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. William (Red) Alford
  3. Nesmith Ankeny
  4. Roger Apéry
  5. Peter Friedrich Arndt (Wikipedia)
  6. 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)
  7. Oliver Atkin
  8. Frederick Valentine Atkinson (Angelo B. Mingarelli)
  9. L. Aubry
  10. James Burton Ax (1937-2006)
  11. A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar
  12. Paul Gustav Heinrich Bachmann (MacTutor)
  13. Mark Borisovich Barban (RMS)
  14. Eric Stephen Barnes
  15. Felix Behrend
  16. Eric Temple Bell (MacTutor)
  17. Gennadii Vladimirovich Belyi (1951-2001) Russ. Math. Surv. 57 981 (2002)
  18. Anne-Marie Bergé died on September 20th, 2008
  19. Joseph Louis François Bertrand (MacTutor)
  20. William Edward Hodgson Berwick (JLMS)
  21. Arne Karl August Beurling
  22. Bhaskara (MacTutor)
  23. Jacques de Billy (MacTutor)
  24. Hans Frederick Blichfeldt (MacTutor. Also see Stanford University memorial page)
  25. Fritz Blumer (1904-1988)
  26. Stjepan Bohnicek (1872-1956)
  27. Alfred Theodore Brauer (MacTutor)
  28. Robert Breusch (1907-1995)
  29. Béla Brindza (1957-2003)
  30. 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)
  31. Aleksandr Adol'fovich Bukhshtab (RMS)
  32. Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (MacTutor)
  33. Leonard Carlitz
  34. Robert Daniel Carmichael (Wikipedia)
  35. Eugène Charles Catalan (MacTutor)
  36. Claude Chabauty
  37. John H.H. Chalk
  38. David Gawen Champernowne (ICGA Journal 23 December 2000)
  39. Nikolai Grigorievich Chebotaryov (MacTutor)
  40. Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (MacTutor)
  41. Thyagaraju Chelluri
  42. Chen Jingrun (Acta Mathematica Sinica, New Series (1996) 12, No. 3, 225-233)
  43. Claude Chevalley (MacTutor)
  44. Sarvadaman Chowla
  45. Nikolai Grigor'evich Chudakov
  46. Paul Cohen (LMS newsletter), Paul Cohen biography (Wikipedia), Paul J. Cohen memorial web page
  47. George E. Cooke
  48. Albert Everett Cooper
  49. Harald Cramér (MacTutor)
  50. Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham (JLMS)
  51. Harold Davenport
  52. Clive Selwyn Davis (1916-2009)
  53. Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn (MacTutor)
  54. Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (MacTutor)
  55. Hubert Delange (1913-2003)
  56. Boris Nikolaevich Delone
  57. 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)
  58. Leonard Eugene Dickson (MacTutor)
  59. Diophantus of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  60. Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
  61. Bohuslav Diviš (Ohio collection) (Also see J. Number Theory 9 1977, v-vii)
  62. Mary Dolciani
  63. Alain Durand (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1415)
  64. Bernard Dwork
  65. Martin Eichler
    • Martin Eichler (AA)
    • Leben und Werk von Martin Eichler, Elemente der Mathematik 49 (1994) 45-60 (by Jürg Kramer)
  66. Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (MacTutor)
  67. Otto Endler (1929-1988)
  68. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (MacTutor)
  69. Paul Erdös
  70. Theodor Estermann (BLMS)
  71. Dennis Estes (June 18, 1941- Feb. 1, 1999)
  72. Euclid of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  73. Leonhard Euler
  74. Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev
  75. Naum Il'ich Feldman
  76. Pierre de Fermat
  77. Nathan Fine (NAMS)
  78. Ernests Fogels
  79. Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (MacTutor)
