ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Sorted By Birth/1851 - 1900 CE
For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.
- "The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten."
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1851 - 1860
1854
Henri Poincaré
1854 – 1912
Full name: Jules Henri Poincaré.
French mathematician and philosopher.
Often referred to as "The last universalist", as he was the last one able to master the whole of mathematics at the time. (Since then the field has grown too large.)
Introduced the field of special relativity.
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Hans von Mangoldt
1854 – 1925
Full name: Hans Carl Friedrich von Mangoldt.
German mathematician who contributed towards the solution of the Prime Number Theorem.
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1856
Andrey Andreyevich Markov
1856 – 1922
Alternatively rendered Andrei Andreyevich Markov (Russian: Андре́й Андре́евич Ма́рков) .
Russian mathematician best known for his work on stochastic processes.
Elder brother of Vladimir Andreyevich Markov, and father of Andrey Andreyevich Markov Jr.
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Charles Émile Picard
1856 – 1941
French mathematician who made significant advances in the fields of:
Son-in-law of Charles Hermite.
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Walther von Dyck
1856 – 1934
Walther Franz Anton von Dyck was a German mathematician who was one of the pioneers of group theory.
He was originally known as Walther Dyck: the von was added later when he was ennobled.
The first to define a group in the abstract sense. The first to study a group by generators.
A student of Felix Klein.
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Thomas Joannes Stieltjes
1856 – 1894
Thomas Joannes Stieltjes (whose name is also rendered Thomas Jan Stieltjes) was a Dutch mathematician whose main fields of study included continued fractions and measure theory.
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1858
Giuseppe Peano
1858 – 1932
Italian mathematician who contributed significantly to the founding of the fields of mathematical logic and set theory.
Invented many of the symbols used today in these fields.
Worked on the axiomatization of mathematics, and contributed greatly towards the method of mathematical induction.
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1859
Florian Cajori
1859 – 1930
Swiss-born American mathematician who specialized in (and in fact pioneered) the field of mathematics history.
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Ernesto Cesàro
1859 – 1906
Italian mathematician who worked mainly in the fields of differential geometry and number theory.
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Adolf Hurwitz
1859 – 1919
German mathematician who was an early master of the theory of Riemann surfaces.
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Otto Ludwig Hölder
1859 – 1937
German mathematician most famous for his work in analysis (in particular Fourier series) and group theory.
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1860
Jan Cornelis Kluyver
1860 – 1932
Dutch mathematician who made important contributions to analysis, number theory and geometry. He was professor at Leiden University, 1892-1930.
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David Eugene Smith
1860 – 1944
American mathematician and educator best known for his translations of classics.
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1861 - 1870
1861
Alfred North Whitehead
1861 – 1947
English mathematician who also studied philosophy.
Best known for his co-authorship with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica, published from 1910.
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Cesare Burali-Forti
1861 – 1931
Italian mathematician best known for discovering what is now known as the Burali-Forti Paradox.
Disbelieved in the Theory of Relativity, and even went so far as to write a book attempting to refute it.
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Frank Nelson Cole
1861 – 1926
American mathematician famous for finding the factors of the Mersenne number $M_{67}$. (It had already been demonstrated by Édouard Lucas in 1876 that it is not prime, but till this time the factors had not been found.) Cole's demonstration of this in 1903 took the form of a now famous lecture in which he performed the necessary arithmetic on a blackboard, delivering the only totally wordless lecture in recorded history.
The American Mathematical Society's Cole Prize was named in his honor.
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Thomas Little Heath
1861 – 1940
English Civil servant who is best known for his scholarly translations of the Greek classics of mathematics into English.
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1862
David Hilbert
1862 – 1943
One of the most influential mathematicians in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Most famous for the Hilbert 23, a list he delivered in 1900 of 23 problems which were at the time still unsolved.
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Leonard James Rogers
1862 – 1933
English mathematician famous for the Rogers-Ramanujan Identities and for proving a special case of Hölder's inequality.
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1863
Lars Edvard Phragmén
1863 – 1937
Contributed towards the field of complex function theory.
Also contributed towards the field of insurance mathematics.
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William Henry Young
1863 – 1942
English mathematician, who worked on measure theory, Fourier series, differential calculus amongst other fields.
