Mathematics & Mathematicians Educational Posters, pg 3/3
for classrooms, home schoolers and math lovers.

Carl Friedrich Gauss
b. 4-30-1777; Germany
d. 2-23-1855

Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss has been described as "the prince of mathematics" for his contributions to number theory, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Those familiar with computer software imaging programs will know the term "Gaussian Blur" which refers to a set of normal distribution Gauss used to analyze astronomical data, and is applicable to image enhancement.

• Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
• Prince of Mathematics: Carl Friedrich Gauss

Sophie Germain
b. 4-2-1776; France
d. 6-27-1831; breast cancer

Sophie Germain was a French mathematician who became friends with Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Grace Hopper
b. 12-9-1906; NYC
d. 1-1-1992; Arlington, VA

• more Grace Hopper Posters
• Women of Science poster series
• Women of Science Composite Poster
• more computer posters
• more Internet Posters

Gottfried Wilhelm Baron de Leibniz
b. 7-1-1646; Germany
d. 11-14-1716; Germany

• The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time

James Clerk Maxwell
b. 11-13-1831; Edinburgh, Scotland
d. 8-13-1910; Cambridge

James Clerk Maxwell was a mathematician and theoretical physicist noted for his equations in electricity, magnetism and inductance; and laying the foundations for the 20th century fields of special relativity and quantum mechanics. He also made the first true color photographs.

• The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

Marin Mersenne
b. 9-8-1588; France
d. 9-1-1648

Marin Mersenne was a mathematician, theologian, philosopher, music theorist and monk.

August Ferdinand Mobius,
b. 10-24-1790; Germany
d. 9-26-1868

Mobius, a mathematician and professor of astronomy, is best known for his discovery of the Möbius strip, "a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space."

• The Mobius Strip: Dr. August Mobius's Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology
• M. C. Escher "Ants" on a Mobius Strip poster

John Napier
b. 1550; Scotland
d. 4-4-1617

John Napier invented logarithms which advanced the sciences in the solving of equations where the exponents are unknown. The word logarithms is based on the Greek logos = word, reason, and arithomos = number.

Napier also developed an acabus for simplifying multiplication and division problem popularly known as Napier's Bones.

• John Napier: Logarithm John

Isaac Newton
b. 1-4-1643; Lincolnshire, England
d. 3-20-1727; London

• more Isaac Newton posters

Florence Nightingale
b. 5-12-1820; Florence, Italy
d. 8-13-1910

Florence Nightingale loved mathematics and her study of mathematics helped her collect data and organize a record keeping system to calculate the mortality rate of soldiers in the hospital.
BTW- Florence Nightingale was named for the city of her birth.

• more women scientists posters

Blaise Pascal
b. 6-19-1623; France
d. 8-18-1662; Paris

Pascal, a child prodigy educated by his father, was a mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher whose earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, study of fluids, clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli, and corresponded with Fermat on the probability theory. Pascal wrote in defense of the scientific method, and after a mystical experience, abandoned his scientific studies.

Claudius Ptolemy (fl. 90-168 AD) was a Greek or Hellenized Egyptian mathematician, geographer, astronomer, and astrologer in Alexandria, Roman Egypt.

Pythagoras
b. c. 569 BC; Greece
d. c. 475 BC

Pythagoras was a philosopher who believed that numbers were the ultimate reality and everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles described through mathematics, including music.

Pythagoras is thought to have developed the first proof for the theorem that bears his name; "The Pythagorean Theorem - In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle)".

Johannes Müller von Königsberg, "Regiomontanus"
b. 6-6-1436; Bavaria
d. 7-6-1476

Regiomontanus (L. = from King's mountain) was a late Middle Ages mathematician, astronomer and astrologer.

Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi, from "China Illustrated", Giclee Print

Matteo Ricci
b. 10-6-1552; Papal States
d. 5-11-1610; China

Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary, mathematician and cartographer, and Xu Guangqi, a Chinese bureaucrat, agricultural scientist, astronomer, mathematician, were a colleagues who translated part of Euclid's Elements into Chinese, and Confucianism text into a western language.

• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was also a Jesuit priest

Evangelista Torricelli
b. 10-15-1608; Italy
d. 10-25-1647

Torricelli was an Italian mathematician and physicist most noted for inventing the Barometer (1642) and for stating Torricelli's Law concerning the speed of a fluid flowing out of an opening, later shown to be a particular case of Bernoulli's principle. He succeeded Galileo as the grand-ducal mathematician and professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa.

• weather posters

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
b. 9-17-1857; Russian Empire
d. 9-19-1935

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist and pioneer of space travel, earned a living as a math teacher. The television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation honored him by naming a fictional space ship the K. E. Tsiolkovsky.