Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Birth/1701 - 1800 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.
- -- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London
$\text {1701}$ – $\text {1710}$
1701
November
Anders Celsius $($$\text {1701}$ – $\text {1744}$$)$
Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician whose best known contribution to science was his $1742$ proposal of what is now known as the Celsius temperature scale.
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1702
Thomas Bayes $($$\text {1702}$ – $\text {1761}$$)$
The Rev. Thomas Bayes was a mathematician and Presbyterian minister.
Most famous for his formulation of what is now known as Bayes' Theorem.
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1704
July
Gabriel Cramer $($$\text {1704}$ – $\text {1752}$$)$
Swiss mathematician best known for Cramer's Rule.
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August
Alexis Fontaine des Bertins $($$\text {1704}$ – $\text {1771}$$)$
French mathematician who contributed to some of the early work on differential equations.
Credited with inventing the technique (independently of Leonhard Paul Euler and Alexis Claude Clairaut) of the use of integrating factors.
Did much of his work independently of others, and questions of precedence arose as a result.
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October
Johann Andreas Segner $($$\text {1704}$ – $\text {1777}$$)$
Hungarian scientist best known for inventing the Segner wheel.
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December
Thomas Godfrey $($$\text {1704}$ – $\text {1749}$$)$
American inventor who invented the sextant, independently of John Hadley.
One of the founder members of the American Philosophical Society.
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1706
January
Benjamin Franklin $($$\text {1706}$ – $\text {1790}$$)$
American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher.
One of the founder members of the American Philosophical Society.
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1707
April
Leonhard Paul Euler $($$\text {1707}$ – $\text {1783}$$)$
Swiss mathematician and physicist who pioneered much of the foundation of modern mathematics.
Introduced much of the notation which is used today, including $e$ and the modern notation for trigonometric functions.
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September
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon $($$\text {1707}$ – $\text {1781}$$)$
French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste.
Translated Isaac Newton's works on calculus into French.
His claim to fame in the world of mathematics stems from his thought experiment Buffon's Needle.
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1710
James Ferguson $($$\text {1710}$ – $\text {1776}$$)$
Self-educated Scottish astronomer, engineer and philosopher.
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May
Johann II Bernoulli $($$\text {1710}$ – $\text {1790}$$)$
Swiss mathematician who worked mostly on the theory of heat and light.
Son of Johann Bernoulli and the younger brother of Nicolaus II Bernoulli and Daniel Bernoulli.
Father of Johann III Bernoulli and Jakob II Bernoulli.
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August
Thomas Simpson $($$\text {1710}$ – $\text {1761}$$)$
British mathematician and inventor.
Eponym of Simpson's Rule to approximate definite integrals.
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$\text {1711}$ – $\text {1720}$
1713
March
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille $($$\text {1713}$ – $\text {1762}$$)$
French astronomer who named $14$ out of the $88$ constellations.
Observed over $10 \, 000$ stars using just a half-inch refractor.
Constructing astronomical ephemerides and mathematical tables.
Calculated a table of eclipses for $1800$ years.
Determined that Earth is flatter at the South Pole than at the North Pole
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May
Alexis Claude Clairaut $($$\text {1713}$ – $\text {1765}$$)$
French mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist. Worked out the shape of the Earth.
Best known in mathematics for Clairaut's (differential) equation.
Credited with inventing the technique (independently of Leonhard Paul Euler and Alexis Fontaine des Bertins) of the use of integrating factors.
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1717
William Ludlam $($$\text {c. 1717}$ – $\text {1788}$$)$
English mathematician and writer on theology who was a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
Credited with first formulating what is now known as Playfair's Axiom.
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January
Matthew Stewart $($$\text {1717}$ – $\text {1785}$$)$
Scottish mathematician who made significant contributions to the fields of geometry and astronomy.
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November
Jean le Rond d'Alembert $($$\text {1717}$ – $\text {1783}$$)$
French mathematician, physicist and philosopher best known for his contribution to the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra -- he produced a flawed proof which was later patched up by Gauss.
