René Descartes 1596 to 1650
Born La Haye (now Descartes),Touraine, France
Cogito Ergo
Sum.
"I think,
therefore I am."
Abu Arrayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni
973 - 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 - 1871
Born in London, England
“Errors using
inadequate data
are much less
than those using
no data at all.”
Niels Henrik David Bohr
1885 - 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 Cardano
1501 - 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 Carroll
1832 - 1898
Born 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 Einstein
1879 - 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 BC Born 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 Galilei
1564 – 1642 Born 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 Gauss
1777 – 1855 Born in Brunswick, Germany
“Mathematics is
the queen of the
sciences and
number theory is
the queen of
mathematics.”
Omar Khayyam
1048 – 1122 Born in Nishapur, Persia (now Iran)
“The Moving Finger
writes; and, having
writ,
Moves on : nor all thy
Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to
cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash
out a Word of it.”
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya
1850 – 1891
Born in Moscow
“It is impossible
to be a
mathematician
without being a
poet in soul.”
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 – 1519 Born 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 Laplace
1749 – 1827 Born in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France
“What we know
is not much.
What we do not
know is
immense.” (Allegedly his last words.)
Benoit Mandelbrot
1924 – Born in Warsaw, Poland
“Being a language,
mathematics may be
used not only to
inform but also,
among other things, to
seduce.”
Sir Isaac Newton
1643 – 1727 Born 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 BC Born in Samos, Ionia
“Every man has
been made by
God in order to
acquire
knowledge and
contemplate.”
Blaise Pascal
1623 – 1662 Born 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 BC Born in Athens, Greece
“Let no one
ignorant of
Mathematics
enter here.”
Alfréd Rényi
1921 – 1970 Born 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 Schrödinger
1887 – 1961 Born 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 Turing
1912 – 1954 Born 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 – 1449 Born in Soltaniyeh, Timurid, Iran
“It is the duty of
every true
Muslim, man
and woman, to
strive after
knowledge.”
Erik Christopher Zeeman
1925 – Born in Japan
“Technical skill
is mastery of
complexity
while creativity
is mastery of
simplicity”