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WORLD-FAMOUS MATHEMATICIANS

SIMO JELAČA, Ph.D.

PYTHAGORAS (581-497 BC), Greek mathematician and philosopher

Pythagoras was a practitioner and even conducted experiments on the relationship between mathematics and music, which led to the opening of a school that, in principle, still exists today. He claimed that the world is located in a sphere, in which the stars also move in circular paths. He founded his school (Academy) in Croton, Italy, in 518 BC, where the relationship between the physical world and mathematics was studied. For him, reality was based on mathematical foundations. As a prominent mathematician and geometer, he was the first to state that the sum of the angles in any triangle is 180°, and that the sum of the angles in a polygon with n sides is 2n-4 right angles, and he was the first to define irrational numbers. The Pythagorean theorem on a right triangle is well-known, according to which the square over the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares over both legs (c″=a″+b″). Pythagoras was also the first to work with fractions. While engaged in mathematics, he studied in detail the dimensions of the Egyptian pyramids (all of which were built according to the same proportions), the height to half the base of the base as 171:140. The legs of these triangles are 171 and 140, and the hypotenuse is 221. Therefore, Pythagoras was the first to unravel their secret.

EUCLID (330-260 BC), Greek mathematician

Euclid was a student of Plato in Athens, but spent most of his life working in Alexandria, Egypt, where he founded a mathematical academy. His most famous work is the Elements, which had a huge influence on Western academic thought. The Elements is said to be the most studied, translated, and printed work in human history after the Bible. It went through 1,700 editions. Euclid systematically described what he studied, established a number of axioms, and derived theorems from the conclusions he obtained. This logical method of research has been maintained to this day. The Elements was written in thirteen volumes, and in them Euclid presented the findings of his predecessors, Pythagoras and others, in the form of systematic proofs, theories, and original findings. The first six volumes deal in detail with plane geometry: triangles, squares, rectangles, circles, and the theory of proportions. The next four volumes cover various theories, including the theory of infinite numbers. The last three volumes deal with solid geometry. Some of Euclid's axioms (such as the parallelism theorem) were disproved in the nineteenth century, and Albert Einstein stated that Euclid's geometry does not hold in space.

ARCHIMEDES (287-212), Greek mathematician

Archimedes was a brilliant explorer, mathematician, and inventor of his time and is remembered as perhaps the greatest mathematician of all time. He was the first to determine that the volume of a sphere is equal to V=4 ∂ r≥ / 3 where r is the radius of the sphere, or equal to ″/3 of the volume of the circumscribed cylinder, and that the surface area of a sphere is equal to four times the area of its largest circle. Archimedes determined that the value of the number ∂ is approximately equal to ″″/7, which is equal to 3.142857... He determined that the volumes of a cup, a hemisphere, and a cylinder, with the same base and height, are in the ratio 1:2:3.

Archimedes also established the famous physical law, according to which any body immersed in a liquid is pushed by a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by it. It is recorded that when he found it while bathing, he ran out into the street in great excitement and

ran and shouted: "Eureka, Eureka" (meaning: I have discovered it). In addition, he studied the laws of levers, pulleys, wedges, screws and a method for determining the center of gravity of a body. Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier while doing mathematical calculations for the defense of Syracuse, and his last words were: "Do not touch my circles".

AL-KHWARIZMI (780-850), Uzbek mathematician, geographer and astronomer

Al-Khwarizmi was born in Khorezm (now Khiva) in Uzbekistan. His full name is Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi. He worked in Baghdad and was the first to introduce Arabic numerals into mathematics. He is one of the most prominent mathematicians, geographers and astronomers of the Arab world. He presented his system of calculation in the section Calculus with Hindu Numbers. After it was translated into Latin, it was adopted throughout the Western world, and even today it is considered a single global language. At the age of twenty, in 800, he founded Al-Ma'mun (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, which housed a library with translations of famous Greek philosophers and devices for astronomical observation. Al-Khwarizmi's work Calculus with Complex Numbers and Remainders is actually an introduction to the use of arithmetic, which was later called algebra. In this work, Al-Khwarizmi was the first to introduce quadratic equations, although he expressed them only descriptively. He also introduced the concept of complex numbers (removing the negative signs, example:

24 x″ - 8 x = 16 x″ + 4 x + 60, which gives 8 x″ - 12 x = 60, or

8 x″ - 60 = 12 x). Al-Khwarizmi is therefore considered the father of algebra, and the name Algorismi (Algorithms) is derived from his name. Al-Khwarizmi is said to have been the first to calculate sines and tangents.

In the fields of astronomy and geography, he expanded on the works of Ptolemy, applying the lines of longitude and latitude, which he drew on geographical maps, much more accurately than his predecessor.

UMAR IBN IBRAHIM EL-KHAYAMI (1048-1131), Islamic mathematician

Known in the West as Omar Khayami, he is one of the most important Islamic poets, mathematicians and astronomers. He worked for 18 years at the observatory in Isfahan, 300 km south of Tehran. He measured the length of the solar year to be 365.24219858156 days, which is absolutely correct and the most precise in history. He proposed a solar calendar with 8 leap years over a period of 33 years, which is more accurate than the Gregorian calendar. He sent his proposals in 1079 to the Shah of the time, but unfortunately they remained outside the reach of science.

GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646-1716), German mathematician

Leibniz is remembered as a very persistent researcher in the development of mathematical theories, especially statistics. In London, he met Newton, and later both claimed to be the first to discover calculus, a claim that has never been fully confirmed. Leibniz may be more likely to have been right. In 1700, Leibniz convinced Frederick I of Prussia to found the Prussian Academy of Sciences, of which Leibniz became the first president.

GEORGE BOOLE (1815-1864), English mathematician

George Boole was the first mathematician to express logic in algebraic form. He was working as a professor of mathematics in Ireland when he wrote a thesis on differential equations in 1847. He also introduced new symbols for logical equations. Boolean logic is expressed with only two digits (0 and 1), as binary numbers, which became the basis for the modern digital system used in computers. The so-called Boolean algebra is known in the professional world.

MIHAJLO PETROVIĆ – ALAS (1868-1943), Serbian mathematician

Mihajlo Petrović Alas received his doctorate in Paris in 1894. He published 270 professional papers and 12 monographs and introduced new mathematical disciplines: Mathematical spectra and mathematical phenomenology. Special mathematical functions that bear Petrović's name are also known in world science. In Paris, he gave lectures for one semester in the field of the original theory of mathematical spectra, on the basis of which he was nominated for a member of the French Academy of Sciences and Scientific Societies based on the book "Travaux Scientifiques". He created a very reputable mathematical school in Belgrade and contributed the most to the fact that mathematics gained a prominent place in science in Serbia. Mika Alas occupied the top of Serbian science, and in world science he was noted in the fields of differential equations, theoretical functions and computerization of algebra. His works are contained in 15 volumes, published between 1894 and 1943. He enjoyed fishing and spent lots of time on the Danube.

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