Biographies of past number theorists and various items of historical interest

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Some biographies of past contributors to number theory

Some of the major sources of obituaries of mathematicians are:
  1. The Mactutor History of Mathematics (MacTutor)
  2. Russian Mathematical Surveys (RMS)
  3. Acta Arithmetica (AA)
  4. Notices of the Americal Mathematical Society (NAMS)
  5. Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society (BLMS)
  6. Journal of the London Mathematical Society (JLMS) (Pre BLMS)
  7. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (PLMS) (Pre JLMS)
  8. The Mathematical Intelligencer
  9. Journal of Number Theory
  10. Mathematicians of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (David Wilkins' transcriptions from A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, by W.W. Rouse Ball)
  11. Historia Mathematica
A glance at Paulo Ribenboim's Fermat's Last Theorem for amateurs, Franz Lemmermeyer's Reciprocity Laws and L.E. Dickson's History of the Theory of Numbers, reveals the existence of many past number theorists about whom little is known.
Any corrections, extra information or links to additional online biographies should be passed on to Keith Matthews at webmaster@numbertheory.org


[ A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M ]
[ N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | Z ]

  1. Alexander Aigner
  2. Helen Popova Alderson
  3. William (Red) Alford
  4. Nesmith Ankeny
  5. Roger Apéry
  6. Peter Friedrich Arndt (Wikipedia)
  7. Cahit Arf (MacTutor)
  8. Emil Artin
    • Emil Artin (MacTutor)
    • Emil Artin, his life and his work, (by Hans Zassenhaus, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic V, No. 1, January 1964)
  9. Oliver Atkin
  10. Frederick Valentine Atkinson (Angelo B. Mingarelli)
  11. L. Aubry
  12. James Burton Ax (1937-2006)
  13. A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar
  14. Paul Gustav Heinrich Bachmann (MacTutor)
  15. Mark Borisovich Barban (RMS)
  16. Eric Stephen Barnes
  17. Felix Behrend
  18. Eric Temple Bell (MacTutor)
  19. Gennadii Vladimirovich Belyi (1951-2001) Russ. Math. Surv. 57 981 (2002)
  20. Anne-Marie Bergé died on September 20th, 2008
  21. Joseph Louis François Bertrand (MacTutor)
  22. William Edward Hodgson Berwick (JLMS)
  23. Arne Karl August Beurling
  24. Bhaskara (MacTutor)
  25. Jacques de Billy (MacTutor)
  26. Hans Frederick Blichfeldt (MacTutor. Also see Stanford University memorial page)
  27. Fritz Blumer (1904-1988)
  28. Stjepan Bohnicek (1872-1956)
  29. Alfred Theodore Brauer (MacTutor)
  30. Joel Lee Brenner (1912-1997)
  31. Robert Breusch (1907-1995)
  32. Béla Brindza (1958-2003)
  33. Viggo Brun
    • Viggo Brun (from an obituary by C. Scriba, Historia Mathematica 7 (1980), 1-6)
    • Viggo Brun (Christoph Scriba, Mitt. Math. Ges. Hamburg 11 (1985) 271-290)
    • Viggo Brun (In Norwegian)
    • Viggo Brun (Sigmund Selberg: Norske Vid. Selsk. Forh. (Trondheim) (1979) 57-61 - in Norwegian)
  34. Aleksandr Adol'fovich Bukhshtab (RMS)
  35. Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (MacTutor)
  36. Leonard Carlitz
  37. Robert Daniel Carmichael (Wikipedia)
  38. Eugène Charles Catalan (MacTutor)
  39. Claude Chabauty
  40. John H.H. Chalk
  41. David Gawen Champernowne (ICGA Journal 23 December 2000)
  42. Nikolai Grigorievich Chebotaryov (MacTutor)
  43. Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (MacTutor)
