History of Mathematics - Part II

A collection of vocabulary flashcards covering key mathematicians and concepts from the History of Mathematics.

Henry Briggs

The mathematician who invented the "common logarithm" and is famous for the terms "mantissa" and "characteristics".

Blaise Pascal

Referred to as "The greatest might have been."

Gilles Persone de Roberval

The mathematician who made the first sketch of half of an arch of a sine curve.

Galileo Galilei

An astronomer and contemporary of Kepler; he was likened to Moses, having come within sight of the promised land but unable to enter it.

Theorem of Cavalieri

States that "If two solids have equal altitudes,…" (regarding volumes).

Kepler

Discovered that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun.

Apollonius

The author of treaties on "Conics" and the book "Plane Loci".

Democritus

Responsible for the formulation of the atomic theory of the universe.

Pappus of Alexandria

Remembered today for his "Synagogue" or "Mathematical Collection".

Arithmetica

A famous text written by Diophantus, originally composed of $13$ books.

Christian Huygens

The inventor of the Pendulum Clock.

Gaspard Monge

The inventor of Descriptive Geometry.

Pierre de Fermat

Discovered the fundamental principle of Analytic Geometry independent of Rene Descartes.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Known as the "Prince of Mathematicians," he discovered non-Euclidean Geometry and is famous for a story about adding numbers $1$ to $100$ as a child.

Archimedes

The Father of Mathematical Physics and author of "The Sand-Reckoner"; famous for "Eureka!" and inventing war machines.

Thales of Miletus

The first true mathematician, regarded as a "pupil of Egyptians and Chaldeans," who measured the heights of pyramids.

Rene Descartes

The philosopher and mathematician known for the statement "I think, therefore I am."

Karl Weierstrass

Known as the Father of Modern Analysis.

John Venn

The mathematician who coined the term "logic of chance."

Girolamo Cardano

The author of the book "Ars Magna" who defined probability as the quotient of favourable outcomes and total outcomes.

Pythagoras

The first pure mathematician to whom the construction of solids and theory of proportional is ascribed.

ALL IS NUMBERS

The motto of the Pythagoreans.

Hippocrates of Chios

The mathematician who discovered the Quadrature of Lunes.

Paradoxes of Zeno

A set of paradoxes known as THE DICHOTOMY, THE ACHILLES, THE ARROW, and THE STADE.

Plato

Known as the "maker of mathematician" who inscribed "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here" in his school and developed the analytical method for solving construction problems.

Eudoxus

Developing the Method of Exhaustion.

Menaechmus

Reputed to have discovered the duplication of the cube and curves later known as ellipse, parabola, and hyperbolas.

The Elements of Euclid

A work containing geometry, algebra, and the "Theory on Numbers"; Books III and IV focus on theory of proportions and numbers.

Fibonacci

The author of the works "Liber Abaci" and "Flos".

Sophie Germain

Regarded as the "revolutionary mathematician" and an initiator of the elasticity theory.

Nikolai Lobachevsky

Regarded as the "Copernicus of Geometry" and author of "On the Principles of Geometry" and "Imaginary Geometry".

Protagoras

The founding father of the Sophists.

Diophantus

Famous for his riddle: "God granted him to be a boy of the sixth part of his life,…"

Nicole Chuquet

The author of the book "Triparty".

Luca Pacioli

The Father of Accountancy and Double-Entry Bookkeeping and author of "Summa de Arithmetica".

Luigi Ferrari

The secretary of Cardano who provided the solution to the quartic equation.

Francois Viete

A lawyer who referred to algebra as "analytic art."

Harriot

The mathematician responsible for the symbols "greater than" ($>$) and "less than" ($<$).

William Oughtred

Responsible for the widely used notation "$\times$" for multiplication.

Steven Pacioli

Associated with the "Wreath of spheres" diagram.

Charles Babbage

Designed the "difference engine" to eliminate errors in table computation.

George Boole

Author of the work "Mathematical Analysis of Logic".

Lazare Carnot

Discovered the aberrancy of angle of deviation and introduced the term "transversal".

Albert Gerard

Published a treatise on trigonometry containing the earliest use of abbreviations: sin, tan, and sec.

George Dantzig

Invented the method known as linear programming.

Jacob Bernoulli

An $18$th-century Swiss mathematician who introduced the "Law of Large Numbers".

Sexagesimal

The numerical system used in Mesopotamia.

Anaxagoras

Imprisoned in Athens for asserting the sun was a huge red-hot stone rather than a deity.

Menelaus

Author of the book "Sphaerica" and establisher of the basis for spherical triangles.

Multiplicative Grouping

The type of number system used by the Chinese-Japanese.

F.J. Servois

The French mathematician who first used the term "pole" in projective geometry.

J. Neuber

The Belgian mathematician who introduced the term "mediator" in mathematics.

Longchamps

Introduced the terms "orthocentric group of points" and "harmonic polar".

Jordanus

The first mathematician to consider circumscriptible quadrilaterals in the $13$th century.

Poncelet

Proposed the term "homological".

Mathieu

The mathematician to whom the term "trilinear polar" is due.

Bonaventura Cavalieri

Associated with the "Methods of Indivisable".

Anaximander

A student of Thales who founded Astronomy and was the first to develop Cosmology.

Proclus

Head of Plato's academy known for commentaries on the work of other mathematicians.

Eudemos

The first major historian of Mathematics.

Ahmes

The scribe who wrote the Rhind Papyrus.

Sporus

Associated with the problems of squaring the circle and duplicating the cubes.