I know opinion differs, but still every one of us are entitled to have one. So "who is your favourite mathematician?".\n\nAlthough there are many contenders for this, my favourite is the french mathematician 'Galois'. Galois is a child prodigy who died so young (20). He was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals.\n\nThe next one will be Gauss. Known as the prince of Mathematics. And virtually contributed to every feild of Mathematics.\n\nEuler is mainly known for his contributions to Applied Mathematics.\n\nThen comes Ramanujan. Known for his elegant insight in to Number Theory, considered as one of the purest discipline in Mathematics, mastered it.\n\nWho is yours?
214275
Gauss and Euler have so much impacted the whole history and methodology of mathematics that they deserve my top score.\n\nLooking to the other answers, I believe Newton is a bit overvalued as a mathematician (not as a physicist of course): calculus was independently discovered also by Leibniz and received fundamental contributions by many others.\n\nI also want to spend a word about Henri Poincare, a mathematician of great vision, who was ahead his time and with his work on differential equations posed the foundations for modern math branches such as dynamical systems and chaos theory.
565753
Maniche is great when in time of need! Ronaldo i really like coz for being so young and yet plays like he's been playing all his life! Deco is definately my most favourite. I also like Simao, Pauleta, Ricardo, Miguel! well to put it this way. i like all of them!!
634833
What mathematical topics to you want discuss ?
669754
I thought I already answered this one. Hmm.\n\nAnyway.\n\nHe was a figure in Pythagorean history who attained a cult-like following during his lifetime and his followers grew in number exponentially after his death because they believed in the immortality of the human soul and felt they had accomplished the quest for immortality.
661297
Leonardo of Pisa (Pisa, c. 1170 - Pisa, 1250), also known as Leonardo Pisano, Leonardo Fibonacci, or simply Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician. He is best known for the discovery of the Fibonacci numbers, and for his role in the introduction to Europe of the modern Arabic positional decimal system for writing and manipulating numbers (algorism). Some consider him the "the most talented mathematician of the middle ages."[1]
429754
Plato for sure... I was just re-reading the Republic recently and admiring all over again how very well he picked an issue apart by answering every question with another question until getting to the root of it. If only we all did that!
136037
I come from the University of Waterloo, the only school in North America (I believe) with a FACULTY of mathematics.  We're ranked with MIT and the like for goodness when it comes to math and computers.\n\nAnyways I see mathematicians go off every which way to jobs.  Some stay at the institution and do work on theorems, etc.  Some work for computer companies, deveoping algorithms, etc.  Some go into a highly mathematical branch of physics or chemistry and work on stuff there.\n\nIf you've taken some stats courses, maybe you'd consider being an actuarial scientist.  These are the people who work with stats ALL the time, for insurance companies, banks, etc.  They make SOOOOO much money (6 figures to start!)\n\nGive it all some thought...and never give up :)
332072
I like math class, I'm really good at math, and I know that it benefits everyone, but I'm not going to spend my free time memorizing the digits of pi or phi. I can do trigonometry, but on vacations, I will not work problems for fun. I think everyone should get at least an Algebra 2 level of math mastered.
76562
Mathematicians have proven that, in general, 1 + 1 = 2. It took them awhile to do it, but they succeeded. Unless the time truly comes when there is a need to ignore this generalisation, this assumption made is as good as any other axioms ever declared by the wise logicians.
590559
I'm still working my way up to 26. Ching the answer to four is Prince Albert.\n\nModified: I almost forgot to post back, became to carried away solving the questions (almost done). The answer to 26 is George Michael...good luck :)
22543
Me?\n\nI don't think you can quantify such a thing. I am a scientist and work with many of the world's top minds in their specialized field. Could they manage to go grocery shopping on their own? No way, yet they can clone a cat. Go figure.\n\nA great author or poet is smart in one way, while a brilliant mathematician is smart in another.  \n\nI guess you want an all around Jack of All trades smart guy. Well Ken Jennings from Jeopardy has a lot of trivia knowledge and knows amny subjects, but no one would call him the smartest person on the planet.  Einstein was a great physicist yet he was a lousy artist.\n\nI think  you can be the best at somthing, but not the best at everything.
