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The Warriors
Mouse over the images of
these great Mathematicians to view their image as your Maths Warrior
today.
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Al’Khwarizmi
Thought to have lived from 780 until 850 in Baghdad, Iraq, Khwarizmi
was an Arab scholar. He is most famous for a latin translation of his
work on the Arabic number system. Out of that translation came algebra
and algorithm. Khwarizmi also classified the solution of quadratic
equations, and gave geometric methods for completing the square.
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Archimedes
Born to one Phidias, an astronomer, in 287 B.C., Archimedes confounded
contemporaries of the time with his uncanny arithmetical wizardry and
engineering genius until his death in 212 B.C. He was most famous for
his proofs of formulas concerning the volume of spheres, cylinders, and
other plane geometric figures.
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Blaise Pascal
Born June 19th, 1623 in Clermont, France, Pascal made many profound
contributions to the field of Mathematics. He created a functional
calculator, clarified the often misunderstood concepts regarding conic
sections, added greatly to our understanding of the arithmetical
triangle, and created the principles that comprise our modern day
Theory of Probabilities.
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Euclid of Alexandria
Revered as the greatest mathematician of all time, Euclid was a
teacher. He is believed to have lived from 325 B.C. until 265 B.C. in
the city of his birth, Alexandria, Egypt. Best known for his treatise
entitled, "The Elements", Euclid laid out the parameters that comprise
the framework for what is the construct of modern day Geometry.
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Ferdinand
Gotthold Max Eisenstein
Born April 16th, 1823 in Berlin, Germany, Eisenstein understand
mathematical proofs by age six. What intrigued Eisenstein about
mathematics was the extraordinary clarity and self evidence of
theorems, the ingeniousness of the ideas. Eisenstein made significant
contributions in the areas of elliptic functions, quadratic forms, and
quadratic reciprocity.
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Fibonacci
Fibonacci was born in 1170 in Pisa (now Italy). At first a historian
and linguist, Fibonacci became fascinated with numerical symbols from
other cultures, becoming the first to introduce the Hindu-Arabic
place-value decimal system and the use of Arabic numerals to Europe. He
is best remembered for Fibonacci numbers and the Fibonacci sequence.
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Georg Cantor
Born into a wealthy family in St Petersburg, Russia, Cantor became an
accomplished violinist and artist long before his mathematical genius
became apparent. Cantor conceptualized set theory and infinite numbers
and the originator of cardinal numbers. In 1904 Cantor was awarded by
the Royal Society of London with the prestigious Sylvester Medal Fund.
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Joseph-Louise
Lagrangee
Born in Turin, Italy in 1736 to French and Italian ancestry, Lagrange
was exposed to a rich cultural heritage. After reading Halley’s 1693
work on the use of Algebra in optics, he devoted himself to the study
of mathematics. Lagrange’s most notable contributions include his
results on the calculus of variations and the calculus of probabilities.
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Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Born in 1718 in the Milan Hapsburg Empire (now Italy), Agnesi spoke six
different languages by age 16. In 1738, she wrote a series of essays
known as Propositiones Philosophicae which she had to defend.
Thereafter, she began her study of mathematics and wrote her most
famous publication, Instituzioni Analitiche Ad Uso Della Giovent
Italiano, containing her discussion of the cubic curve.
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Pythagoras of Samos Ionia
Born in 580 B.C. Pythagoras is most remembered for "The Pythagorean
Theorem," where, for a right angled triangle, the square of the
hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
He held that at its deepest level, reality, is in effect, of a
mathematical nature. Thus, where vibrating strings produce harmonious
tones, the ratios of the lengths of the strings are whole numbers.
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Takakazu Seki Kawa
Kawa was born in 1642 into a Samurai warrior family in Fujioka, Japan.
A child prodigy, Kawa catalogued a library of information on
mathematical discoveries made by Japanese and Chinese scholars. In 1683
Kawa became the first to study mathematical determinants. He studied
Bernoulli numbers, and added much to the understanding of Diophantine
equations.
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Tsu Ch’ung Chi
A famous Chinese mathematician and astronomer, Chi was born in Fan-yang
(now Hopeh), China in 430. Chi postulated the rational approximation
355/113 to pi which is correct to 6 decimal places. He also proved that
3.1415926 is less than pi which is less than 3.1415927.
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