Made brilliant and long-lasting contributions to the study of functions of several complex variables.
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1864
Hermann Minkowski
1864 – 1909
Created and developed the field of geometry of numbers.
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1865
Jacques Salomon Hadamard
1865 – 1963
French mathematician who contributed in the fields of:
Most famous for proving the Prime Number Theorem in 1896, independently of Charles de la Vallée Poussin.
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1866
Charles de la Vallée Poussin
1866 – 1962
Full name: Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, Baron de la Vallée Poussin.
Belgian mathematician famous for proving the Prime Number Theorem, independently of Jacques Hadamard in 1896.
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1867
Derrick Norman Lehmer
1867 – 1938
Derrick Norman Lehmer was an American mathematician active mainly in the field of number theory.
The father of Derrick Henry ("Dick") Lehmer.
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Maxime Bôcher
1867 – 1918
American mathematician who worked on on differential equations, series, and algebra.
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1868
Felix Hausdorff
1868 – 1942
German mathematician fundamental in the development of modern topology.
Also active in set theory, measure theory and function theory.
The first to formulate what is now known as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis.
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Emanuel Lasker
1868 – 1941
German philosopher and mathematician who was also one of the greatest chess-players of all time.
Inventor of the game now known as Lasca.
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1869
Dmitri Fyodorovich Egorov
1869 – 1931
Dmitri Fyodorovich Egorov (Russian: Дмитрий Фёдорович Егоров) was a Russian mathematician is noted for his contributions to differential geometry and analysis.
His religious views caused him to fall foul of the Soviet regime and he died as a result of a hunger strike he embarked upon while in prison for being a "religious sectarian".
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1870
Ernst Leonard Lindelöf
1870 – 1946
Finnish topologist who also worked on differential equations and the gamma function.
Wrote a series of highly-regarded textbooks and published extensively on the history of Finnish mathematics.
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1871 - 1880
1871
Vladimir Andreyevich Markov
1871 – 1897
In Russian: Влади́мир Андре́евич Ма́рков.
Russian mathematician noted for the solution of the Markov Brothers' Inequality, with his elder brother Andrey Andreyevich Markov.
Died of tuberculosis at the tragically young age of 25.
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Émile Borel
1871 – 1956
Full name: Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel.
French mathematician working mainly in measure theory and its applications to probability theory.
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Ernst Zermelo
1871 – 1953
Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo German mathematician best known for his work on the foundations of mathematics.
Laid the groundwork (later to be enhanced by Abraham Fraenkel) for what are now known as the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of axiomatic set theory.
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1872
Bertrand Russell
1872 – 1970
Full name: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, the 3rd Earl Russell.
British philosopher, mathematician and logician.
Best known for his co-authorship with Alfred North Whitehead of Principia Mathematica, published from 1910.
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1873
Constantin Carathéodory
1873 – 1950
Otherwise known as Constantine Karatheodori (in Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή).
Greek mathematician who contributed to the theory of functions of a real variable, the calculus of variations and measure theory.
Also worked on rationalisation of the theory of thermodynamics.
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1874
René-Louis Baire
1874 – 1932
French mathematician who worked mainly on the theory of continuity and irrational numbers.
Most famous for the Baire Category Theorem.
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Leonard Eugene Dickson
1874 – 1954
One of the first American mathematicians to work in abstract algebra.
Also remembered for his history of number theory.
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Edward Vermilye Huntington
1874 – 1952
American mathematician who worked on the foundations of mathematics.
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Friedrich Moritz Hartogs
1874 – 1943
Friedrich Hartogs (known to his associates as Fritz) was a German mathematician who made advances in set theory and complex analysis.
Killed himself as a result of the treatment he had received from the government of his country at the time.
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R.E. Powers
Chronology approximate
American mathematician who discovered the 10th and 11th Mersenne primes $2^{89} - 1$ (in 1911) and $2^{107} - 1$ (in 1914.)
In 1916, he determined that $2^{241} - 1$ is composite.
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1875
Issai Schur
1875 – 1941
Jewish mathematician of Russian descent working mainly in group theory and combinatorics.
Worked most of his life in Germany, then emigrated to Palestine in 1939 as a result of political persecution, and died a pauper.
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Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich
1875 – 1929
English all-rounder mathematician who committed suicide from mental illness supposedly brought on by overwork.
