i love Cantor and Cohen. Cantor because his story is so sad, and Cohen because he is famous for a single thing, which sound hilarious to me.

You should read "Mathematical Apocrypha", its a book of anecdotes and it's great.

Paul Erdos (" over the o) was amazing. He grew up in Hungary, published while in highschool, and got his doctorate at age 21. He traveled the world living with mathematicians in exchange for working with them. He was said to have an amazing ability for giving people problems just easy enough that they could solve, without being nontrivial. He published more papers than anyone else in history, almost all of them coauthored by others.

>>16

Einstein wasn't good if it came to mathematics, formal side of his theory was formulated by Minkowski, who was quite nice guy because of his interpretation of fourth dimension.

Walter Rudin.. baby rudin is pretty neato

Expelled from École Normale, arrested for conspiracy to overthrow the government, after he was acquitted, proposed a toast to King Louis-Philippe with a dagger above his cup which was interpreted as a threat against the king's life (arrested again, acquitted again). Arrested a third time for protesting on Bastille Day heavily armed. Worked on math in prison, and died in a duel a month after getting out (perhaps on behalf of a lady's honor).

His work led to Galois Theory.

Went by the pen name Student, most famous for Student's t-distribution.

Worked a lot with beer, contributed greatly to the (relatively modern) field of statistics. He took on his pseudonym as a compromise (with Arthur Guiness & son) for being able to publish about statistics, claiming that his findings had no practical use for competitors.

Pythagoras

Turned mathematics into the parallel of a cult/religion, manipulated only the smartest of minds to attend his lectures, and was without a doubt the most mentally and physically disciplined of any other mathematician. He had discovered the first true mathematics behind harmony, and it should be needless to discuss the importance behind one of the world's most known theorems (a^2+b^2=c^2). Knowledgeable in politics, science, astronomy, and physics; Pythagoras should easily be considered the "Superman" of mathematicians (in the sense that he has too many damn weapons/superpowers for anybody else to put up a fair fight. Pythagoras also had a cryptonite: beans)

>>91
>notpornpythagoras.jpg

SAGE has been used.

"a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science"

All I know about him is from The Lady Tasting Tea, an enjoyable read on the history of statistics, but he seems like a really fascinating guy. I remember he had an eyesight problem that led him to understand geometry very intuitively, and that he was kind of nudged out of academic publication by being unapologetic with his rigor and method and that the Established Academics at the time didn't really understand his math.

Also he was into eugenics and argued against smoking causing cancer, which I think adds to him being an interesting person.

>>22
>Paul Erdos (" over the o)
¨ + o = ö

;-)

>>139
Ő, not Ö

SAGE has been used.

>>140
Well, given his linguistic peculiarities, I think that an ö would do.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Benoit Mandelbrot. He is the man that made "fractals" a recognizable word, and in doing so tossing the importance and novelty of Euclidian geometry aside. In his famous book "The Fractal Geometry of Nature", he explains how ubiquitous fractals are in life, earth, physics, chemistry, art, ect… We probably would have the technological advancements of the 1990's if it weren't for him. Pic related.

David Hilbert. Mathematician that had an incredibly wide interests, also a logician.