Greatest Mathematician

[ParadigmShifter]

Yep, it gives rise to conservation laws of linear momentum and energy.

She also did groundbreaking work on abstract algebra.

 

[gangleri2001]

No one loves Rusell?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Just you and one other

I believe he is the only one on the list to have survived a plane crash though.

I also like his comment after proving that 1+1=2, "The above proposition is occasionally useful".

 

[jessiecat]

Al-Khwarizmi. To introduce Indian numerals and use Greek geometry to invent Algebra as the purest form of mathematical expression is pretty awesome IMO.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Cool, I like it when someone gets their first vote.

And in other news, Gauss slips ahead of Euler.

 

[mightfire500]

after 6 years this might be a strange bump, but i stumbled upon this forum and this question

and see Gauss winning

what made Gauss so special that the wide consensus considers him the greatest

 

[really]

No idea - I voted for Pascal because I used to drink in Café Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand.

 

[Goodfella]

I agree with Newton, Gauss, or Euler. I'm not extremely familiar with the latter two, but I've used Gauss's contributions, particularly Gaussian elimination and Gaussian surfaces, quite a bit in school while Euler's theorem and Euler's number are extremely useful. But Newton's contributions to physics and the invention of calculus are ridiculous which is why I'm inclined to vote for him.

 

[Lohrenswald]

What's Gauss elimination again?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I had multiple math professors at Georgia Tech (and High School math teacher who formerly taught at Georgia Tech) who expressed the opinion that Euler was the greatest mathematician in history, so I'm going with that one.

 

[mightfire500]

I had multiple math professors at Georgia Tech (and High School math teacher who formerly taught at Georgia Tech) who expressed the opinion that Euler was the greatest mathematician in history, so I'm going with that one.

yeah Euler was a genius...no doubt

 

[Goodfella]

What's Gauss elimination again?

It's a method of solving large systems of equations by using matrices that contain all the coefficients of the terms in the equations. It's also useful for high-degree differential equations. However, wiki says it was used by mathematicians in China long before Gauss so maybe he doesn't deserve much credit for it. It seems like Newton devised it in Europe and Gauss is mostly responsible for its current notation.

 

[Hygro]

I'm not a math guy but hatsoff to Imhotep

 

[Antilogic]

This thread just makes me sad because so many posters in it have since disappeared.

 

[Kyriakos]

Thankfully the more illustrious ones - like myself - are still around

 

[Lohrenswald]

It's a method of solving large systems of equations by using matrices that contain all the coefficients of the terms in the equations. It's also useful for high-degree differential equations. However, wiki says it was used by mathematicians in China long before Gauss so maybe he doesn't deserve much credit for it. It seems like Newton devised it in Europe and Gauss is mostly responsible for its current notation.

Ah yea I remember now.
It doesn't really seem useful to me, but I learned it only last semester, so I may likely be wrong.

 

[MilesGregarius]

This thread just makes me sad because so many posters in it have since disappeared.

Indeed.

ParadigmShifter where have you gone? OT suffers a severe dearth of Evertonians.

 

[Mise]

Voted Gauss in 2009, would vote Gauss again. He did a lot of stuff in a lot of different fields. Euler probably had more stuff named after him, but (arguably) all that stuff was stuff that enabled other people to do stuff, whereas Gauss's stuff was intrinsically useful and applicable stuff. So Gauss's stuff > Euler's stuff.

 

[Kyriakos]

^ +1 to Gauss for not being establishment misanthrope and sidelining Abel

 

[Power_of_Beer]

I would put John von Neumann on top of the list, though he was also an applied mathematician and physicist. The sheer amount of influential work he has done is amazing, most notably his contributions to computing.