  44. Thyagaraju Chelluri
  45. Chen Jingrun (Acta Mathematica Sinica, New Series (1996) 12, No. 3, 225-233)
  46. Claude Chevalley (MacTutor)
  47. Sarvadaman Chowla
  48. Nikolai Grigor'evich Chudakov
  49. Paul Cohen (LMS newsletter), Paul Cohen biography (Wikipedia), Paul J. Cohen memorial web page
  50. George E. Cooke
  51. Albert Everett Cooper
  52. Harald Cramér (MacTutor)
  53. Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham (JLMS)
  54. Harold Davenport
  55. Clive Selwyn Davis (1916-2009)
  56. Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn (MacTutor)
  57. Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (MacTutor)
  58. Hubert Delange (1913-2003)
  59. Boris Nikolaevich Delone
  60. Max Deuring
    • Max Deuring (from the Göttingen Collection - also see Martin Kneser, Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung 89 (1987) 135-143, Peter Roquette, ibid 91 (1989) 109-125)
    • Max Deuring (AA)
  61. Leonard Eugene Dickson (MacTutor)
  62. Diophantus of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  63. Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
  64. Bohuslav Diviš (Ohio collection) (Also see J. Number Theory 9 1977, v-vii)
  65. Mary Dolciani
  66. Alain Durand (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1415)
  67. Bernard Dwork
  68. Martin Eichler
    • Martin Eichler (AA)
    • Leben und Werk von Martin Eichler, Elemente der Mathematik 49 (1994) 45-60 (by Jürg Kramer)
  69. Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (MacTutor)
  70. Otto Endler (1929-1988)
  71. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (MacTutor)
  72. Paul Erdös
  73. Theodor Estermann (BLMS)
  74. Dennis Estes (June 18, 1941- Feb. 1, 1999)
  75. Euclid of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  76. Leonhard Euler
  77. Graham Everest (1958-2010)
  78. Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev
  79. Naum Il'ich Feldman
  80. Pierre de Fermat
  81. Nathan Fine (NAMS)
  82. Ernests Fogels
  83. Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (MacTutor)
  84. Albrecht Fröhlich
  85. Wolfgang Fuchs (NAMS)
  86. Karl Rudolf Fueter
  87. Philipp Furtwängler (1869-1940) (Obituary: JDMV 50 1940, 167-178)
  88. Steve Galovich
  89. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
  90. Leopold Bernhard Gegenbauer (MacTutor)
  91. M.A. Gel'bke
  92. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  93. Aleksandr Osipovich Gelfond
  94. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  95. Marie-Sophie Germain (MacTutor)
  96. James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (MacTutor)
  97. Frank Emmett Gerth III
  98. Herbert James Godwin (1922-2005)
  99. Christian Goldbach (MacTutor)
  100. Franz Goldscheider (1852-1926)
  101. Irving John (Jack) Good died on April 6th, 2009 (Virginia Tech)
  102. William Sealey Gosset (MacTutor)
  103. Jorgen Pedersen Gram (MacTutor)
  104. George Greaves
    • George Greaves (LMS Newsletter)
    • George Greaves (BLMS 43, (2011) 203-205)
  105. Emil Grosswald
  106. Fritz Grunewald died on March 21, 2010; homepage of Fritz Grunewald
  107. Andrew Paul Guinand (MacTutor)
  108. Stan Gurak
  109. Jacques Salomon Hadamard (MacTutor)
  110. Marshall Hall Jr. Marshall Hall Jr(MacTutor)
  111. Harris Hancock
  112. Godfrey Harold Hardy
  113. Colin Brian Haselgrove (MacTutor)
  114. Helmut Hasse
  115. David Hayes 1937-2011
  116. Erich Hecke
  117. Kurt Heegner