  80. Albrecht Fröhlich
  81. Wolfgang Fuchs (NAMS)
  82. Karl Rudolf Fueter
  83. Philipp Furtwängler (1869-1940) (Obituary: JDMV 50 1940, 167-178)
  84. Steve Galovich
  85. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
  86. Leopold Bernhard Gegenbauer (MacTutor)
  87. M.A. Gel'bke
  88. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  89. Aleksandr Osipovich Gelfond
  90. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  91. Marie-Sophie Germain (MacTutor)
  92. James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (MacTutor)
  93. Frank Emmett Gerth III
  94. Herbert James Godwin (1922-2005)
  95. Christian Goldbach (MacTutor)
  96. Franz Goldscheider (1852-1926)
  97. Irving John (Jack) Good died on April 6th, 2009 (Virginia Tech)
  98. William Sealey Gosset (MacTutor)
  99. Jorgen Pedersen Gram (MacTutor)
  100. George Greaves (LMS Newsletter)
  101. Emil Grosswald
  102. Fritz Grunewald died on March 21, 2010; homepage of Fritz Grunewald
  103. Andrew Paul Guinand (MacTutor)
  104. Jacques Salomon Hadamard (MacTutor)
  105. Marshall Hall Jr. Marshall Hall Jr(MacTutor)
  106. Harris Hancock
  107. Godfrey Harold Hardy
  108. Colin Brian Haselgrove (MacTutor)
  109. Helmut Hasse
  110. Erich Hecke
  111. Kurt Heegner
  112. Hans Arnold Heilbronn (MacTutor)
  113. Kurt Hensel (MacTutor)
  114. Jacques Herbrand (MacTutor)
  115. Charles Hermite (MacTutor)
  116. David Hilbert
  117. Edmund Hlawka, born on Nov 5th 1916 in Bruck an der Mur (Styria), died on Feb 19th 2009 in Vienna
  118. Ludwig Holzer (1891-1968) (Rudolf Einhorn: Rostock. Math. Kolloq. No. 27, (1985) 23-30)
  119. Loo-keng Hua
  120. Adolf Hurwitz
  121. Albert Edward Ingham
  122. Kustaa Inkeri
  123. Kenkichi Iwasawa
  124. Shokichi Iyanaga (Also see Mactutor biography)
  125. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
  126. Ernst Jacobsthal
  127. 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)
  128. Michael Kalecki
  129. Pierre Kaplan
  130. Irving Kaplansky
  131. Erich Kamke
  132. Shri Dattathreya Ramachandra Kaprekar
  133. Anatolii Alexeevich Karatsuba (1937-2008)
  134. Aubrey J. Kempner
  135. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (MacTutor)
  136. Hendrik Douwe Kloosterman
  137. Stanislaw Knapowski (Paul Turán, Coll. Math. 23 (1971) 309-318)
  138. John Knopfmacher
  139. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  140. Jurjen Ferdinand Koksma (MacTutor)
  141. Kjell Kolden
  142. Ivan Korec
  143. Alexander Nikolaevich Korkine (in Russian) (english translation by Bob Burns)
  144. Miloš Kössler
  145. Leopold Kronecker (MacTutor)
  146. Ernst Eduard Kummer (MacTutor)
  147. Sigekatu Kuroda (J. Number Theory 7 1975, 1-4)
  148. R.O. Kuz'min
  149. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
  150. Gabriel Lamé (MacTutor)
  151. Edmund Georg Hermann Landau
  152. Serge Lang
  153. Bob Laxton (1933-2002)
  154. Victor Amédée Lebesgue (1791-1875)
  155. Adrien-Marie Legendre
  156. Derrick Henry Lehmer (AA)
  157. Emma Lehmer
  158. Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker
  159. Mathias Lerch (MacTutor)
  160. William Judson LeVeque (NAMS)
  161. Norman Levinson (MacTutor)
  162. Richard P. Lewis (LMS newsletter)
  163. Frederick Lindemann - Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) (Wikipedia)
  164. Edward Hubert Linfoot (J.H. Bell: BLMS 16 (1984) 52-58); J. Linfoot: Math. Intelligencer 15 (1993) 39-43
  165. Yuri Vladimirovich Linnik