Devised a technique for solving the linear second order ODE with constant coefficients whose auxiliary equation has repeated roots.
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1718
May
Maria Gaëtana Agnesi $($$\text {1718}$ – $\text {1799}$$)$
Italian mathematician, linguist and philosopher famed for writing the first book discussing both integral and differential calculus.
The curve in analytic geometry called the Witch of Agnesi is named for her.
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$\text {1721}$ – $\text {1730}$
1725
September
Jean-Étienne Montucla $($$\text {1725}$ – $\text {1799}$$)$
French mathematician and civil servant best known now for his work on the history of mathematics.
Wrote the first comprehensive history of mathematics, uncompleted at the time of his death.
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1728
August
Johann Heinrich Lambert $($$\text {1728}$ – $\text {1777}$$)$
Swiss mathematician, physicist and astronomer.
The first to introduce hyperbolic functions into trigonometry.
Made conjectures regarding non-Euclidean space.
Credited with the first proof that $\pi$ is irrational.
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1729
January
Johann Daniel Titius $($$\text {1729}$ – $\text {1796}$$)$
German astronomer best known for formulating the Titius-Bode Law, and thence to predict the existence of a planet between Mars and Jupiter.
Also active in the field of biology.
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1730
March
Étienne Bézout $($$\text {1730}$ – $\text {1783}$$)$
French mathematician best known for his work in number theory and algebra.
Also the author of widely-used textbooks.
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$\text {1731}$ – $\text {1740}$
1731
September
Giovanni Francesco Giuseppe Malfatti $($$\text {1731}$ – $\text {1807}$$)$
Italian mathematician best known for posing the Malfatti Problem.
Discovered the Gravitational Property of Lemniscate of Bernoulli.
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December
Francis Maseres $($$\text {1731}$ – $\text {1824}$$)$
English lawyer, judge, mathematician and historian.
Also at one time the attorney general of the Province of Quebec.
His stance on mathematics was somewhat conservative, to the extent of refusing to accept the validity of negative numbers.
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1732
July
Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande $($$\text {1732}$ – $\text {1807}$$)$
French astronomer and writer.
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1733
May
Jean-Charles de Borda $($$\text {1733}$ – $\text {1799}$$)$
French mathematician, physicist, and sailor.
Worked on problems in fluid dynamics.
Developed a ranked preferential voting system, the Borda count.
Constructed the metre based on the measurements of Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, thus helping to introduce the metric system to France.
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1735
February
Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde $($$\text {1735}$ – $\text {1796}$$)$
French mathematician and musician mainly active in the fields of combinatorics.
Referred to by some as "the founder of the theory of determinants".
Best known nowadays for the Vandermonde determinant and the Chu-Vandermonde Identity.
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1736
Edward Waring $($$\text {c. 1736}$ – $\text {1798}$$)$
English mathematician mainly active in the fields of number theory and analysis.
Most famous for posing what are now called:
- Waring's Problem
- Waring's Prime Number Conjecture, otherwise known as the Goldbach Conjecture.
January
James Watt (I) $($$\text {1736}$ – $\text {1819}$$)$
Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist best known for his steam engine.
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Joseph Louis Lagrange $($$\text {1736}$ – $\text {1813}$$)$
Italian-born French mathematician who made big advances in the fields of the calculus of variations and analytical mechanics.
Contributed to number theory and algebra.
Extended a lot of the fields established by Euler, and in turn laid down the groundwork for later explorations by Gauss and Abel.
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June
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb $($$\text {1736}$ – $\text {1806}$$)$
French military engineer and physicist.
Best known as the discoverer of what is now called Coulomb's Law.
Did important work on friction.
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1737
August
Charles Hutton $($$\text {1737}$ – $\text {1823}$$)$
English professor at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, who wrote a number of arithmetic textbooks.
