The People Behind the Formulas 32 short, accurate biographies of the mathematicians and scientists whose ideas became the formulas you use every day — from Pythagoras and Archimedes to Euler, Gauss, Ramanujan, Turing and Maryam Mirzakhani. Each one links to the formula they are most famous for.
P Ancient
Pythagoras c. 570 – c. 495 BC
The cult leader who gave us the most famous theorem in maths
E Ancient
Euclid of Alexandria fl. c. 300 BC
The author of the best-selling textbook in history
A Ancient
Archimedes of Syracuse c. 287 – c. 212 BC
The genius who calculated π and could move the Earth with a lever
H Ancient
Hypatia of Alexandria c. 350 – 415 AD
The first female mathematician whose life we really know
AK Medieval
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi c. 780 – c. 850
The scholar whose name became "algorithm" and whose book named "algebra"
F Medieval
Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) c. 1170 – c. 1250
The merchant's son who sold Europe on Arabic numerals
C Renaissance
Gerolamo Cardano 1501 – 1576
The gambling physician who cracked the cubic and founded probability
N Renaissance
John Napier 1550 – 1617
The Scottish laird who invented logarithms and saved astronomers years of work
D Renaissance
René Descartes 1596 – 1650
The philosopher who married algebra to geometry
F Enlightenment
Pierre de Fermat 1607 – 1665
The lawyer whose scribbled note tormented maths for 358 years
P Enlightenment
Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662
The teenage prodigy who built a calculator and co-founded probability
N Enlightenment
Isaac Newton 1643 – 1727
The man who invented calculus to explain the entire universe
L Enlightenment
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646 – 1716
The rival who gave calculus the notation we still use
B Enlightenment
Jacob Bernoulli 1655 – 1705
The mathematician who found the number e hiding in compound interest
B Enlightenment
Thomas Bayes c. 1701 – 1761
The minister whose theorem now powers modern AI
E Enlightenment
Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783
The most prolific mathematician who ever lived
L Enlightenment
Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749 – 1827
The "French Newton" who turned probability into a science
G Modern
Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855
The "Prince of Mathematicians" who summed 1 to 100 as a child
G Modern
Évariste Galois 1811 – 1832
The hot-headed duellist who invented group theory at 20, then died
B Modern
George Boole 1815 – 1864
The self-taught genius whose logic runs every computer
AL Modern
Ada Lovelace 1815 – 1852
The poet's daughter who wrote the first computer program
R Modern
Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866
The shy genius behind the million-dollar hypothesis
C Modern
Georg Cantor 1845 – 1918
The man who counted infinity — and found bigger infinities
H Modern
David Hilbert 1862 – 1943
The man who set mathematics its to-do list for a century
R Modern
Srinivasa Ramanujan 1887 – 1920
The self-taught Indian genius who saw formulas in dreams
EN Modern
Emmy Noether 1882 – 1935
The woman who revolutionised physics with a single theorem
GK Modern
Kurt Gödel 1906 – 1978
The logician who proved maths can never be complete
T Modern
Alan Turing 1912 – 1954
The father of computer science who helped crack Enigma
JN Contemporary
John Nash 1928 – 2015
The Nobel genius of "A Beautiful Mind" and game theory
M Contemporary
Benoit Mandelbrot 1924 – 2010
The father of fractals who found order in roughness
KJ Contemporary
Katherine Johnson 1918 – 2020
The NASA mathematician who helped send humans to the Moon
MM Contemporary
Maryam Mirzakhani 1977 – 2017
The first woman to win the Fields Medal