  166. Joseph Liouville (MacTutor)
  167. John Edensor Littlewood
  168. Wilhelm Ljunggren (MacTutor)
  169. Robert Landis Long
  170. Salomon Lubelski (AA)
  171. François Edouard Anatole Lucas (MacTutor)
  172. Kurt Mahler
  173. Wilhelm Maier (1896-1990)
  174. Edmond Maillet
  175. Henry Mann (Ohio collection)
  176. Alla Lavrik-Männlin (March 2nd, 1964-February 14th, 2003)
  177. Andrei Andreyevich Markov (MacTutor)
  178. George Ballard Mathews
  179. Emile Léonard Mathieu (MacTutor)
  180. Daniel Friedrich Ernst Meissel (MacTutor)
  181. Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917-1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1-4, 21-24)
  182. Franz Mertens (MacTutor)
  183. 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
  184. Hermann Minkowski
  185. Dimitry Mirimanoff
  186. Leon Mirsky (BLMS 18 (1986) 195-206)
  187. August Ferdinand Möbius (MacTutor)
  188. Louis Joel Mordell
  189. Taro Morishima (Wikipedia)
  190. Leo Moser
    • Leo Moser (Canadian Math. Bulletin 15, 1-8, 1972)
    • Leo Moser (Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics1, 255-256, 1971)
  191. Theodore Samuel Motzkin (J. Comb. Theory (A))
  192. Thomas Muir(MacTutor)
  193. Trygve Nagell (AA)
  194. Christopher Eastick Nelson (?-1973)
  195. Jürgen Neukirch, (1937-1997) in memoriam by Theodor Bröcker
  196. Donald J. Newman (Temple University), Donald J. Newman (Wikipedia)
  197. Morris Newman
  198. Ivan Niven (obituary by Kenneth Ross)
  199. Břetislav Novák
  200. Robert Winston Keith Odoni (Sept 2003 issue, Glasgow Math. Journal)
  201. Carl Douglas Olds Vyacheslav Alekseevich Oleinikov (RMS)
  202. Alexander Oppenheim
  203. Hans-Heinrich Ostmann (1913-1959) (Obituary JDMV 86, 1984, 31-35)
  204. Oystein Ore
  205. Alexander Markowich Ostrowski
  206. Gordon Pall (no biography)
  207. Pan Chengdong
  208. William Parry
  209. Wilhelm Patz (no biography)
  210. William Barry Pennington (BLMS)
  211. Oscar Perron
  212. Hans Petersson (MacTutor)
  213. Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (Yale obituary)
  214. Théophile Pépin (1826-1904)
  215. Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai
  216. Nils Pipping (1890-1982)
  217. Charles Pisot (AA)
  218. Peter Arthur Barry Pleasants (24th August 1939- 20th April 2008)
  219. Felix Pollaczek
  220. George Pólya (MacTutor)
  221. J. Popken (1905-1970) (H. Jager, C.G.Lekkerkerker: Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde 19 (1971) 1-9)
  222. Aleksei Georgievich Postnikov (RMS)
  223. Karl Prachar (1924-1994) (E. Hlawka: Monatshefte für Math. 121 (1996) 1-9)
  224. Hans Rademacher
  225. Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan
  226. Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam (MacTutor)
  227. Srinivasa Ramanujan
  228. Robert Alexander Rankin (MacTutor)
  229. Ramanujan website (Prof. K. Srinivasa Rao)
  230. László Rédei
  231. Robert Remak (MacTutor)
  232. Alfréd Rényi
  233. Giovanni Ricci (AA)
  234. Hans-Egon Richert
  235. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
  236. Raphael Robinson (MacTutor)
  237. Kirill Andreevich Rodosskii (1913-2004)
  238. Claude Ambrose Rogers
  239. N.P. Romanov
  240. Arnold Ross (NAMS)
  241. John Barkley Rosser (Wikipedia)
  242. Louis Saalschütz (1835-1913)
  243. Raphaël Salem
  244. Pierre Samuel (Wikipedia)
  245. Giovanii Sansone
  246. Mathieu Schaar (1817-1867)
  247. Peter Scherk (1910-1985)
  248. Theodor Schneider (J. Number Theory 39 (1991) 129-143, Errata: 41 (1992) 129)