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$\text {1741}$ – $\text {1750}$
1741
August
John Wilson $($$\text {1741}$ – $\text {1793}$$)$
English mathematician remembered mainly for Wilson's Theorem, which was in fact published by Edward Waring and came originally from Ibn al-Haytham ("Alhazen").
It was in fact proved by Lagrange in $1793$.
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1743
February
René Just Haüy $($$\text {1743}$ – $\text {1822}$$)$
French priest and mineralogist best known for his work on crystal structure.
Helped establish the metric system.
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1744
November
Johann III Bernoulli $($$\text {1744}$ – $\text {1807}$$)$
Swiss mathematician who worked on probability theory, recurring decimals and the theory of equations.
Son of Johann II Bernoulli and the elder brother of Jakob II Bernoulli.
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1745
February
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta $($$\text {1745}$ – $\text {1827}$$)$
Italian physicist, chemist, and pioneer of electricity and power.
Invented the Voltaic pile in $1799$.
Discovered methane.
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June
Caspar Wessel $($$\text {1745}$ – $\text {1818}$$)$
Norwegian–Danish mathematician and cartographer who, in $1799$, was the first person to describe the geometrical interpretation of complex numbers as points in the complex plane.
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1746
May
Gaspard Monge $($$\text {1746}$ – $\text {1818}$$)$
French mathematician who invented the field of descriptive geometry.
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1747
January
Johann Elert Bode $($$\text {1747}$ – $\text {1826}$$)$
German astronomer known for his reformulation and popularization of the Titius-Bode Law.
Determined the orbit of Uranus and suggested the planet's name.
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1748
March
John Playfair $($$\text {1748}$ – $\text {1819}$$)$
Scots mathematician and scientific philosopher who was an early proponent of the philosophical position that physical laws are the same throughout the universe and do not change with time.
Also credited with Playfair's axiom, an alternative (and easier to digest) form of Euclid's Fifth Postulate, although he himself did not originate it.
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1749
March
Pierre-Simon de Laplace $($$\text {1749}$ – $\text {1827}$$)$
French mathematician and astronomer whose work greatly influenced the development of the mathematics governing astronomy.
Pioneered the field of mathematical physics.
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September
Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre $($$\text {1749}$ – $\text {1822}$$)$
French mathematician and astronomer.
Author of well-known books on the history of astronomy from ancient times to the 18th century.
Placed in charge of the mission to measure the meridian from Dunkirk to Rodez in the south of France, taking over the responsibility from Jean-Dominique de Cassini, who refused the mission for political reasons.
One of the first astronomers to derive astronomical equations from analytical formulas, formulating the trigonometrical identities now known as Delambre's Analogies.
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1750
May
Lorenzo Mascheroni $($$\text {1750}$ – $\text {1800}$$)$
Professor of mathematics at Pavia.
Wrote Geometria del Compasso, published in $1797$, in which he showed that any geometrical construction that can be made with compasses and straightedge can also be achieved by using only compasses.
This had, however, already been demonstrated by Georg Mohr in $1672$.
Published in his $1790$ work Adnotationes ad Calculum Integrale Euleri a calculation to $32$ places of the value of what is now known as the Euler-Mascheroni Constant.
However, only the first $19$ places were accurate. The rest were corrected in $1809$ by Johann von Soldner.
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$\text {1751}$ – $\text {1760}$
1752
September
Adrien-Marie Legendre $($$\text {1752}$ – $\text {1833}$$)$
French mathematician, focusing in the fields of statistics, abstract algebra, number theory and analysis.
His work formed the basis for work by many others, including Gauss and Abel.
Gave an early proof of Fermat's Last Theorem for $n = 5$.
Attempted a proof of the Law of Quadratic Reciprocity in $1785$, but it was flawed. It was eventually proven by Gauss in $1798$.
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1753
May
Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot $($$\text {1753}$ – $\text {1823}$$)$
French mathematician, physicist and politician.
Known as the Organizer of Victory in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars.
