Famous Mathematicians
PYTHAGORAS
Pythagoras lived in the 6th Century BC and none of his writings have survived. We do not know how he proved his theorem (in a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides) but so far more than 300 different proofs have been discovered.
ERATOSTHENES OF ALEXANDRIA (276-194BC)
A brilliant mathematician, poet and geographer! He was a friend of Archimedes. He used mathematics and shadows cast by the sun to prove that the earth was curved. He developed a 'sieve' for finding prime numbers.
LEONARDO FIBONACCI (1170-1250)
Fibonacci wrote the book 'Liber Abaci' in 1202AD. He adopted the Hindu Arabic System of mathematical notation. His work covered geometry and trigonometry. He is more widely known for his Fibonacci Sequence of numbers, for example a series beginning 0,1 is continued 0,1,2,3,5,8,13, and so forth.
KARL FRIEDERICK GAUSS (1777-1855)
One of the 3 greatest mathematicians of all time, along with Archimedes and Newton. He mastered many languages and was an astronomer. At the age of ten he discovered a quick method of finding the sum of the digits from 1 to 1000!