me to describe how a mathematician should look, I would have described a mirror image of this guy.

I thought the same thing as well. I find his story extremely fascinating. Here's a more detailed article if anyone is insterested:

Meet the cleverest man in the world (who's going to say no to a $1m prize)

James Randerson, science correspondent
Wednesday August 16, 2006
The Guardian

He is possibly the cleverest person on the planet: an enigmatic and reclusive genius who shocked the academic world with his claim to have solved one of the hardest problems in maths. He is tipped to win a "maths Nobel" for his work on possible shapes of the universe. But rumours are rife that the brilliant Russian mathematician will spurn the greatest accolade his peers can bestow.

Since Grigory "Grisha" Perelman revealed his solution in 2002 to a century-old maths problem, it has been subjected to unparalleled scrutiny by the best academic minds. But no one has been able to find a mistake and there is a growing consensus that he has cracked the problem.

So, next Tuesday he is tipped to win a Fields medal. But even by the standards of troubled maths virtuosos such as John Nash, portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind, Dr Perelman is described as "unconventional".

He has said he will refuse a $1m prize offered by a private maths research institute in the US that would be his if his claim is proved correct. And upper echelons of the maths world are buzzing with rumours that even if he is offered the gong he will not accept it. The medals are open to mathematicians under 40 years old at the beginning of the prize year. Dr Perelman turned 40 in June so this is the last year that he can win.

He has also refused a major European maths prize, supposedly on the grounds that he did not believe the committee awarding the prize was sufficiently qualified to judge his work.

"I just don't see him turning up in a stretch limo with four over-endowed women and waving his cheque in the air. It's not his style," said Jeremy Gray, a maths historian at the Open University.

"I think he's a very unconventional person. He's against being involved in pageantry and idolatry," said Arthur Jaffe at Harvard University. "But he carries it to extreme which people might describe as a little crazy."

Little is known about Dr Perelman, who refuses to talk to the media. He was born on June 13 1966 and his prodigious talent led to his early enrolment at a St Petersburg school specialising in advanced mathematics and physics. At the age of 16, he won a gold medal with a perfect score at the 1982 International Mathematical Olympiad, a competition for gifted schoolchildren.

After receiving his PhD from the St Petersburg State University, he worked at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics before moving to the US in the late 80s to take posts at various universities. He returned to the Steklov about 10 years ago to work on his proof of the universe's shape.

The maths world was set humming in 2002 by the first instalment of his ground-breaking work on the problem which was set out by the French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Jules Henri Poincaré in 1904. The conjecture, which is difficult for most non-mathematicians even to understand, exercised some of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

It concerns the geometry of multidimensional spaces and is key to the field of topology. Dr Perelman claims to have solved a more general version of the problem called Thurston's geometrisation conjecture, of which the Poincaré conjecture is a special case.

"It's a central problem both in maths and physics because it seeks to understand what the shape of the universe can be," said Marcus Du Sautoy at Oxford University, who will be giving this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. "It is very tricky to pin down. A lot of people have announced false proofs of this thing."

The obsession with the problem, shared by several great mathematicians, has been dubbed Poincaritis.

But Dr Perelman seems to have succeeded where so many failed. "I think for many months or even years now people have been saying they were convinced by the argument," said Nigel Hitchin, professor of mathematics at Oxford University. "I think it's a done deal."

Even the way he announced his proof - which took eight years to complete - was unusual. Rather than publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, he posted three manuscripts in an online archive of maths and physics papers.

"He placed the papers on the web archive and basically said 'that's it'," Prof Hitchin said. "A lot of details needed to be filled in. And there's a bit of squabbling in the background actually about who was first to fill in the details." The most recent of the papers fleshing out his proof runs to a mind-numbing 473 pages.

There is more than just professional acclaim at stake. In 2000, the Clay Institute in Boston, a private maths research organisation, established seven "millennium problems", each with a million-dollar reward for a solution. The Poincaré conjecture is one, but Dr Perelman has said he is not interested in the money. "There are all sorts of jokes going round the community that having a million dollars in St Petersburg is quite dangerous," Prof Hitchin said.