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1755
April
Marc-Antoine Parseval $($$\text {1755}$ – $\text {1836}$$)$
French mathematician, most famous for what is now known as Parseval's Theorem, which presaged the unitarity of the Fourier transform.
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1757
November
William Frend $($$\text {1757}$ – $\text {1841}$$)$
English clergyman (later Unitarian), social reformer and writer.
Wrote a few works on mathematics in which, like Francis Maseres, he rejected the use of negative quantities.
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1759
October
Louis François Antoine Arbogast $($$\text {1759}$ – $\text {1803}$$)$
French mathematician, and later politician, who pioneered the concept of discontinuous functions, further developing the work of Leonhard Paul Euler in this field.
This work was developed further by Augustin Louis Cauchy.
The first to conceive the calculus as a set of operational symbols.
Also the first to publish what is now known as Faà di Bruno's Formula.
Responsible for the law which introduced the decimal metric system to France.
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Jakob II Bernoulli $($$\text {1759}$ – $\text {1789}$$)$
Swiss mathematician who worked in geometry and mathematical physics.
Son of Johann II Bernoulli and the younger brother of Johann III Bernoulli.
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1760
Paul Charpit de Ville Coer $($$\text {? c. 1760}$ – $\text {1784}$$)$
French mathematician about whom very little is known, not even his approximate date of birth.
Made some contributions to the science of differential equations, but died before he was able to get anything published.
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July
Christian Kramp $($$\text {1760}$ – $\text {1826}$$)$
French mathematician working mainly with factorials.
His main claim to fame is for being the one to introduce the Factorial sign: $!$
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October
François Peyrard $($$\text {1760}$ – $\text {1822}$$)$
French mathematician, educator and librarian.
One of the founders of the École Polytechnique, and its first librarian.
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$\text {1761}$ – $\text {1770}$
1763
February
Johann Wilhelm von Camerer $($$\text {1763}$ – $\text {1847}$$)$
German protestant theologian, mathematician, astronomer and historian of mathematics.
Also published an edition of the first six books of Euclid's The Elements.
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1764
November
Pieter Nieuwland $($$\text {1764}$ – $\text {1794}$$)$
Dutch nautical scientist, chemist, mathematician and poet.
Has been called the Dutch Isaac Newton.
Known for finding the largest cube that can pass through a hole in a unit cube.
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1765
June
Henry Thomas Colebrooke $($$\text {1765}$ – $\text {1837}$$)$
English mathematician and scholar in Indian culture, best known for his translations of Indian classics.
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September
Paolo Ruffini $($$\text {1765}$ – $\text {1822}$$)$
Italian mathematician and philosopher.
Most famous for his incomplete proof of what is now known as the Abel-Ruffini Theorem proving the insolubility of the general quintic with radicals.
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December
Johann Friedrich Pfaff $($$\text {1765}$ – $\text {1825}$$)$
German mathematician who was a precursor of the German school, being a direct influence on Carl Friedrich Gauss.
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1766
February
Thomas Robert Malthus $($$\text {1766}$ – $\text {1834}$$)$
English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.
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September
John Dalton $($$\text {1766}$ – $\text {1844}$$)$
English chemist, physicist and meteorologist.
Best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry.
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John Farey $($$\text {1766}$ – $\text {1826}$$)$
English geologist, known for defining the Farey Sequence.
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1768
March
Joseph Fourier $($$\text {1768}$ – $\text {1830}$$)$
French mathematician and physicist best known for the Fourier series and his application of this technique to the problem of heat conduction.
Also developed the technique of dimensional analysis, and discovered the greenhouse effect.
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April
François Joseph Français $($$\text {1768}$ – $\text {1810}$$)$
French mathematician who worked on partial differential equations.
Also had a career as a soldier in the forces of the French (revolutionary) government of the time.
The brother of Jacques Frédéric Français.
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July
Jean-Robert Argand $($$\text {1768}$ – $\text {1822}$$)$
Amateur mathematician of Swiss origin, also an accountant and bookseller, best known for the Argand diagram.
