Mathematics

Patterns, structures, and mathematical ideas.

People in Mathematics

86 profiles

Physicist

Isaac Newton

Formulating the laws of motion and universal gravitation.

Mathematician

Katherine Johnson

Calculating flight paths for early US space missions.

Statistician

C. R. Rao

Establishing fundamental ways to measure and improve statistical estimates.

Mathematician

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Extraordinary discoveries about numbers, infinite series and partitions.

Astronomer

Nicolaus Copernicus

Placing the moving Earth around the Sun in a new model of the heavens.

Mathematician

Blaise Pascal

Advancing probability, pressure research and early mechanical calculation.

Mathematician

Al-Khwarizmi

Writing a foundational algebra treatise and helping transmit positional arithmetic.

Mathematician

Maryam Mirzakhani

Becoming the first woman to receive the Fields Medal for work on curved surfaces.

Mathematician

Aryabhata

Developing influential mathematical and astronomical methods in the Aryabhatiya.

Mathematician

Terence Tao

Making major contributions across analysis, number theory and combinatorics.

Mathematician

Emmy Noether

Connecting symmetry with conservation laws and transforming abstract algebra.

Mathematician

Brahmagupta

Setting out influential rules for zero, negative numbers and algebra.

Mathematician

Bhaskara II

Writing influential works on arithmetic, algebra and mathematical astronomy.

Mathematician

David Blackwell

Advancing statistics, decision theory and the mathematical study of information.

Mathematician

John von Neumann

Shaping modern computing, game theory and mathematical physics.

Mental calculator

Shakuntala Devi

Performing extraordinary calculations mentally before live audiences.

Mathematician

John Nash

Developing the equilibrium concept central to modern game theory.

Mathematician

Dorothy Vaughan

Leading Black women mathematicians at Langley and helping them move into computer programming.

Mathematician

Leonhard Euler

Transforming mathematics, from calculus and number theory to the beginnings of graph theory.

Mathematician

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Reshaping number theory and geometry, and calculating the orbit that helped astronomers recover Ceres.

Mathematician

Bernhard Riemann

Developing the geometry later used in general relativity and posing the Riemann hypothesis about prime numbers.

Mathematician

David Hilbert

Setting out 23 problems that helped shape twentieth-century mathematics.

Mathematician

Georg Cantor

Showing that infinite sets can have different sizes and helping establish set theory.

Mathematician

Henri Poincaré

Pioneering topology and revealing the unpredictable behaviour now associated with chaos theory.

Mathematician

Sophie Germain

Advancing number theory and the mathematics of vibrating surfaces while excluded from formal university study.

Mathematician

Sofya Kovalevskaya

Making major advances in differential equations and becoming a pioneering woman professor of mathematics.

Mathematician

Julia Robinson

Helping prove that no universal algorithm can solve every whole-number equation of a certain kind.

Mathematician

Karen Uhlenbeck

Pioneering geometric analysis and becoming the first woman to receive the Abel Prize.

Mathematician

Ingrid Daubechies

Developing wavelets that helped make digital image compression practical.

Mathematician

Andrew Wiles

Proving Fermat’s Last Theorem after it had resisted mathematicians for more than three centuries.

Mathematician

Grigori Perelman

Solving the Poincaré conjecture, a century-old problem about the shape of three-dimensional spaces.

Mathematician

Cédric Villani

Winning the Fields Medal for work explaining how physical systems approach equilibrium.

Mathematician

Manjul Bhargava

Winning the Fields Medal for new ways to count and understand important number systems.

Mathematician

Archimedes

Explaining buoyancy and using geometry to calculate the sizes of curved shapes with extraordinary precision.

Mathematician

Jamshid al-Kashi

Calculating pi with remarkable accuracy and developing powerful arithmetic methods at Samarkand’s scientific court.

Mathematician

Akshay Venkatesh

Connecting number theory with geometry and dynamics, earning the 2018 Fields Medal.

Mathematician

Artur Avila

Transforming the study of dynamical systems and becoming the first Latin American Fields medallist in 2014.

Mathematician

Euclid

Organising geometry into a logical system of definitions, assumptions and proofs in the Elements.

Mathematician

Shing-Tung Yau

Proving the Calabi conjecture and transforming the study of curved spaces through geometric analysis.

Mathematician

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

Developing trigonometry and planetary models, and establishing the great observatory at Maragha.

