1.

3: Notable Mathematicians
There are a lot of notable and creative mathematicians in the history. We will mention only five
of them according to their contributions to mathematics, their creativity, and their journey to reach
this level and the results.
These mathematicians are Isaac Newton, Pierre de Fermat, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Joseph Fourier,
and Leonhard Euler.

Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician born in 1607. Fermat had had a father called
Dominique Fermat and he was wealthy leather merchant. Fermat was one of a four children having
a brother and two sisters and his family lived in a mansion. He went to the University of Orléans
in 1623 but before it Fermat was learning mathematics and his interest to it was born. Fermat had
received his bachelor in civil war at twenty. After a few years, he became interested in mathematical
research. He produced work on maxima and minima which he share with Étienne d’Espagnet who
clearly loved his work and shared mathematical interests with him. In 1631, Fermat married Louise
de Long. He had eight children and five of whom survived.
Fermat was not dealing with mathematics as a profession but a hobby instead. However, he had
significant contributions in number theory, analytic geometry, probability theory, and infinitesimal
calculus. Fermat developed a method to find the minima and maxima of functions to some curves
even before the discovery of calculus.
He was also very famous because of his work on number theory and he was called the father of
modern number theory. He discovered a lot of theorems like Fermat’s little theorem, Fermat’s factor-
ization method, Fermat’s right triangle theorem, polygonal number theorem, two-square theorem,
and Fermat’s last theorem.
Fermat had a habit that he publish few proofs of his results and some theorems did not gave us
his proof. Fermat’s last theorem was mentioned in a copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica. He claimed
that his proof was to small to include his beautiful proof. It was not proven until 1994 by Sir
Andrew Wiles, using some advanced mathematics that was not available to Fermat at his time.
The theorems states that:
an + b n = c n
has solutions if and only if n equals 1 or 2 where a, b c, and n are positive integers. It means that
you can find a square which is a sum of two squares (called the Pythagoras triplets) like 32 + 42 = 52
and a normal positive integer which is a sum of two positive integers (it is obvious). But you can
not find a cube that is a sum of two cubes and you can not find a positive integer raised to the
power of four that is a sum of two positive integers to the power of four each and so on.

Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was an English polymath—which means a person with knowledge in various fields
and subjects—born in 4 January 1643. His dad had died three months before his birth. His
mother remarried and lived with her husband when Newton was three in the care of his maternal
grandmother. From the age of twelve, he was educated at the King’s school in Grantham and when
he was about seventeen years old, his mother attempted to make him a farmer and he hated it. In
1661, Newton joined the Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge’s teaching was
based on Aristotle and Newton read works by Descartes and Galileo Galilei. Fellows were required
to take holy orders and the proof is from the Church of England. Newton was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society in 1672. A lot of doctors see that Isaac Newton was having an autism because
some of his verbs. Also, Newton never married and some people believe that Newton died a virgin.
Newton died in March 1727.
Newton was notable because of his work in mathematics, his development of calculus (beside
Leibniz), optics, and gravity. For his development of calculus was seen in 1661 and most of the
modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz worked in calculus at the same time. Also,
Newton and Leibniz had very different notations for derivatives and calculus notations in general.
Newton also worked in generalized binomial theorem and Newton’s method and it was used to
approximate the roots of polynomials.
Isaac was also known for his massive work in optics and development of some key concepts like
the refraction of light and spectrum. He also developed Newton’s theory of color.
In physics, he developed Newton’s law of motion and Newtonian Mechanics which is the most
basic way to model mechanical situations by forces—its SI unit is Newton on his honour —and
Newton’s law of cooling which is an empirical law
dT
= k(T − Ts )
dt
that describes how the temperature changes through time when two bodies with different temper-
ature contact.

Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician born in 1707. Euler was the oldest of four children.
He had two sisters and a brother. His family moved from Basel (the place where Euler born) to
Riehen in Switzerland because his father became pastor in the local church. When Euler was young,
He received schooling in mathematics from his father. He had taken courses from Jacob Bernoulli.
In 1720 (Euler was thirteen), Euler enterd the University of Basel. This age was unusual at the time.
He had taken a course in the university called Elementary mathematics by Johann Bernoulli—The
younger brother of Jacob Bernoulli—and he soon got to know eachother very well. In 1727, Euler
entered ”Paris Academy Prize Competition”. For the first time, Euler took the second place. Euler
participated in this competition 15 times and won 12 of them. In 1738, he became blind in his right
eye because of his fever. In 1766, Euler was almost blind in his two eyes after a cataract in his
left eye. Although he was blind, Euler was productive. Euler produced one mathematical research
paper every week on average.
Euler is one of the most prolific mathematicians in history if he is not the most. He made
significant contributions in a lot of mathematical areas like infinitesimal calculus, topology, analytic
number theory, graph theory, and complex analysis. He also worked in some physics fields like
mechanics, music theory, and optics.
Euler was the first to use the letter π as the ratio of the circumference of the circle and the
diameter of the same circle. Before Euler, it was called Archimedes Constant and Euler popularized
this usage. He was also the first to use the notation f (x) for functions.
In 1730s, the Basel Problem was introduced and became a famous open problem and Leonhard
Euler solved it. The problem is determining the sum of the reciprocal of natural numbers squared.
Euler found the sum and it is:
∞
X 1 1 1 1 π2
= + + + ... =
k=1
k2 12 22 32 6

