YAY! Math is in the title! -- your favorite mathematician

Vernon Dent: If I gave you a dollar, and your father gave you a dollar, how many dollars would you have?

Larry: One dollar.

Vernon Dent: You don't know your arithmetic.

Larry: You don't know my father!!!



Moe (reading): Oh see the deer. Does the deer have any doe?

Curly: Yeah, two bucks!!! nyuk nyuk nyuk
 
Ron Graham

World class mathematician, juggler and athlete.

Has a Guinness world record (for the largest number in a proof) and was the subject of a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" cartoon.

Also an all-around cool guy.
 
I dont have a favorite mathematician but how close does the Texas Instruments company come? If they had never made graphing calculators with multiline input, made the calculator programmable (in a language similar to BASIC so virtually anyone can understand it), functionality with i, matrix functionality, and all those other features I might not have forgotten how do that tricky long division. Its true, I'm so dependent on calculators that I'm starting to forget how to do simple subtractions... I am hopeless at mental subtractions with numbers above 20.
 
Alan Turing

He just seemed like a fascinating character. Also probably was one mathematician who had the most profound affect on the modern world, yet most people haven't heard of him.

Also, does Johnny Ball count? :D
 
Alan Turing

He just seemed like a fascinating character.
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Yes. he should have been hailed as an international hero, but instead was shunned.
 
And no thread would be complete without a quote from our own Sage of Baltimore:

2 + 2 = 4
 
Euler and Shannon.

e^(i pi) +1 = 0 is simply sublime.

(sum) -p log2 p ditto.
 
Hoi, too many to list. Tough to choose the "one"


Archimedes of Syracuse


Isaac Newton was no slouch (calculus)

William A. Brownell (researcher: equal additions algorithm vs decomposition algorithm)

Some of the Giants:

Christian Goldbach

Leonardo de Pisa (Fibonacci)

Blaise Pascal

Huygens

Pythagoras of Samos

Tsu Ch'ung-chih

Wang Fau

Liu Hui

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
 
Well here's a song writte by my favourite Mathematics Professor:


That's Mathematics
To the tune of "That's Entertainment."
Counting sheep
When you're trying to sleep,
Being fair
When there's something to share,
Being neat
When you're folding a sheet,
That's mathematics!

When a ball
Bounces off of a wall,
When you cook
From a recipe book,
When you know
How much money you owe,
That's mathematics!

How much gold can you hold in an elephant's ear?
When it's noon on the moon, then what time is it here?
If you could count for a year, would you get to infinity,
Or somewhere in that vicinity?

When you choose
How much postage to use,
When you know
What's the chance it will snow,
When you bet
And you end up in debt,
Oh try as you may,
You just can't get away
From mathematics!

Andrew Wiles gently smiles,
Does his thing, and voila!
Q.E.D., we agree,
And we all shout hurrah!
As he confirms what Fermat
Jotted down in that margin,
Which could've used some enlargin'.

Tap your feet,
Keepin' time to a beat,
Of a song
While you're singing along,
Harmonize
With the rest of the guys,
Yes, try as you may,
You just can't get away
From mathematics!



The imimimmimitable Tom Lehrer off course.:D
 
PygmyPlaidGiraffe said:
Hoi, too many to list. Tough to choose the "one"

No problem, I know the thread title says 'your favorite mathematician', but in the OP I did say you could list as many as you like basically :) There are so many afterall ;) Good list too, I especially like that last fellow :)

Archimedes of Syracuse
Isaac Newton was no slouch (calculus)
William A. Brownell (researcher: equal additions algorithm vs decomposition algorithm)

Some of the Giants:

Christian Goldbach
Leonardo de Pisa (Fibonacci)
Blaise Pascal
Huygens
Pythagoras of Samos
Tsu Ch'ung-chih
Wang Fau
Liu Hui
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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Ya, so I forgot some of my favorites like:

Peano
Frege
Euclid
Spinoza
Husserl..... oops wrong list :D

Adam
 
JesFine said:
My favorite is Paul Erdos (pronounced AIR-dish, also dots over the 'o') because he was crazy and I like crazy people.
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I've got Erdös number of 4. Any others with a finite number here?
 
slimshady2357 said:
I love it :D

Oh and to all you UK people, it's MATH no 's' on the end :p
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Well my favorite mathmatician must be my father.....

And by the way, 'maths' is an abbreviation of mathematicS

The way you are saying 'math' implys mathematic. So are you good at mathematic? do you enjoy mathematic? No, you enjoy mathematics, and you are good at mathematics.

You are bad at english though.....;)
 
I would like to post a vote for Jonny Ball. Unknown outside the UK I am sure. He presented a TV show ‘Think of a number’ when I was young. This children’s show made maths fun and accessible. Along with ‘How’ and the Royal Societies Childrens Christmas Lecture series it gave a healthy alternative to the normal children’s TV programs.
 
Re: Re: YAY! Math is in the title! -- your favorite mathematician

Jon_in_london said:


Well my favorite mathmatician must be my father.....

And by the way, 'maths' is an abbreviation of mathematicS

The way you are saying 'math' implys mathematic. So are you good at mathematic? do you enjoy mathematic? No, you enjoy mathematics, and you are good at mathematics.

You are bad at english though.....;)
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Hey don't talk to me, talk to your fellow country man, Lothian. Look up at his second to last post, it says:
Chambers C20 Dictionary

Math math (dial.) n a mowing.

Maths. See Mathematic.
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So perhaps you could explain to me what Mathematic is, since it is Maths that means that :p

Math, it's already plural in nature, it refers to anything mathematical :D

Do people over there study Logics too? :D

Adam
 
Based on what I know and use (not much and a computer) I'm totally in awe of those that inspired a lot of computation and verification of their formulae in earlier times. So- my favorite mathematician is:

Fourier

Because his work, plus Helmholz and Hertz led to figuring out sound waves, and that gave us telephony etc.

Like I say, I don't know the details. But it was a bad-ass bitchin sort of math back when nobody had a reasonable way of coming to grips with continuous functions like that... to provide a way to turn a wave function into a summed series of sinusoids... even in your brain that is hard to do!
 
My 7th grade geometry teacher - Zero Crabtree
A great name and one of those terrific teachers you sometimes meet in life who make a big difference in how you turn out.

If you are a teacher and one of those - "thanks".

(And Pythagoras rocks).
 
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