Also published, in $1814$, the first complete and rigorous proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.
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François Joseph Servois $($$\text {1768}$ – $\text {1847}$$)$
French mathematician and military officer.
Worked in the fields of projective geometry, functional analysis and complex analysis.
First introduced (in $1814$) the concept of commutativity which till then had generally been taken for granted in all fields of mathematics.
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September
William Wallace $($$\text {1768}$ – $\text {1843}$$)$
Scottish mathematician and astronomer best known for the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwien Theorem.
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1769
Thomas Leybourn $($$\text {c. 1769}$ – $\text {1840}$$)$
Professor of mathematics at the Royal Military College.
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August
Napoleon Bonaparte $($$\text {1769}$ – $\text {1821}$$)$
Amateur French mathematician also famous as a military and political leader of France (in the same way that Henry Tudor was an amateur singer/songwriter whose hits included Greensleeves).
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$\text {1771}$ – $\text {1780}$
Charles Haros $($$\text {$18$th Century}$ – $\text {$19$th Century}$$)$
French mathematician and geometer who flourished at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Known for his work on what later became known as the Farey sequence.
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1771
June
Joseph Diez Gergonne $($$\text {1771}$ – $\text {1859}$$)$
French mathematician and logician, best known for founding and editing Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées.
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1773
March
Nathaniel Bowditch $($$\text {1773}$ – $\text {1838}$$)$
American mathematician best known for his work on ocean navigation.
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December
Robert Brown $($$\text {1773}$ – $\text {1858}$$)$
Scottish botanist and paleobotanist who made important contributions to botany largely through his pioneering use of the microscope.
His contributions include one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the cell nucleus and cytoplasmic streaming.
The first to observe what is now known as Brownian motion.
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1774
March
Jean-Baptiste Biot $($$\text {1774}$ – $\text {1862}$$)$
French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who co-discovered the Biot-Savart Law with Félix Savart, established the reality of meteorites, made an early balloon flight, and studied the polarization of light.
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1775
Étienne Midy $($$\text {c. 1775}$ – $\text {c. 1850}$$)$
French mathematician about whom little is known.
Best known as the eponym of Midy's Theorem.
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January
André-Marie Ampère $($$\text {1775}$ – $\text {1836}$$)$
French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics".
Inventor of numerous applications, such as the solenoid (a term coined by him) and the electrical telegraph.
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February
Farkas Wolfgang Bolyai $($$\text {1775}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$
Hungarian mathematician, mainly known for his work in geometry.
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June
Jacques Frédéric Français $($$\text {1775}$ – $\text {1833}$$)$
French mathematician whose work was mostly inspired by that of his brother François Joseph Français.
Famous for having published Jean-Robert Argand's work on the use of the complex plane to represent complex numbers.
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1776
April
Marie-Sophie Germain $($$\text {1776}$ – $\text {1831}$$)$
French mathematician who contributed to differential geometry and number theory, and provided some insights into aspects of Fermat's Last Theorem.
She was completely self-taught (as women typically left education at a young age and were discouraged from pursuing academic interests) and contributed her early work under the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc.
Had Gauss and Lagrange as mentors, but apart from that, suffered throughout her career from prejudice against her gender.
Later in her career she contributed towards the mathematical theory of elasticity.
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July
Johann Georg von Soldner $($$\text {1776}$ – $\text {1833}$$)$
German mathematician, physicist and astronomer.
Calculated the Euler-Mascheroni constant to 24 places.
The first one to predict (100 years before Einstein) that light rays would be bent by the gravitational fields of stars.
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August
Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro $($$\text {1776}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$
Italian scientist, most noted for his contribution to molecular theory now known as Avogadro's Law.
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Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński $($$\text {1776}$ – $\text {1853}$$)$
Polish Messianist philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, lawyer, and economist.
Best known for his definition of the Wronskian.
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October
Peter Barlow $($$\text {1776}$ – $\text {1862}$$)$
English mathematician and physicist, famous for his New Mathematical Tables, which would be later republished and known as Barlow's Tables and become a standard reference work.