109332
I vote for infinity, because when studied one finds out that it is even more puzzling and contradictory than it appears on the surface.\n\nGeorg Cantor, listed in a previous answer, proved some very surprising things about infinity. In fact Cantor's work lead to set theory, which most students have seen to some degree, even in high school.\n\nHere's a few commonly taught items about infinite that Cantor discovered:\n\n+ There are various degrees of infinity, not just one.\n\n+ The two most commonly described degrees of infinity are countably infinite and uncountably infinite. Countably infinite means that all elements in that set map to the set of integers. Uncoutably infinite means that there are even more in that set than there are integers.\n\n+ Rational numbers, i.e., fractions, are countably infinite. That means there's a one-to-one mapping between fractions and integers. (Dove-Tail Proof)\n\n+ Real numbers, i.e., includes all [non-repeating] decimals are uncountably infinite. That means there are more reals than rationals even if both sets are infinite. (Diagonalization Proof)\n\n+ Buy using a set theory technique, the set of infinte sets can be grown to even "larger" sets of infinity. In fact, there's an infinite degree of infinite sets.\n\nCantor also had a hypothesis that there was no set of size in between the basic countable and uncountable degrees of infinity, but he couldn't prove it, and it turns out for good reason. Well after his death, other mathematicians proved that his continuum hypothesis could not be proven nor disproven, but that starts to open up a whole new can of worms.
167750
I'm sure you know more about calculus than I do, but I had to mention that Neil Stephenson wrote a pretty good trilogy called the Baroque Cycle or something along those lines.  First book is called Quicksilver.  It's a historical fiction and it uses Newton and Leibniz as character as they work out the basics of calculus.  You might find it interesting.\n\nhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/90841/ref=pd_sr_ec_ser_b/103-2231829-6875059\n\nAs for the original question, Newton was first but he didn't publish first, so he didn't get the full credit.\n\nEdit: Yes, my grammar is very poor as I never did well in English class.  I'll try and fix things a little just for you. :)  I don't really think so.  It's pretty much 90% off topic by now.
306569
I'm assuming you mean Einstein, but I would have to go with Newton. He invented calculus and was absolutely revolutionary in developing elementary physics. Now, obviously Einstein was brilliant too, but at least he had a long background of physicists to build on. He stood on the shoulders of giants, one of which is newton.
623165
Euclid of Alexandria\nhttp://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Euclid.html\n\nSpend time with Euclid. He was a Greek mathematician, born about 300 BC. He is the man to see about plane geometry.\n\n           Pythagoras of Samos\nhttp://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pythagoras.html\n\nMeet Pythagoras. He was born about 569 BC on the island of Samos off the coast of Greece. He is known for being a mathematician, but he was really more of a philosopher.\n\n                August Ferdinand Möbius\nhttp://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk:80/~history/Mathematicians/Mobius.html\n\nGet to know August Ferdinand Möbius. He was a German mathematician who focused on analytical geometry. Introduce students to his Möbius strips. \n\n              Euclid: The Father of Geometry\nhttp://www.khsd.k12.ca.us/district/instruct/technology/workshops/euclid/default.htm\n\nPerhaps antiquity’s most prominent mathematician, Euclid of Alexandria is best known for his treatise on mathematics entitled The Elements, which arranged and perfected many geometric theorems. The beauty and symmetry of Euclid’s work was even celebrated by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in her poem “Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare.”\n\nHistory of Geometry\nhttp://math.rice.edu/~lanius/Geom/his.html\nRead a brief synopsis of geometry throughout history. This site describes the contributions of Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks. It also includes links to biographies of major contributors to geometry.
24009
There is actually a little controversy surrounding whether or not Pythagoras was actually the one who discovered the theorem, or if it was another of his associates, the Pythagoreans.  This website: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/Group3/hist.html has some interesting history of other cultures illustrating an understanding of this, without expressing it in literal mathematical language.\n\nAs far as your second question, a great illustration can be found at http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/53937.html    The pythagorean theorem is actually a specific instance of the law of cosines, which is represented as a^2 = b^2 + c^2 - 2ab*cos(a).  As you can see, the equation only becomes the pythagorean theorem if 2ab*cos(a) = 0, which only happens if the angle is 90 degrees.
555802
haha, thats crazy to ask.\n\nbasically, this was proven by andrew wiles in 1994, and resubmitted after an error was found\n\nhe developed new mathematics that will basically be the foundation of study in the coming century.\n\nthe level of mathematics that would be required to understand the proof most PhD mathematicians dont have.\n\nsorry\nwish i could be more help\nmatttlocke