Math History

Pythagoras

520 BCE

Pythagoras was born in Grece in Samos. He established a school that shared much of their knowledge, therefore it was hard to attribute the contributions to one man. The main contribution is the Pythagorean Theorem. This states that the sum of the squares of the legs of the right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. Although, it is debated that he was the first to display a proof for this theorem.

Democritus

400 BCE

Democritus was born in Northern Greece. Much of his work has gotten lost over the years. Democritus claimed that the world could be reduced to interactions between atoms. One of his main contributions was that the volume of a cone is one third the volume of a cylinder with similar base and height.

Euclid

300 BCE

It is not certain where Euclid was born but he did most of his important work in Alexandria, Egypt. The most prominent of his work was a series of books compiled into one called The Elements. The Elements neatly laid out the principles of geometry and number theory of his time.

Archimedes

240 BCE

Archimedes was born and lived in Syracuse, Sicily. He believed math was the only worthy pursuit. He was heavily influenced from his father being an Astronomer. His most famous contribution comes from the realization that all the water that overflowed from his tub was proportional to the amount of his body that was submerged.

Apollinus

210 BCE

Apollinus was born in Turkey and did much of his work in Alexandria. He was known for his work on conics and his study of curved surfaces. Apollinus inspired much of the advance of Islamic mathematics but most of his work has been lost.

Chui-Chang Suan-Shu

1 BCE

Chui-chang suan-shu is a famous mathematician from China. His most known work is Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Procedures. This book lays out 246 questions and solutions ranging from taxation, agriculture and engineering.