Mathematician

Liu Hui

Explaining the reasoning behind ancient Chinese mathematical procedures and refining calculations of pi.

Mathematician

Caucher Birkar

Making major advances in classifying algebraic shapes, including a proof of boundedness for Fano varieties.

Mathematician

Zu Chongzhi

Calculating an exceptionally accurate value of pi in fifth-century China.

Mathematician

Jean-Pierre Serre

Connecting topology, algebraic geometry and number theory in work that reshaped modern mathematics.

Mathematician

Michael Atiyah

Connecting geometry and equations through the Atiyah–Singer index theorem.

Mathematician

Ngô Bảo Châu

Proving the fundamental lemma, a central result in the Langlands programme.

Mathematician

Maryna Viazovska

Solving the sphere-packing problem in eight dimensions and winning a Fields Medal.

Mathematician

Pierre de Fermat

Posing Fermat’s Last Theorem and pioneering number theory and probability.

Mathematician

John Milnor

Discovering exotic spheres and transforming the study of higher-dimensional shapes.

Mathematician

Stephen Smale

Transforming topology and developing tools for understanding chaotic dynamical systems.

Mathematician

June Huh

Connecting geometry and combinatorics to solve longstanding mathematical problems.

Physicist

Edward Witten

Connecting quantum physics with mathematics, from the shapes of knots to string theory.

Mathematician

Stanislav Smirnov

Proving conformal invariance in models of statistical physics.

Mathematician

Kunihiko Kodaira

Advancing complex geometry and the theory of algebraic surfaces.

Mathematician

Karl Weierstrass

Giving mathematical analysis rigorous definitions of limits and continuity.

Mathematician

Jean Bourgain

Connecting major problems across mathematical analysis.

Mathematician

Alessio Figalli

Advancing optimal transport and its applications to analysis.

Mathematician

Lars Ahlfors

Advancing complex analysis and becoming an inaugural Fields medallist.

Mathematician

Sergei Novikov

Advancing algebraic topology and the mathematics of solitons.

Mathematician

René Thom

Founding cobordism theory and developing catastrophe theory.

Mathematician

Pierre Deligne

Proving the final Weil conjecture in algebraic geometry.

Mathematician

Lars Hörmander

Transforming the theory of linear partial differential equations.

Mathematician

Alexander Grothendieck

Transforming the foundations of modern algebraic geometry.

Mathematician

Maxim Kontsevich

Connecting geometry, topology and mathematical physics.

Mathematician

Yu Deng

Studying nonlinear equations and the mathematics of waves and particles.

Mathematician

Peter Scholze

Introducing perfectoid spaces in arithmetic geometry

Mathematician

Elon Lindenstrauss

Connecting ergodic theory with problems in number theory.

Mathematician

Klaus Roth

Proving a landmark theorem on approximating algebraic numbers.

Mathematician

Gerd Faltings

Proving the Mordell conjecture in arithmetic geometry.

Mathematician

Laurent Lafforgue

Proving a major case of the Langlands correspondence.

Mathematician

James Maynard

Advancing the study of gaps between prime numbers.

Mathematician

Alain Connes

Developing noncommutative geometry and the theory of operator algebras

Mathematician

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

Fields Medal-winning work on dynamical systems

Mathematician

Martin Hairer

Developing regularity structures for stochastic equations.

Mathematician

Hugo Duminil-Copin

Probability research explaining phase transitions in lattice models.

Mathematician

Heisuke Hironaka

Resolving singularities in algebraic geometry.

Mathematician

George Salmon

Influential nineteenth-century textbooks in algebra and geometry.

Mathematician

Pierre-Louis Lions

Partial differential equations and the calculus of variations.

Mathematician

Wendelin Werner

Understanding the geometry of random processes.

Mathematician

Enrico Bombieri

Major advances in analytic number theory and the large sieve.

Mathematician

Atle Selberg

The Selberg sieve and advances in analytic number theory.

Mathematician

Hong Wang

Advancing the three-dimensional Kakeya problem with Joshua Zahl.

Mathematician

Andrei Okounkov

Connecting probability, representation theory and algebraic geometry

Mathematician

Jacob Tsimerman

Connecting number theory with algebraic geometry

Mathematician

Alan Baker

Effective methods in transcendental number theory.

Mathematician

Simon Donaldson

Transforming the study of smooth four-dimensional spaces.