Overview of Famous Mathematicians

Overview of Famous MathematiciansMathematicians ManifestoA young human race who died at the age of 32 in a foreign vote d own he had travelled to, to pursue his craft. A clumsy eccentric who could get wind his complete ready in his head before he adjust it to bumvas. A Russian who shuns the limelight and ref designs recognition for his acidify. A traveller who went from soil to country on a whim in order to meet with others. A man whose scribblings inspired the life work of hundreds. A woman, who break loose the prejudices against her gender to make a name for herself. A recluse who spent close to ten years working on one piece. A revolutionary child prodigy who died in a gun affaire dhonneur before his twenty-first birthday. What do you picture when you read the above? Artists? Musicians? Writers? sure not mathematicians?Srinivas Ramanujan (1887-1920) was a self-taught nobody who, in his short life-span, observe intimately 3900 conclusions, m either of which were all unexpected, and influenced and do wide c beers for future mathematicians. In situation there is an entire journal devoted to areas of memorise inspired by Ramanujans work. Even trying to give an overview of his lifes work would require an entire book.Henri Poincare (1854-1912) was short-sighted and hence had to learn how to visualise all the lectures he sat through. In doing so, he developed the skill to visualise entire proofs before writing them down. Poincare is considered one of the founders of the field of Topology, a field relate with what remains when objects are transformed. An oft-told joke ab bulge out Topologists is that they roll in the hayt communicate their acquireut from their coffee cup.A conjecture of Poincares, regarding the equivalent of a country in 4-dimensional space, was unsolved till this century when Grigori Perelman (1966- ) became the first mathematician to crack a millenium prize problem, with prize money of $1million. Perelman hitched it dow n. He is also the wholly mathematician to withdraw dark down the Fields Medal, math equivalent of the Nobel Prize. enlist in you heard of the Kevin Bacon number? Well mathematicians give themselves an Erdos number after capital of Minnesota Erdos (1913-96) who, same(p) Kevin Bacon, collaborated with everybody important in the field in various separate of the world. If he heard you were doing some interesting research, he would pack his bags and turn up at your doorstep.Pierre de Fermat (1601-65) was a lawyer and amateur mathematician, whose work in Number Theory has provided some of the greatest tools mathematicians affirm today, and are integral to very modern areas much(prenominal) as cryptography. He made an enigmatic color in a margin of his copy of Diaphantus Arithmetica faceIt is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I switch discovered a truly ma rvellous proof of this, which this margin is too trap to contain.Whether he actually had a proof is debatable, still this one comment inspired work for the next three hundred years.In these intervening 300 years, one name has to be mentioned Sophie Germain (1776-1831). Germain remains one of the few women who have broken the glass ceiling and made significant contri providedions to mathematics. She was responsible for proving Fermats scribblings for a large marrow of numbers.I apologise to Andrew Wiles (1953- ) for calling him a recluse, but he did spend close to 10 years on the proof of Fermats Last Theorem, during most of which he did not expose his progress to anybody.Saving the best for last, Evariste Galois (1811-32), a radical republican in pre-revolutionary France, died in a duel over a woman at the age of 20. Only the night before, he had finished a holograph with some of the most innovative and impactful results in mathematics. in that location is speculation that th e resulting overleap of sleep caused him to lose the duel. Galois developed what became a whole kickoff of mathematics to itself Galois Theory, a sub-discipline which connect two other subdisciplines of abstract algebra. It is the hardly branch of mathematics I can think of which is named after its creator (apart from Mr. Algebra and Ms. Probability).This world power appear to be anecdotal evidence of the creative spirit of mathematics and mathematicians. However, the same can be said about the evidence presumption for Artistic genius. In fact there is research which shows that the archetype of a mad artistic genius doesnt stand on hearty ground. So, lets move off from exploring creative mathematicians, to the creative thinking of the discipline.Mathematics is a exceedingly creative discipline, by any useful sense of the word creative. The study of mathematics involves speculation, risk in the sense of the go outingness to follow ones chain of thought to wherever it leads, innovative arguments, exhilaration at achieving a result and many a time beauty in the result. dissimilar scientists, mathematicians do not have our universe as a crutch. wide-eyed mathematics powerfulness be able to get inspiration from the universe, but quickly things change. Mathematicians have to invent conjectures from their imagination. Therefore, these conjectures are very tenuous. Most of them will fail to bear any fruit, but if mathematicians are unwilling to take that risk, they will lose any hope of discovery. Once mathematicians are confident(p) of the certainty of an argument, they have to present a rigorous proof, which nobody can poke any holes in. Once again, they are not as stack as scientists, who are happy with a statistically significant result or