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Beppo Levi
1875 – 1961
Italian mathematician best known for his work on algebraic curves and Lebesgue integration.
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Henri Léon Lebesgue
1875 – 1941
French mathematician famous mainly for his work on the theory of integral calculus.
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Ernst Sigismund Fischer
1875 – 1954
Austrian mathematician who worked in the field of analysis.
Worked with Emmy Noether.
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Francesco Paolo Cantelli
1875 – 1966
Italian mathematician best known for his work in probability theory, and for the Borel-Cantelli Lemma.
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1876
Robert John Tainsh Bell
1876 – 1963
Scottish mathematician noted for his work in solid geometry.
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1877
Godfrey Harold Hardy
1877 – 1947
English mathematician noted for his work in number theory and analysis.
Also famous for his discovery and mentorship of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Non-mathematicians remember him mainly for his book A Mathematician's Apology.
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1878
Felix Bernstein
1878 – 1956
German mathematician active mainly in the field of algebraic logic.
He is best known for his 1897 contribution to what is now known as the Cantor-Bernstein-Schroeder Theorem.
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Leopold Löwenheim
1878 – 1957
German mathematician whose work pioneered the field of model theory.
Much of his unpublished work was lost when the British brutally bombed his house in 1943, an act of unforgivable barbarism for which the Brits have never delivered appropriate recompense.
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Maurice René Fréchet
1878 – 1973
French mathematician who made considerable advances in topology, and pioneered the concept of metric spaces.
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1879
Edwin Raymond Smith
1879 – ?
American (?) mathematician who co-authored a book of mathematical tables with Robert Daniel Carmichael.
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Robert Daniel Carmichael
1879 – 1967
American mathematician who contributed mainly to the fields of differential equations and number theory.
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Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955
German-born mathematician and physicist. Probably the most famous scientist of all time.
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Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain
1879 – 1919
British logician whose work was in the fields of mathematical logic and the foundations of set theory.
He also applied his results in logic to the field of physics.
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Duncan MacLaren Young Sommerville
1879 – 1934
Scots mathematician (sometimes rendered Duncan M'Laren Young Sommerville) best known for his work in geometry, including non-Euclidean.
A founder, and first secretary, of the New Zealand Astronomical Society.
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1880
Frigyes Riesz
1880 – 1956
Hungarian mathematician who developed the field of functional analysis.
Gave an elementary proof of the Mean Ergodic Theorem.
Elder brother of the mathematician Marcel Riesz.
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Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze
1880 – 1964
Austrian mathematician mainly working in abstract algebra and topology.
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1881 - 1890
1881
Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer
1881 – 1966
Known to his friends as Bertus.
Dutch mathematician working in topology, set theory, measure theory and complex analysis.
Founded the mathematical philosophy of intuitionism.
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1882
Henry Maurice Sheffer
1882 – 1964
American logician famous for proving in 1913 that Boolean algebra can be defined by using just the logical NAND operator. (This had previously been noted by Peirce in 1880 but not published till 1933.)
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Joseph Wedderburn
1882 – 1948
Scottish mathematician most famous for his work in abstract algebra.
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Wacław Sierpiński
1882 – 1969
Wacław Franciszek Sierpiński was a Polish mathematician who made considerable contributions to the fields of set theory, number theory and topology, among others.
Most famous for the Sierpiński triangle.
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Emmy Noether
1882 – 1935
Amalie ("Emmy") Noether was a German-born mathematician who made considerable contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.
Most famous for Noether's Theorem which makes the fundamental connection between symmetry and various laws of conservation.
Her philosophy and outlook were fundamental in the development of ideas that led to the establishment of the field of category theory.
Daughter of Max Noether.
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Maurice Kraitchik
1882 – 1957
Belgian mathematician and writer who wrote on number theory and recreational mathematics.
Proved in 1922 that the Mersenne number $M_{257}$ is composite, contrary to the claims of Marin Mersenne.
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1883
Eric Temple Bell
1883 – 1960
Scottish mathematician now more famous for his popular work on the history of mathematics Men of Mathematics.
Did research in number theory and analysis, and (less than successfully) worked on putting umbral calculus on a sound logical footing.
Also noted (in certain circles) for writing science fiction (under the pseudonym John Taine) and poetry.