Also (disappointingly) notable for his prediction in $1811$ that no prime greater than $2^{31} - 1$ would ever be discovered.
Also noted for his work on magnetism and strength of materials.
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1777
January
Louis Poinsot $($$\text {1777}$ – $\text {1859}$$)$
French mathematician and physicist best known for his work in geometry and the embryonic field of graph theory.
Invented the field of geometrical mechanics.
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April
Carl Friedrich Gauss $($$\text {1777}$ – $\text {1855}$$)$
One of the most influential mathematicians of all time, contributing to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis and differential geometry.
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July
William Spence $($$\text {1777}$ – $\text {1815}$$)$
Scottish mathematician who worked on logarithmic functions.
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August
Hans Christian Ørsted $($$\text {1777}$ – $\text {1851}$$)$
Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields.
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1779
March
Benjamin Gompertz $($$\text {1779}$ – $\text {1865}$$)$
British self-educated mathematician and actuary, best known for his Gompertz Law of Mortality, a demographic model published in $1825$.
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1780
March
August Leopold Crelle $($$\text {1780}$ – $\text {1855}$$)$
Self-educated and enthusiastic German mathematician whose most important work was founding Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, better known as Crelle's Journal.
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July
Daniel Christian Ludolph Lehmus $($$\text {1780}$ – $\text {1863}$$)$
German mathematician best remembered for the Steiner-Lehmus Theorem.
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$\text {1781}$ – $\text {1790}$
1781
June
Siméon-Denis Poisson $($$\text {1781}$ – $\text {1840}$$)$
French mathematician and physicist best known for his work in probability theory and differential equations.
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October
Bernhard Placidus Johann Nepomuk Bolzano $($$\text {1781}$ – $\text {1848}$$)$
Bohemian priest who was also a mathematician, logician, theologian and philosopher.
A major precursor of the wave of development of analysis in the late $19$th century.
Proved the Bolzano-Weierstrass Theorem, independently of (and earlier than) Karl Weierstrass.
Gave the first analytical proof of the Intermediate Value Theorem (which is also known as Bolzano's Theorem).
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November
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana $($$\text {1781}$ – $\text {1864}$$)$
Italian astronomer and mathematician.
Eponym of the Abel-Plana Formula.
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1783
December
Charles Julien Brianchon $($$\text {1783}$ – $\text {1864}$$)$
French mathematician and chemist who took up a career in Napoleon's artillery.
With Jean-Victor Poncelet, proved the Nine Point Circle Theorem in $1820$.
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1784
July
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel $($$\text {1784}$ – $\text {1846}$$)$
Prussian mathematician best known for making a systematic study of what is now known as Bessel's equation.
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1785
February
French mechanical engineer, affiliated with the French government, and a physicist who specialized in continuum mechanics.
The Navier-Stokes equations refer eponymously to him, with George Gabriel Stokes.
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1786
February
Jacques Philippe Marie Binet $($$\text {1786}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$
French mathematician best known for his contribution to the Binet-Cauchy Identity.
Recognized as the first to define the rules for matrix multiplication.
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Dominique François Jean Arago $($$\text {1786}$ – $\text {1853}$$)$
French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician.
Worked in the field of optics with Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
First person to construct an electromagnet.
As an active practical astronomer and geographer in troubled political times, once found himself arrested on charges of espionage.
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June
William George Horner $($$\text {1786}$ – $\text {1837}$$)$
British mathematician who wrote extensively on functional equations, number theory and approximation theory.
Also wrote on optics.
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1787
November
Magnus Georg Paucker $($$\text {1787}$ – $\text {1855}$$)$
Russian astronomer and physicist best known for his construction of the regular $257$-gon using a compass and straightedge.
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1788
Edward Riddle $($$\text {1788}$ – $\text {1854}$$)$
English mathematician and astronomer.