  118. Hans Arnold Heilbronn (MacTutor)
  119. Kurt Hensel (MacTutor)
  120. Jacques Herbrand (MacTutor)
  121. Charles Hermite (MacTutor)
  122. Gustav Herglotz (MacTutor)
  123. David Hilbert
  124. Edmund Hlawka, born on Nov 5th 1916 in Bruck an der Mur (Styria), died on Feb 19th 2009 in Vienna
  125. Ludwig Holzer (1891-1968) (Rudolf Einhorn: Rostock. Math. Kolloq. No. 27, (1985) 23-30)
  126. Loo-keng Hua
  127. Adolf Hurwitz
  128. Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda (MacTutor)
  129. Albert Edward Ingham
  130. Kustaa Inkeri
  131. Kenkichi Iwasawa
  132. Shokichi Iyanaga (Also see Mactutor biography)
  133. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
  134. Ernst Jacobsthal
  135. Vojtěch Jarník
    • Vojtěch Jarník (MacTutor)
    • Life and work of Vojtěch Jarník, Břetislav Novák, Published by the Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists, Zitna 25, Praha 1, Czech Republik
    • Vojtěch Jarník (AA)
  136. Michael Kalecki
  137. Pierre Kaplan
  138. Irving Kaplansky
  139. Erich Kamke
  140. Shri Dattathreya Ramachandra Kaprekar
  141. Anatolii Alexeevich Karatsuba (1937-2008)
  142. Robert M. Kauffman
  143. Aubrey J. Kempner
  144. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (MacTutor)
  145. Hendrik Douwe Kloosterman
  146. Stanislaw Knapowski (Paul Turán, Coll. Math. 23 (1971) 309-318)
  147. John Knopfmacher
  148. Marvin Knopp (1933-2011)
  149. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  150. Jurjen Ferdinand Koksma (MacTutor)
  151. Kjell Kolden
  152. Ivan Korec
  153. Alexander Nikolaevich Korkine (in Russian) (english translation by Bob Burns)
  154. Miloš Kössler
  155. Leopold Kronecker (MacTutor)
  156. Jonas Kubilius (July 27, 1921-October 30, 2011)
  157. Ernst Eduard Kummer (MacTutor)
  158. Sigekatu Kuroda (J. Number Theory 7 1975, 1-4)
  159. R.O. Kuz'min
  160. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
  161. Gabriel Lamé (MacTutor)
  162. Edmund Georg Hermann Landau
  163. Serge Lang
  164. Bob Laxton (1933-2002)
  165. Victor Amédée Lebesgue (1791-1875)
  166. Adrien-Marie Legendre
  167. Derrick Henry Lehmer (AA)
  168. Emma Lehmer
  169. Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker
  170. Mathias Lerch (MacTutor)
  171. William Judson LeVeque (NAMS)
  172. Norman Levinson (MacTutor)
  173. Richard P. Lewis (LMS newsletter)
  174. Frederick Lindemann - Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) (Wikipedia)
  175. Edward Hubert Linfoot (J.H. Bell: BLMS 16 (1984) 52-58); J. Linfoot: Math. Intelligencer 15 (1993) 39-43
  176. Yuri Vladimirovich Linnik
  177. Joseph Liouville (MacTutor)
  178. John Edensor Littlewood
  179. Wilhelm Ljunggren (MacTutor)
  180. Robert Landis Long
  181. Salomon Lubelski (AA)
  182. François Edouard Anatole Lucas (MacTutor)
  183. Kurt Mahler
  184. Wilhelm Maier (1896-1990)
  185. Edmond Maillet
  186. Henry Mann (Ohio collection)
  187. Alla Lavrik-Männlin (March 2nd, 1964-February 14th, 2003)
  188. Andrei Andreyevich Markov (MacTutor)
  189. George Ballard Mathews
  190. Emile Léonard Mathieu (MacTutor)
  191. Daniel Friedrich Ernst Meissel (MacTutor)
  192. Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917-1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1-4, 21-24)
  193. Franz Mertens (MacTutor)
  194. William H. Mills (November 9, 1921- March 7, 2007) (See A prime-representing function, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., Volume 53, Number 12 (1947), 1196-1196