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Richard Edler von Mises
1883 – 1953
Mathematician and scientist of Austrian nationality who worked in the fields of statistics, probability theory and various branches of applied mathematics and physics.
Also an authority on the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
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James Henry Weaver
1883 – 1942
American mathematician who co-authored books with Robert Daniel Carmichael.
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1884
George David Birkhoff
1884 – 1944
American mathematician best known for what is now known as the Ergodic Theorem.
The father of Garrett Birkhoff.
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Thomas Murray MacRobert
1884 – 1962
British mathematician working mainly in analysis.
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Charles Ernest Weatherburn
1884 – 1974
Australian mathematician best known for his work in vector analysis.
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Dénes Kőnig
1884 – 1944
Dénes Kőnig was a Hungarian mathematician who was a pioneer of graph theory.
The son of Gyula Kőnig.
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1885
John Edensor Littlewood
1885 – 1977
British mathematician best known for his collaborations with G.H. Hardy.
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Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl
1885 – 1955
German mathematician who worked in the fields of mathematical logic and mathematical physics.
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1886
Lillian Rosanoff Lieber
1886 – 1986
American mathematician about whom (despite her time at Long Island University) few details survive.
Most famous for her work directed at T.C. Mits (The Celebrated Man In The Street). Her husband Hugh Gray Lieber often did the illustrations.
Some editions of her work are credited to Lilian R. Lieber, but most resources have her as Lillian.
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Marcel Riesz
1886 – 1969
Hungarian mathematician who worked on analysis, number theory and abstract algebra, among other fields.
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1887
Thoralf Albert Skolem
1887 – 1963
Norwegian mathematician who worked mainly in the fields of mathematical logic and set theory.
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Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov
1887 – 1974
In Russian: Влади́мир Ива́нович Смирно́в.
Contributed significantly to several areas of pure and applied mathematics. Best known for his 5-volume textbook A Course in Higher Mathematics which was widely used.
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George Pólya
1887 – 1985
George Pólya (Hungarian name: Pólya György) was a Hungarian mathematician best known nowadays for the books he wrote.
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Srinivasa Ramanujan
1887 – 1920
Srīnivāsa Aiyangār Rāmānujan (also Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan, in Tamil: சீனிவாச இராமானுஜன் or ஸ்ரீனிவாஸ ஐயங்கார் ராமானுஜன்) was an Indian mathematician who made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions.
His name is also seen rendered as Ramanujam: the final letter of such names is ambiguous in Tamil.
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1888
Richard Courant
1888 – 1972
German mathematician best known for his writings.
Made considerable contributions to the field numerical analysis.
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Sydney Chapman
1888 – 1970
English mathematician whose most noted mathematical accomplishments were in the field of stochastic processes.
Worked out the photochemical mechanisms that give rise to the ozone layer.
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Zygmunt Janiszewski
1888 – 1920
Polish mathematician whose work was mainly in topology.
Co-founded the journal Fundamenta Mathematicae but died of influenza before its first issue.
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William Threlfall
1888 – 1949
William Richard Maximilian Hugo Threlfall was a German mathematician whose main work was in topology.
Collaborated extensively with Herbert Seifert.
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James Waddell Alexander II
1888 – 1971
American mathematician who did pioneering work in topology and knot theory.
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Paul Isaac Bernays
1888 – 1977
Swiss mathematician who worked mainly in mathematical logic and axiomatic set theory.
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1891 - 1900
1891
Abraham Fraenkel
1891 – 1965
Abraham Halevi (Adolf) Fraenkel (in Hebrew: אברהם הלוי (אדולף) פרנקל) was a German-born Israeli Hungarian mathematician best known for his work on axiomatic set theory.
He improved Ernst Zermelo's axiomatic system, and out of that work came the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms.
He also wrote on topics in the history of mathematics.
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Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov
1891 – 1983
Sometimes rendered Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov. In Russian: Иван Матвеевич Виноградов.
One of the creators of the field of analytic number theory.
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Edward Lindsay Ince
1891 – 1941
English mathematician who worked mainly in the field of differential equations.
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1892
Stefan Banach
1892 – 1945
Polish mathematician who founded the modern field of functional analysis.