at most a result within basketball team standard deviations. As a result of this, once you prove a numeric theorem, your name will be associated with it for eternity. Aristotle might have been superseded by Newto n and Newton by Einstein, but Euclids proof of blank primes will always be true. As Hardy said, A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are much permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. The beauty of mathematical results and proofs is a pregnant terrain, but there are certain results, great masters such as Eulers identity and Euclids proof, which are almost universally accepted as aesthetically pleasing.So, why are people so afraid of mathematics? Why do they consider it to be dumb and staid? Well, the easy answer is that they are taught shopkeeper mathematics. In school, you are taught to follow rules in order to arrive at an answer. In the remediate schools, you are encouraged to do so using blocks and toys. However, basically the entirely skills you are getting are those which help you in commercial transactions. At the most, you get the skills to help you in other disciplines like Economics and the Sciences.Ther e has been a huge push in the recent past for the arts to be taught in school for arts sake. There would be uproar tomorrow amongst artists and the liberal elite if art class turned into replicating posters (not even creating them). There would even be a furore if the only art students did was to draw the solar system for Science class and the Taj Mahal for brotherly Studies. What good art classes involve is initiateers introducing concepts such as particular shapes and hence encouraging students to experiment and create based on those concepts.What about maths for maths sake? Students should be encouraged to amount up with their own conjectures based on concepts introduced by the teacher. This class would have to be nearly guided by a teacher who is conceptually very strong, so that they can give examples in order to get students to come up with conjectures. They would also be required to provide students with counterexamples to any conjecture they have come up with.I am not suggesting completely doing away with the current model of mathematics education involving repeated practice of questions. vindicatory as replication probably helps in the arts and the arts can serve as great starting points for concepts in other disciplines, repetition is important in mathematics as it helps you intuit concepts and certain mathematical concepts are important for the conceptual understanding of other disciplines and for life. So, there inevitably to be a blend of mathematics classes (those which teach mathematics) and shopkeeper classes (those which teach mathematical concepts for other disciplines and for life). These would not work as separate entities and might even be taught at the same time. This requires a complete draw of the mathematics curriculum with a much lighter load of topics so that teachers can explore concepts in depth with their students. It also requires a bigger emphasis on concepts such as symmetry, graph theory and picture element geometry which are easier to inquire into and form conjectures in than topics like calculus.Now we come to the logistics. How many teachers are there in the country who have a strong enough conceptual understanding required to engage with mathematics in this manner? I would be pleasantly surprised if that were a long list, but I suspect it isnt. In order to flesh up this capability, the emphasis at teacher colleges and in teacher paid development has to move from dull and pointless concepts like classroom oversight and teaching strategies, to developing conceptual understanding, at least in Mathematics. The amount of knowledge required to teach school mathematics is not all that much. All that is required is a strong conceptual base in a few concepts along with an understanding of mathematics as an endeavor, and a disposition for the eccentricities of the discipline.Even so, this will not be easy to effectuate and will take time. In the meanwhile, wherever possible, professional mathema ticians could come in to schools and work with teachers on their lesson plans. In other cases, these mathematicians could partner with educationalists and come up with material, which can more or less be put to use in any class (this is not ideal as lesson plans should be created by the teachers and evolved based on their understanding of their class, but this will have to do in the interim).Not only will this help in developing a disposition for mathematics and hopefully churn out mathematicians, but it will also help in the understanding of shopkeeper mathematics. Pedagogy and conceptual understanding are not separate entities. In fact a strong conceptual understanding is a necessity for effective pedagogy.Mathematics is unfortunate in its usefulness to other disciplines and the improvement it provides for life. In the meanwhile, the real creative essence of the discipline is lost. I dont blame students for hating mathematics in school. In fact it is completely justified. Mathema tics is missing out. Who knows, one of these students would have proved the Riemann Hypothesis in an alternate reality. Artists have been very successful in campaigning for the creativity of their discipline to be an integral part of schools. Mathematicians, on the other hand, authentically need to pull up their socks and join the fight for the future of mathematics. In the spirit of Galois, Mathematicians of the World Unite You have nothing to lose but the chains of countless students