ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Sorted By Birth/BCE

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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BCE 1000 - 601

Baudhayana

c. 800 BCE

Indian mathematician, also a priest, believed to have flourished c. 800 BCE. Believed to have been a skilled craftsman, thus to have used his mathematical expertise in practical ways.

Did some early research into creating a circle with the same area as a given square.

Discovered $\pi$ to some degree of precision, and discovered what is now known as Pythagoras's Theorem.

Also evaluated the square root of 2 to five decimal places of accuracy.
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BCE 600 - 501

Thales

c. 625 – 547 BCE

Greek mathematician, scientist, philosopher and astronomer, who (amongst other things) predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BCE.
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Pythagoras of Samos

between 580 and 572 BCE – between 500 and 490 BCE

Greek philosopher whose contributions to mathematics were perhaps more limited than is generally believed.

Best known for being said to have provided the first known proof of Pythagoras's Theorem (or one of his students did) which had probably been known to the ancient Egyptians.
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BCE 500 - 401

Zeno of Elea

c. 490 – c. 430 BCE

Greek: Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεάτης.

Pre-Socratic philosopher of southern Italy.

Member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the "inventor of the dialectic".

Best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".
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Oenopides of Chios

c. 490 – c. 420 BCE

Mathematician, geometer and astronomer.

Little is known about him except that he came from the island of Chios, and is generally believed to have lived and worked in Athens in his youth.

Estimated the tilt of the Earth's axis with respect to the ecliptic as $24^\circ$.

Appears to have introduced the rule that all geometric constructions must be done with a straightedge and compass.
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Hippocrates of Chios

c. 470 – 410 BCE

Mathematician, geometer and astronomer.

The first to write a systematic textbook on geometry, Elements of Geometry, only a fragment of which survives.

Invented the technique of reduction, that is, transforming a mathematical problem into a more general, easily solvable one.

May have been a pupil of Oenopides.
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Socrates

c. 469 – 399 BCE

Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης, Sōkrátēs) was a Greek philosopher, a teacher of Plato.

Although no writings of his survive (if there ever were any), much of his philosophy has been documented in the works of Plato.

Executed by hemlock in 399 BCE supposedly for the crime of corrupting the young.
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Democritus

c. 460 – 370 BCE

Democritus (Greek: Δημόκριτος, Dēmokritos, chosen of the people) was a Greek mathematician and philosopher, most famous for his atomic theory of the universe.
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Plato

428/427 – 348/347 BCE

Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad") was a Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle.

Importantly documents the philosophy of Socrates.

Of particular importance was his insistence on the idea of proof.
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Eudoxus of Cnidus

410 or 408 BCE – 355 or 347 BCE

Greek astronomer and mathematician who, among other things:

• Pioneered work on proportion;
• Introduced the astronomical globe;
• Developed the method of exhaustion, this being an early precursor to integral calculus. This was later exploited by Archimedes.

Student of Plato.
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BCE 400 - 301

Aristotle

384 – 322 BCE

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

Phenomenally influential philosopher whose works (for better or for worse) shaped the entirety of the intellectual development of the Western world for over a millennium.

Most important from the point of view of mathematics for formulating the Principle of Non-Contradiction and the Law of the Excluded Middle.
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Aristaeus the Elder

c. 370 BCE – c. 300 BCE

Differentiated by Pappus of Alexandria from another later Aristaeus whose existence is no longer recorded.

Did considerable work on conic sections, but this was rendered obsolete by subsequent work by Apollonius.

Proved that "the same circle circumscribes both the pentagon of the dodecahedron and the triangle of the icosahedron inscribed in the same sphere."
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Aristarchus of Samos

310 – 230 BCE

Greek astronomer and mathematician who used parallax to determine the relative distances of the moon and the sun.

His result was inaccurate, based as it was on faulty input data, but the method was sound.

One of the first to suggest a heliocentric universe.
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BCE 300 - 201

Euclid

c. 300 BCE

In Greek: Εὐκλείδης (Eukleídēs), also known as Euclid of Alexandria.

Little is known about him, apart from:

• He taught in Alexandria (then a Macedonian colony);
• He assembled the geometry text The Elements, possibly the most famous mathematics text book of all time.

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Archimedes

c. 287 – 212 BCE

Known as Archimedes of Syracuse.

Greek mathematician, physicist, astronomer, engineer and general all-round inventor.

Perfected the method of exhaustion.
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Eratosthenes of Cyrene

c. 276 – c. 195 BCE

Ancient Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης.

Greek geometer and astronomer best known for his estimate of the size of the Earth.

Also famous for his Sieve of Eratosthenes.
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Apollonius of Perga

c. 262 – c. 190 BCE

Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλώνιος, also known (in the Latin form) as Pergaeus. Greek geometer and astronomer best known for his work on conic sections, in which he uses techniques in analytic geometry which anticipated the work of Descartes.

Greatly influential, he provided the names of the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola.
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Piṅgalá

c. 5th or 2nd century BCE

Indian mathematician about whom practically nothing is known, not even when he lived.

Notable for being the first in history to mention what is now known as Pascal's Triangle.
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BCE 200 - 101

Hypsicles of Alexandria

c. 190 – c. 120 BCE

Alexandrian mathematician and astronomer best known for having Book XIV of Euclid's The Elements attributed to him.

Whether or not he was also responsible for Book XV of The Elements is still up for debate.

Also appears to have written a (now lost) work on polygonal numbers.
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Theodosius of Bithynia

c. 160 – c. 100 BCE

Greek astronomer and mathematician best known for writing Sphaerics, a book on spherical geometry.

According to Vitruvius, he is supposed to have invented a sundial which would work anywhere in the world.

Sometimes confused with various other writers called Theodosius. On this basis, often erroneously believed to have been born in Tripolis.
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