  249. Lev Genrikhovich Schnirel'mann (translation by Vladimir Drobot)
  250. Arnold Scholz
  251. Lowell Schoenfeld (John Ewing's tribute)
  252. Theodor Schönemann (1812-1868)
  253. Issai Schur (MacTutor)
  254. 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
  255. Stefan Schwarz (MacTutor)
  256. Sanford (Sandy) Segal (1937-2010)
  257. Beniamino Segre (AA)
  258. Atle Selberg
  259. Sigmund Selberg (1910-1994)
  260. Clas-Olaf Selenius
  261. Joseph Alfred Serret (MacTutor)
  262. Daniel Shanks (NAMS)
  263. Andrei Borisovich Shidlovsky (RMS)
  264. Takuro Shintani (J. Fac. Sci. Tokyo 28 (1981) iii-vi)
  265. Lev Genrikhovich Shnirelman (MacTutor)
  266. Carl Ludwig Siegel
  267. Waclaw Sierpinski
  268. Stanley Skewes (Wikipedia)
  269. Albert Thoralf Skolem
  270. 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)
  271. Henry John Stephen Smith
  272. Robert Arnold Smith (1937-1983) (E. Kani: Rocky Mountain J. 15 (1985) 413-415)
  273. Julius Sommer
  274. Vladimir Gennadievich Sprindzuk
  275. Paul Gustav Stäckel (MacTutor)
  276. Sergei Borisovich Stechkin (RMS)
  277. Moritz Abraham Stern (1807-1894)
  278. Ludwig Stickelberger (1850-1936)
  279. Thomas Jan Stieltjes (MacTutor)
  280. Richard G. Stoneham (1920-1996)
  281. Carl Størmer (1874-1957) (Carl Størmer in memoriam, by Viggo Brun, Acta Math. 100, 1958, i-vii)
  282. Ernst Gabor Strauss
  283. Erik Stridsberg (1871-1950)
  284. Matukumalli Venkata Subbarao, 1921-2006 (R. Balasubramanian)
  285. George Szekeres(1911-2005)
  286. Teiji Takagi (MacTutor)
  287. Ralph Tambs-Lyche (Obituary by Ernst S. Selmer, Normat 39 (1991))
  288. Yutaka Taniyama (MacTutor)
  289. Tikao Tatuzawa
  290. M.F. Tano
  291. Olga Taussky-Todd (MacTutor)
  292. Paul Emery Thomas (Berkeley memorial)
  293. Axel Thue
  294. Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze (MacTutor)
  295. Nikolai Mikhailovich Timofeev (RMS)
  296. Edward Charles Titchmarsh
  297. Paul Turán
  298. James Victor Uspensky (1883-1947)
  299. Charles-Joseph de la Vallée Poussin
  300. Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput (AA)
  301. Harry Schultz Vandiver (MacTutor)
  302. Joost van Hamel died on January 12, 2008, notice by Andrew Mathas
  303. Jacobus Hendricus van Lint (MacTutor)
  304. Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan (JLMS 33 (1958) 252-255)
  305. Askol'd Ivanovich Vinogradov (1929-2005)
  306. Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov
  307. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  308. Karl Georg Christian von Staudt
  309. Sergei Mikhailovich Voronin (RMS)
  310. Georgy Fedoseevich Voronoi (MacTutor)
  311. Arnold Zel'manovich Walfisz
  312. Edward Waring (MacTutor)
  313. Morgan Ward
  314. George Neville Watson (MacTutor)
  315. George Leo Watson
  316. Heinrich Martin Weber (MacTutor)
  317. André Weil
  318. Alfred Edward Western (JLMS)
  319. Hermann Weyl
  320. Albert Leon Whiteman (NAMS)
  321. Arthur Wieferich
  322. John Raymond Wilton (Australian dictionary of Biography)
  323. Anders Wiman (Trygve Nagell, Acta Math. 103 (1960) I-VI)
  324. Aurel Friedrich Wintner (MacTutor)
  325. Jan Wójcik (1936-1994) (A. Schinzel, Wiadom. Math. 33 (1997), 199-203)
  326. Joseph Wolstenholme (MacTutor)
  327. Sir Edward Maitland Wright (MacTutor)
  328. Hans Zassenhaus
  329. Egor Ivanovich Zolotarev

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Last modified 28th August 2010