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May
Augustin-Jean Fresnel $($$\text {1788}$ – $\text {1827}$$)$
French civil engineer and physicist, whose research in optics led to the almost universal acceptance of the wave theory of light in the 19th century.
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July
Jean-Victor Poncelet $($$\text {1788}$ – $\text {1867}$$)$
French mathematician and engineer who revived the field of projective geometry.
With Charles Julien Brianchon, proved the Nine Point Circle Theorem in $1820$.
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1789
March
Georg Simon Ohm $($$\text {1789}$ – $\text {1834}$$)$
German physicist and mathematician best remembered for Ohm's Law.
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August
Augustin Louis Cauchy $($$\text {1789}$ – $\text {1857}$$)$
French Engineer and mathematician, from a suburb of Paris, which at the time was home to many leading mathematicians.
Wrote seven books and more than 700 papers in various fields of mathematics.
Made significant contributions in number theory, the theory of determinants, eigenvalues, ordinary and partial differential equations, permutation groups, and the foundation of calculus.
Famous for founding the theory of functions of a complex variable.
Argued by some as the founder of group theory.
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1790
November
August Ferdinand Möbius $($$\text {1790}$ – $\text {1868}$$)$
German mathematician and theoretical astronomer, active in geometry and number theory.
Best known for inventing the Möbius Strip, although this was actually invented independently by Johann Benedict Listing at around the same time.
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$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1800}$
1791
June
Félix Savart $($$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1841}$$)$
French physicist and mathematician who is primarily known for the Biot-Savart Law, which he discovered together with his colleague Jean-Baptiste Biot.
Mainly interested in acoustics and the study of vibrating bodies.
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September
Michael Faraday $($$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1867}$$)$
English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.
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October
Victor-Amédée Lebesgue $($$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1875}$$)$
French mathematician working on number theory. He was elected a member of the Académie des sciences in 1847.
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Wilhelm August Förstemann $($$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1836}$$)$
German mathematician best known for his textbooks, which were standard German grammar schools texts for some considerable time.
Published a series of articles on on the task of rationalizing equations.
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December
Charles Babbage $($$\text {1791}$ – $\text {1871}$$)$
English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer.
Originated, together with Ada Lovelace, the concept of a programmable computer.
Founder of both the Royal Statistical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society.
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1792
May
Martin Ohm $($$\text {1792}$ – $\text {1872}$$)$
German mathematician who was the first to fully develop the theory of the exponential $a^b$ when both $a$ and $b$ are complex numbers.
Attempted to reform mathematical education by taking a rigorous approach from first principles.
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Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis $($$\text {1792}$ – $\text {1843}$$)$
French mathematician, mechanical engineer and scientist.
Best known for his work on the supplementary forces that are detected in a rotating frame of reference, leading to the Coriolis effect.
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December
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky $($$\text {1792}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$
Known as "the Copernicus of geometry", for his development of a non-Euclidean geometry, that is, one which does not use the parallel postulate.
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1793
April
Dionysius Lardner $($$\text {1793}$ – $\text {1859}$$)$
Irish scientific writer and populariser of science.
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May
Jakob Philipp Kulik $($$\text {1793}$ – $\text {1863}$$)$
Austrian mathematician known for his construction of mathematical tables.
A table containing the factors of all integers up to $100 \, 000 \, 000$, which he had spent $20$ years working on as a hobby, remained uncompleted and unpublished at his death.
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July
George Green $($$\text {1793}$ – $\text {1841}$$)$
Famously (and mystifyingly) self-taught English mathematical physicist best known for Green's Theorem.
Did pioneering work on electromagnetism.
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November
Michel Chasles $($$\text {1793}$ – $\text {1880}$$)$
French mathematician known for his work in projective geometry, as well as for his contributions to harmonic analysis.
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1794
April
Germinal Pierre Dandelin $($$\text {1794}$ – $\text {1847}$$)$
French mathematician, soldier, and professor of engineering, best known for Dandelin spheres.
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May
William Whewell $($$\text {1794}$ – $\text {1866}$$)$
English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science.