Euler also discovered that the the number of vertices V , and the number of edges E, and the
number of faces F of any polyhedral has the relation:

V −E+F =2
For example, the cube has V = 8, F = 6, and E = 12 which satisfies the relation 8−12+6 = 2. This
formula was the origin of topology and the value of V − E + F now is called Euler characteristic.
Euler also introduced a formula for complex exponentials. This formula called Euler’s formula
was a very great and applicable formula in many math areas like trigonometry. Euler’s formula is:

eiθ = cos(θ) + i sin(θ)

If we substitued that θ = π we will find the Euler’s identity eiπ + 1 = 0 which is described as the
most beautiful formula in mathematics.
Joseph Fourier
Joseph Fourier is a french mathematician born in 1768. He was a son of a tailor.Fourier was
orphan at the age of nine. Fourier was educated by the order of the Benedictine. In 1798, Fourier
went to the Egyptian expedition by Napoleon Bonaparte as a scientific adviser. Fourier published
papers in the Cairo Institute.
Fourier worked in the theory of heat in order to have a reasoning of Newton’s law of cooling by
Théorie analytique de la chaleur (The Analytical Theory of Heat). It was believed that Fourier was
the only person to understand the heat flow at his time.
∂T
= K∇2 T
∂t
Fourier also developed the Fourier analysis which is the study of how functions can be represented
in terms of cosine and sine waves.
f (x)

Fourier believed that any function can be represented as a Fourier series but Dirichlet put some
functions that can not be represented by Fourier series and put conditions called Dirichlet conditions
and if any function is satisfying these conditions, it can be represented as a Fourier series.
Also, Fourier series can be used to prove a lot of infinte series problems like:
1 1 1 1 π
1− + − + − ... =
3 5 7 9 4
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an indian mathematician born on 22 December 1887. His father was a
clerk in a sari shop and his mother was a housewife and was singing on a local temple. Ramanujan
and his family lived in Kumbakonam in a traditional home. Since Ramanujan’s father was at work
most of the time, Ramanujan made a very good relationship between him and his mother. His
mother teached him about the tradition which made Ramanujan religious. At the age of eleven,
he had a mathematical knowledge equivalent to a college student. He lent a book written by S.L.
Loney on advanced trigonometry.
When he was sixteen, he read ”A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathe-
matics”. This book was believed later that it affected his way of writing his results.
In 1913, Ramanujan tried to contact with some British mathematicians. Some mathematicians
returned his papers without any comment like E. W. Hobson and H. F. Baker. But G. H. Hardy
was interested in his work. Hardy wrote to Ramanujan a letter that expressed his interests in the
work and he would like to see proofs of the theorems. Hardy also contacted the Indian office to
plan a trip for Ramanujan to Cambridge. At first, Ramanujan refused to go to Cambridge but after
some time, he then accepted.
Ramanujan had a lot of extremely hard mathematical results. One of them is the approximation
of pi that is used now:
∞
1 X (4k)! × (1103 + 26390k)
=
π k=0
(k!)4 × 3964k
Ramanujan also worked in partitions. The partition function p(n) is the number of possible parti-
tions of a positive integer n. For example, p(5) = 7 since 5 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 + 2 + 2 = 1 + 4 =
1 + 1 + 3 = 2 + 3 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 2. Ramanujan finds some congruences that work in the partition
function:
p(5k + 4) ≡ 0 (mod 5)
p(7k + 5) ≡ 0 (mod 7)
p(11k + 6) ≡ 0 (mod 11)
For example, p(9) where 9 is in the form of 5k + 4 is divisible by 5 (p(9) = 30).
Hardy and Ramanujan worked in some of the topics including the partition. They found an
asymptotic expression for p(n) that is used to approximate p(n):
1 √ 2n
p(n) ∼ √ eπ 3
4n 3