René Descartes 1596 to 1650Born La Haye (now Descartes),Touraine, France

Cogito Ergo Sum.

"I think, therefore I am."

Abu Arrayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni973 - 1048

Born in Kara-Kalpakskaya, Uzbekistan

Once a sage asked why scholars always flock to the doors of the rich, whilst the rich are not inclined to call at the doors of scholars. "The scholars" he answered , "are well aware of the use of money, but the rich are ignorant of the nobility of science"

Archimedes of Syracuse 287 BC - 212 BC

Born in Syracuse, Sciliy, Italy

“Give me a place to stand

and I will move the earth.”

On the lever

Charles Babbage

1791 - 1871Born in London, England

“Errors using inadequate data are much less

than those using no data at all.”

Niels Henrik David Bohr1885 - 1962

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark

“An expert is a man who has made all the

mistakes, which can be made, in

a very narrow field”

Girolamo Cardano1501 - 1576

Born in Pavia, Italy

Quinquies exscriptus, maneat tot millibus

annis.“I wrote it out five

times, may it last the same number of

millennia.”

Lewis Carroll1832 - 1898Born in Daresbury, England

“The different branches of

Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction,

Uglification, and Derision.”

Alice in Wonderland.

Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind

1831 - 1916

Born in Braunschweig, Germany

“Numbers are the free creation

of the human mind”

Albert Einstein1879 - 1955

Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German

and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove

untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany

will declare that I am a Jew.”

Euclid of Alexandria about 325 BC - about 265 BCBorn in Greece?

A youth who had begun to read geometry with Euclid, when he had learnt the first

proposition, inquired, "What do I get by learning these

things?" So Euclid called a slave and said "Give him threepence, since he must

make a gain out of what he learns."

Galileo Galilei1564 – 1642Born in Pisa, Italy

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble

reasoning of a single individual.”

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss1777 – 1855

Born in Brunswick, Germany

“Mathematics is the queen of the

sciences and number theory is

the queen of mathematics.”

Omar Khayyam

1048 – 1122Born in Nishapur, Persia (now Iran)

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having

writ,Moves on : nor all thy

Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya1850 – 1891Born in Moscow

“It is impossible to be a

mathematician without being a poet in soul.”

Leonardo da Vinci 1452 – 1519Born in Vinci (near Empolia), Italy

“There are three classes of people.

Those who see; those who see when they are shown; those who do

not see.”

Pierre-Simon Laplace1749 – 1827Born in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France

“What we know is not much.

What we do not know is

immense.”(Allegedly his last words.)

Benoit Mandelbrot1924 – Born in Warsaw, Poland

“Being a language, mathematics may be

used not only to inform but also,

among other things, to seduce.”

Sir Isaac Newton1643 – 1727Born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England

“If I have been able to see

further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of

giants.”

Pythagoras of Samos about 569 BC - about 475 BCBorn in Samos, Ionia

“Every man has been made by

God in order to acquire

knowledge and contemplate.”

Blaise Pascal1623 – 1662Born in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France

“We are usually convinced more easily

by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others”

Plato

427 BC - 347 BCBorn in Athens, Greece

“Let no one ignorant of

Mathematics enter here.”

Alfréd Rényi1921 – 1970Born in Budapest, Hungary

“If I feel unhappy, I do

mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy”

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger1887 – 1961Born in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria

“I don't like it, and I'm sorry I

ever had anything to do

with it.”[On quantum mechanics ]

Alan Mathison Turing1912 – 1954Born in London, England

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be

done.”

Ulugh Beg 1393 – 1449Born in Soltaniyeh, Timurid, Iran

“It is the duty of every true

Muslim, man and woman, to

strive after knowledge.”

Erik Christopher Zeeman1925 – Born in Japan

“Technical skill is mastery of complexity

while creativity is mastery of simplicity”