Baron, mathematical physicist, French Revolution, a teacher, a secret policeman, a political prisoner, governor of Egypt, The Analytic Theory of Heat www.astro.gla.ac.uk/~davidk/fourier.htm
(Catholic Encyclopedia) Theory of polyhedra, symmetrical functions, proof of a theorem of Fermat which had baffled mathematicians like Gauss and Euler. www.newadvent.org/cathen/03457a.htm
"... the reality which scientific thought is seeking must be expressible in mathematical terms, mathematics being the most precise and definite kind of thinking of which we are capable." www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Plato.html
study of CONTINUITY and definition of the real numbers in terms of Dedekind "cuts", the nature of number and mathematical induction, definition of finite and infinite sets; algebraic number fields, concept of RINGS. euler.ciens.ucv.ve/English/mathematics/dedekind.html
Galois theory, a branch of mathematics dealing with the general solution of equations, group theory, method of determining when a general equation could be solved by radicals, solved many long-standing unanswered questions. history.math.csusb.edu/Mathematicians/Galois.html
Worked on algebra and number theory, gave a table of factors of all integers up to 100000 in 1668. Pell's equation is y^2 = ax^2 + 1, where a is a non-square integer. history.math.csusb.edu/Mathematicians/Pell.html
Main research was functional analysis, doctorate was obtained under Hilbert's supervision, main interest was in integral equations and Hilbert space, best remembered for the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalisation process. history.math.csusb.edu/Mathematicians/Schmidt.html
Most important work considered the basic properties of fluid flow, pressure, density and velocity, and gave their fundamental relationship now known as Bernoulli's principle. www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/../../Bernoulli_Daniel.html
Catalogued stars, predicted a planet beyond Uranus as well as the existence of dark stars, investigated Johann Kepler's problem of heliocentricity, and systematized the mathematical functions involved, which now bear his name. www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/persons/pers_bessel.html
Work on prime numbers included the determination of the number of primes not exceeding a given number, wrote an important book on the theory of congruences, proved that there was always at least one prime between n and 2n for n > 3. www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/../Mathematicians/Chebyshev.html
Proved that in any arithmetic progression with first term coprime to the difference there are infinitely many primes, units in algebraic number theory, ideals, proposed the modern definition of a function. turnbull.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/../Mathematicians/Dirichlet.html
One of the all-time greats, Gauss began to show his mathematical brilliance at the early age of seven. He is usually credited with the first proof of The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra. www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/../Mathematicians/Gauss.html
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