  195. Hermann Minkowski
  196. Dimitry Mirimanoff
  197. Leon Mirsky (BLMS 18 (1986) 195-206)
  198. August Ferdinand Möbius (MacTutor)
  199. Louis Joel Mordell
  200. Taro Morishima (Wikipedia)
  201. Leo Moser
    • Leo Moser (Canadian Math. Bulletin 15, 1-8, 1972)
    • Leo Moser (Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics1, 255-256, 1971)
  202. Theodore Samuel Motzkin (J. Comb. Theory (A))
  203. Thomas Muir(MacTutor)
  204. Trygve Nagell (AA)
  205. Christopher Eastick Nelson (?-1973)
  206. Jürgen Neukirch, (1937-1997) in memoriam by Theodor Bröcker
  207. Donald J. Newman (Temple University), Donald J. Newman (Wikipedia)
  208. Morris Newman
  209. Ivan Niven (obituary by Kenneth Ross)
  210. Břetislav Novák
  211. Robert Winston Keith Odoni (Sept 2003 issue, Glasgow Math. Journal)
  212. Carl Douglas Olds Vyacheslav Alekseevich Oleinikov (RMS)
  213. Alexander Oppenheim
  214. Hans-Heinrich Ostmann (1913-1959) (Obituary JDMV 86, 1984, 31-35)
  215. Oystein Ore
  216. Alexander Markowich Ostrowski
  217. Gordon Pall (no biography)
  218. Pan Chengdong
  219. William Parry
  220. Wilhelm Patz (no biography)
  221. William Barry Pennington (BLMS)
  222. Oscar Perron
  223. Hans Petersson (MacTutor)
  224. Walter Philipp
  225. Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (1929-2009)
  226. Théophile Pépin (1826-1904)
  227. Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai
  228. Nils Pipping (1890-1982)
  229. Charles Pisot (AA)
  230. Peter Arthur Barry Pleasants (24th August 1939- 20th April 2008)
  231. Felix Pollaczek
  232. George Pólya (MacTutor)
  233. Alf van der Poorten (1942-2010)
  234. J. Popken (1905-1970) (H. Jager, C.G.Lekkerkerker: Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde 19 (1971) 1-9)
  235. Aleksei Georgievich Postnikov (RMS)
  236. Karl Prachar (1924-1994) (E. Hlawka: Monatshefte für Math. 121 (1996) 1-9)
  237. Hans Rademacher
  238. Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan
  239. Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam (MacTutor)
  240. Srinivasa Ramanujan
  241. Robert Alexander Rankin (MacTutor)
  242. Ramanujan website (Prof. K. Srinivasa Rao)
  243. László Rédei
  244. Robert Remak (MacTutor)
  245. Alfréd Rényi
  246. Giovanni Ricci (AA)
  247. Hans-Egon Richert
  248. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
  249. Raphael Robinson (MacTutor)
  250. Kirill Andreevich Rodosskii (1913-2004)
  251. Claude Ambrose Rogers
  252. N.P. Romanov
  253. Arnold Ross (NAMS)
  254. John Barkley Rosser (Wikipedia)
  255. Louis Saalschütz (1835-1913)
  256. Raphaël Salem
  257. Pierre Samuel (Wikipedia)
  258. Giovanii Sansone
  259. Mathieu Schaar (1817-1867)
  260. Peter Scherk (1910-1985)
  261. Theodor Schneider (MacTutor)
  262. Lev Genrikhovich Schnirel'mann (translation by Vladimir Drobot)
  263. Arnold Scholz
  264. Lowell Schoenfeld (John Ewing's tribute)
  265. Theodor Schönemann (1812-1868)
  266. Issai Schur (MacTutor)
  267. Jack Schwartz died on March 2, 2009 (author of Algebraic Number Theory, 1961, NYU Institute of Mathematical Sciences) Also see Jack Schwartz Memorial Blog and Wikipedia article
  268. Stefan Schwarz (MacTutor)
  269. Sanford (Sandy) Segal (1937-2010)
  270. Beniamino Segre (AA)
  271. Atle Selberg
  272. Sigmund Selberg (1910-1994)
  273. Clas-Olaf Selenius
  274. John Selfridge (1927-2010)
  275. Joseph Alfred Serret (MacTutor)