No one is quite sure what will happen if the Russian spurns the medal. "If he were to win it and turn it down it would be slightly insulting," said Prof Du Sautoy. But it seems unlikely that Dr Perelman, who recently relinquished his academic position, will care much about offending his peers. "He has sort of alienated himself from the maths community," Prof Du Sautoy added. "He has become disillusioned with mathematics, which is quite sad. He's not interested in money. The big prize for him is proving his theorem."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/...851095,00.html

[sterlingice]

pi - tasty favorite of circle drawers everywhere
X - sure, he always co-stars with Y but his name always goes first
e - underrated dark horse crops up in so many places
2/3rds - I think we all know about this one

SI

[Alf]

My list (before looking at other guys list)

Pythagoras
Thales (might not be considered a mathematician, but his names was the first to pop)
Pascal
Descartes

[dixieflatline]

Taking the million and donating it would be a much better idea than not taking it at all. I can think of several charities running in Russia that would welcome that money.

[ntndeacon]

I will have to do a list when I have a bit more time, but just a oint of clarification. Euclid did not invent geometry. His Elements is one of the most enfluential mathematical texxts to be sure, but there is reason to believe that he did not come up with most of the informatino contained in it.

[st.cronin]

"informatino" sounds like a character on the Sopranos.

[ntndeacon]

Al-Kwarismi Arab mathematician c760-c840 his name is where algorithm comes from. One of his works is where we get the word algebra from. Oh and he is the one who brought us Hindi-Arabic numerals

Gauss

Euler

my fourth probably died too young to really be included, but it shows my prejudice toward algebraists
Galois

[General Mike]

Originally Posted by yabanci

Grigory Perelman

Looks like my Calc 1 teacher at Rutgers.

[Buccaneer]

For pure modern mathematicians, who's the one that died recently but had been truly eccentric (like most, I suppose) and said, "my mind is open?". I saw a book about him from my Dad.

[Alf]

Isn't it Mendelbroot ? The fractals "finder"

[Aardvark]

Carl Frederich Gauss - possibly the most brilliant person ever.
Paul Erdos - "The man who loved only math" -- probably the most brilliant mathematician of this century.
Leonard Euler - founder of graph theory
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - basically co-discovered everything that Newton did (mathematically), but actually published.

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

For pure modern mathematicians, who's the one that died recently but had been truly eccentric (like most, I suppose) and said, "my mind is open?". I saw a book about him from my Dad.

Paul Erdos -- the book is "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers". There is a metric called "The Erdos Number", defined as follows:

Erdos's Erdos number is 0.
Anyone who coauthored a paper with Erdos has an Erdos number of 1.
Anyone who coauthored a paper with someone else with an Erdos number has an Erdos number equal to the minimum Erdos number among their coauthors +1.
Anyone else has an Erdos number of infininty.

[Hammer755]

I was just reading about Perelman in the Wiki the other day, as the Fields Medal presentation was one of their front-page articles. Apparently, he has quit mathematics altogether and now lives in poverty with his mother, and still will decline the award and prize money.

The math community has seemed to bend over backwards to accomodate him. IIRC, his work was not eligible to win the award since it didn't follow the standard procedure of publication in a recognized professional journal. However, the judges determined that his work had been in the public record and scrutinized for so long that they were willing to waive the journal stipulation.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Paul Erdos -- the book is "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers". There is a metric called "The Erdos Number", defined as follows:

Erdos's Erdos number is 0.
Anyone who coauthored a paper with Erdos has an Erdos number of 1.
Anyone who coauthored a paper with someone else with an Erdos number has an Erdos number equal to the minimum Erdos number among their coauthors +1.
Anyone else has an Erdos number of infininty.

That's the one, thank you. I remember scanning through the book and while I'm not much a math type, I was more interested in his personality and eccentricities. Here's a good summary from wiki

He spent most of his life as a vagabond, travelling between scientific conferences and the homes of colleagues all over the world. He would typically show up at a colleague's doorstep and announce "my brain is open", staying long enough to collaborate on a few papers before moving on a few days later. In many cases, he would ask the current collaborator about whom he (Erdős) should visit next.

[Toddzilla]

I got my MS in Math from Virginia Tech and I spoke to my father-in-law about this - he happens to be one of the most renowned mathematicians at NASA and is the expert in his field of aeroacoustic engineering. Anyhow, I posed this question to him, and he immediately came up with this list:

Archimedes
Gauss
Newton
Poincare

I asked him who he woild consider a close 5th and he said stoically "there is no one a close 5th."

...but he did say Euler would be a good alternate.