Originator of many new scientific terms, including ion, cathode, Eocene, Miocene, physicist, and scientist.
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1795
February
Giuliano Frullani $($$\text {1795}$ – $\text {1834}$$)$
Italian mathematician interested in definite integrals and infinite series.
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July
Gabriel Léon Jean Baptiste Lamé $($$\text {1795}$ – $\text {1870}$$)$
French mathematician who investigated curvilinear coordinate systems.
Studied the series of curves now known as Lamé curves.
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October
Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues $($$\text {1795}$ – $\text {1851}$$)$
French banker, mathematician, and social reformer.
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1796
February
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet $($$\text {1796}$ – $\text {1874}$$)$
Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist.
Founded and directed the Brussels Observatory.
Influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences.
Founded the science of anthropometry and developed the body mass index scale, originally called the Quetelet index.
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March
Jakob Steiner $($$\text {1796}$ – $\text {1863}$$)$
Swiss mathematician who worked extensively (and mainly) in geometry.
He made an important contribution to combinatorics with his Steiner system, a kind of block design.
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June
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot $($$\text {1796}$ – $\text {1832}$$)$
French military scientist and physicist, often described as the "father of thermodynamics".
Published the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of heat engines.
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August
Irénée-Jules Bienaymé $($$\text {1796}$ – $\text {1878}$$)$
French mathematician mainly working in statistics, whose work can be considered as extending the work of Laplace.
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November
Andreas Freiherr von Ettingshausen $($$\text {1796}$ – $\text {1878}$$)$
German mathematician and physicist.
The first to build an electromagnetic machine.
Invented the notation $\dbinom n k$ for the binomial coefficient.
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1797
April
Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille $($$\text {1797}$ – $\text {1869}$$)$
French physicist and physiologist best known for giving his name to the poise.
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June
Rehuel Lobatto $($$\text {1797}$ – $\text {1866}$$)$
Dutch mathematician who contributed towards the development of solutions to differential equations.
Developer of the Gauss-Lobatto Quadrature Method.
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December
Joseph Henry $($$\text {1797}$ – $\text {1878}$$)$
American scientist who discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance.
Discovered mutual inductance independently of Michael Faraday.
Developed the electromagnet into a practical device.
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1798
William Rutherford $($$\text {1798}$ – $\text {1871}$$)$
English mathematician famous for his calculation of $208$ digits of $\pi$ in $1841$.
The first to publish what is now known as Napoleon's Theorem.
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January
Karl Georg Christian von Staudt $($$\text {1798}$ – $\text {1867}$$)$
German mathematician best known for his book Geometrie der Lage, an important work in the development of the discipline of projective geometry.
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March
Pierre Frédéric Sarrus $($$\text {1798}$ – $\text {1861}$$)$
French mathematician who discovered a mnemonic rule for solving the determinant of a 3-by-3 matrix, named Sarrus' Scheme.
Demonstrated the Fundamental Lemma of Calculus of Variations.
Discovered Fermat pseudoprimes to base $2$, now known as Sarrus numbers or Poulet numbers.
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October
Heinrich Ferdinand Scherk $($$\text {1798}$ – $\text {1885}$$)$
German mathematician notable for his work on minimal surfaces and the distribution of prime numbers.
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1799
Camille-Christophe Gerono $($$\text {1799}$ – $\text {1891}$$)$
French mathematician concerned mainly with geometry.
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April
Fortuné Landry $($$\text {1799}$ – $\text {1895}$$)$
French mathematician mainly working in the field of factorization of large integers.
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May
Karl Ludwig Gerwien $($$\text {1799}$ – $\text {1858}$$)$
German military officer and mathematician, mainly known for his work in geometry.
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1800
May
Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach $($$\text {1800}$ – $\text {1834}$$)$
German geometer best known for Feuerbach's Theorem.
Introduced homogeneous coordinates in $1827$, independently of August Ferdinand Möbius.
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