Most famous for his collaborative paper with Alfred Tarski in 1924, in which the Banach-Tarski Paradox was raised. This demonstrated that a contra-intuitive truth could be deduced from the ZFC axioms of set theory, specifically, by assuming the truth of the Axiom of Choice. Impassioned controversy rages to this day.
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Torsten Carleman
1892 – 1949
Tage Gills Torsten Carleman was a Swedish mathematician whose main work was in analysis and applied mathematics.
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1893
Leslie John Comrie
1893 – 1950
Mathematician and astronomer who was a pioneer in the field of mechanical computation.
Produced two editions of Barlow's Tables, making significant extensions and enhancements.
Computerised the British football pools.
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1894
Norbert Wiener
1894 – 1964
American mathematician who worked mainly in computer science, stochastic processes and cybernetics.
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1895
Gábor Szegő
1895 – 1985
Gábor Szegő was a Hungarian mathematician best known nowadays for his collaborations with George Pólya.
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Júlio César de Mello e Souza
1895 – 1974
Mathematics professor who became famous his works on recreational mathematics, in particular O Homem que Calculava (The Man Who Counted), written under the name Malba Tahan.
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1896
Raymond Wilder
1896 – 1982
Raymond L. Wilder was a mathematician best known for his writing on the subject of the philosophy of mathematics.
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Kazimierz Kuratowski
1896 – 1980
Sometimes Westernised as Casimir.
Polish mathematician whose work was mainly in topology and metric spaces.
Pioneered, with Alfred Tarski and Wacław Sierpiński, the theory of Polish spaces.
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Pavel Sergeyevich Alexandrov
1896 – 1982
Па́вел Серге́евич Алекса́ндров, sometimes rendered as Aleksandroff or Aleksandrov, was a Russian mathematician who made considerable contributions in the fields of set theory and topology.
The first to introduce the concept of a kernel of a homomorphism.
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Heinz Prüfer
1896 – 1934
Ernst Paul Heinz Prüfer was a German mathematician who worked on abelian groups, algebraic numbers, knot theory and Sturm-Liouville theory.
Provided an ingenious proof of Cayley's Formula.
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1897
Lincoln La Paz
1897 – 1985
American mathematician and pioneer in the field of meteorics.
During World War II, served as research mathematician at the New Mexico Proving Grounds.
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Vojtěch Jarník
1897 – 1970
Czech mathematician who worked mainly in number theory and analysis.
Also produced some results in lattice theory and graph theory.
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1898
Pavel Samuilovich Urysohn
1898 – 1924
Ukrainian mathematician mainly working in analysis and topology.
Introduced the concept of compactness with Pavel Alexandrov in 1923.
Drowned in rough seas while swimming off the coast of France.
Also written as Uryson.
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Emil Artin
1898 – 1962
Austrian-American mathematician mainly working in abstract algebra and topology.
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David Vernon Widder
1898 – 1990
American mathematician mainly working in analyis.
He was highly regarded for his teaching abilities.
The author of the textbook Advanced Calculus.
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Hellmuth Kneser
1898 – 1973
German mathematician, who made notable contributions to group theory and topology.
Derived the theorem on the existence of a prime decomposition for 3-manifolds.
Originated the concept of a normal surface.
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Helmut Hasse
1898 – 1979
German mathematician who worked mainly in algebraic number theory and class field theory.
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1899
Oscar Zariski
1899 – 1986
Russian-born mathematician, originally Oscher (or Ascher) Zaritsky.
Highly influential in the fields of algebraic geometry and topology.
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Wolfgang Krull
1899 – 1971
Made significant contributions to many areas of commutative algebra.
Much of his work was influenced by Felix Klein and Emmy Noether.
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Øystein Ore
1899 – 1968
Norwegian mathematician whose work was mainly in graph theory, although also known for his work in ring theory and Galois theory.
One of the early founders of lattice theory.
Also known for writing and editing several books, including a few on various aspects of the history of mathematics.
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1900
John Charles Burkill
1900 – 1983
Known as both John Burkill and Charles Burkill.
British mathematician whose main work was in analysis.
Also renowned for the quality of his teaching books.
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Antoni Szczepan Zygmund
1900 – 1992
Polish-born American mathematician famous for his work on trigonometrical series.
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References
- ↑ Eric Temple Bell, Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London.
