Brahmagupta (598-668 CE) 

Brahmagupta’s work comprised of the rules to compute with zero. It was traditionally used as a place holder. He also wrote some important works on astronomy alongside mathematics. The seventh-century Indian mathematician showcased examples such as how to find the cube and cube-root of an integer and gave rules regarding squares and square roots. Read more.

Isaac Newton (1643- 1727)

Isaac Newton is perhaps most well-known for his legend on developing the universal laws of gravity. It is known that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was struck on the head by a fruit. This lead to his crucible moment, to develop some of the most important principles of modern physics. He is also renowned for his discovery of calculus, and binomial theorem. This in large has been used to work out the probability of things through statistics. Read more.

Diophantus (AD 285 and 299)

Diophantus is sometimes called “the father of algebra” and developed theories on numbers and solving equations. ‘Arithmetica’ is a major work of Diophantus, and inspired some of the world’s greatest mathematicians including Leonhard Euler and Pierre de Fermat to make significant new discoveries. Read more.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)

English mathematician, Ada Lovelace is recognised as the world’s first computer programmer. Her mathematical skills were evident at an early age. She introduced many computer concepts. Read more.

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)

Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. He contributed to several areas of mathematics, but he is widely known for Pascal’s triangle. Its common use is in probability, where it can be used to find combinations. Read more.

Aryabhata (476–550 CE)

Indian mathematician Aryabhata has had an immense influence on mathematics and astronomy. His contribution includes his work on providing an approximate value. He insisted that the earth is rotating on an axis around the sun and the moon rotated around it. He also spoke about the position of nine planets and stated that they revolved around the sun. Read more.

Fibonacci (1170-1240)

Fibonacci is famous for contributions to number theory and is one of the greatest European Italian scholars. He was the first to introduce the Hindu – Arabic system in Europe, i.e., the positional system of using ten digits with a decimal point and zero. He is popular for using the Fibonacci number sequence, i.e., 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13; in the book authored by him, known as Book of Calculation, the Liber Abaci. Read more.

Euler (1707-1723)

Euler is a Swiss physicist and an expert in maths. Euler discovered the number e and calculated its value to 23 decimal places. This irrational number is one of the most important numbers and is called Euler’s number. Read more.

Arthur Cayley (1821 – 1895)

Arthur Cayley is a British mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to algebraic geometry. Cayley and Salmon (a mathematician) discovered the 27 lines on a cubic surface. Furthermore, he also developed the algebraic aspect of matrices in two papers in the 1850s. Besides their many other applications, matrices became extremely useful for quantum mechanics. Read more.

Emmy Noether (1882-1935)

Emmy Noether is a German mathematician and her work on abstract algebra makes her one of the most important mathematicians of her time. Did you know Einstein called her a genius? Read more.

George Boole (1815 – 1864)

George Boole was an English mathematician. He developed a mathematical representation for the “laws of thought.” This led to using symbols such as x to stand for concepts. He helped establish modern symbolic logic which has now helped with the design of digital computer circuits. Read more.