  276. Joseph Shalika (1941-2010), In Memoriam: Joseph A. Shalika 1941-2010, Freydoon Shahidi, American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 132, Number 6, December 2010, pp. iii-iv
  277. Daniel Shanks (NAMS), (Wikipedia)
  278. Andrei Borisovich Shidlovsky (RMS)
  279. Takuro Shintani (J. Fac. Sci. Tokyo 28 (1981) iii-vi)
  280. Lev Genrikhovich Shnirelman (MacTutor)
  281. Carl Ludwig Siegel
  282. Waclaw Sierpinski
  283. Stanley Skewes (Wikipedia)
  284. Albert Thoralf Skolem
  285. Boris Fadeevich Skubenko (1929-1993) (see Zap. Nauchn. Semin. POMI 212 5-14 (1994) and Boris F. Skubenko. An essay on his life and scientific work, Volume 83, Number 5/February, 1997, 689-693)
  286. Henry John Stephen Smith
  287. Robert Arnold Smith (1937-1983) (E. Kani: Rocky Mountain J. 15 (1985) 413-415)
  288. Julius Sommer
  289. Vladimir Gennadievich Sprindzuk
  290. Paul Gustav Stäckel (MacTutor)
  291. Sergei Borisovich Stechkin (RMS)
  292. Rosemarie Stemmler (July 27, 1930-July 18, 2011)
  293. Moritz Abraham Stern (1807-1894)
  294. Ludwig Stickelberger (1850-1936)
  295. Thomas Jan Stieltjes (MacTutor)
  296. Richard G. Stoneham (1920-1996)
  297. Carl Størmer (1874-1957) (Carl Størmer in memoriam, by Viggo Brun, Acta Math. 100, 1958, i-vii)
  298. Ernst Gabor Strauss
  299. Erik Stridsberg (1871-1950)
  300. Matukumalli Venkata Subbarao, 1921-2006 (R. Balasubramanian)
  301. George Szekeres(1911-2005)
  302. Teiji Takagi (MacTutor)
  303. Ralph Tambs-Lyche (Obituary by Ernst S. Selmer, Normat 39 (1991))
  304. Yutaka Taniyama (MacTutor)
  305. Tikao Tatuzawa
  306. M.F. Tano
  307. Olga Taussky-Todd (MacTutor)
  308. Paul Emery Thomas (Berkeley memorial)
  309. Axel Thue
  310. Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze (MacTutor)
  311. Nikolai Mikhailovich Timofeev (RMS)
  312. Edward Charles Titchmarsh
  313. Paul Turán
  314. James Victor Uspensky (1883-1947)
  315. Charles-Joseph de la Vallée Poussin
  316. Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput (AA)
  317. Harry Schultz Vandiver (MacTutor)
  318. Joost van Hamel died on January 12, 2008, notice by Andrew Mathas
  319. Jacobus Hendricus van Lint (MacTutor)
  320. Boris Borisovich Venkov died in Aachen on November 10th, 2011
  321. Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan (JLMS 33 (1958) 252-255)
  322. Askol'd Ivanovich Vinogradov (1929-2005)
  323. Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov
  324. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  325. Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (MacTutor)
  326. Sergei Mikhailovich Voronin (RMS)
  327. Georgy Fedoseevich Voronoi (MacTutor)
  328. Arnold Zel'manovich Walfisz
  329. Edward Waring (MacTutor)
  330. Morgan Ward
  331. George Neville Watson (MacTutor)
  332. George Leo Watson
  333. Heinrich Martin Weber (MacTutor)
  334. André Weil
  335. Alfred Edward Western (JLMS)
  336. Hermann Weyl
  337. Albert Leon Whiteman (NAMS)
  338. Arthur Wieferich
  339. John Raymond Wilton (Australian dictionary of Biography)
  340. Anders Wiman (Trygve Nagell, Acta Math. 103 (1960) I-VI)
  341. Aurel Friedrich Wintner (MacTutor)
  342. Jan Wójcik (1936-1994) (A. Schinzel, Wiadom. Math. 33 (1997), 199-203)
  343. Joseph Wolstenholme (MacTutor)
  344. Rod Worley died on 24th July 2011
  345. John Wrench Jr.
  346. Sir Edward Maitland Wright (MacTutor)
  347. Hans Zassenhaus
  348. Egor Ivanovich Zolotarev

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Last modified 24th January 2012