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David Hilbert

Early Life
David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He was born on the 23rd of January 1862 in the
Province of Prussia. He is known as one of the leading mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th
century. He attended the ‘Friedrichskolleg Gymnasium’ (Collegium fridericianum) starting from
1872 but he never really settled there. Thus he transferred to Wilhelm Gymnasium in 1879. After
his graduation from here he went to the University of Königsberg. There he became acquainted
with Minkowski who then became a very close a trusted friend who also shared the love of
mathematics with him. Another friendship that became a significant factor in Hilbert’s
mathematical development was with Hurwitz who was also a doctorate student like Hilbert and
Minkowski.

Contribution to Mathematics
Hilbert started teaching at the University of Göttingen from 1886 to 1895. He started as
Privadozent, became Extraordinary Professor and then a full professor in 1893. Hilbert’s
distinguished position in the world of mathematics put him in the limelight and many other
academic institutions offered him to work for them which he declined and continued teaching at
Göttingen. His first work was about the invariant theory which led the way to the proof of the
renowned finiteness theorem. Paul Gordan had solved this theorem almost twenty years back but
his approach did not seem to work for Hilbert so he used a totally different approach and thus the
Hilbert’s Basis Theorem evolved. In 1890 the German Mathematical Society acclaimed his work
concerning the algebraic number theory. His works in the area of geometry are considered to be
the most influential after Euclid.

Hilbert’s famous ’23 problems’ were the most effective and profoundly deliberated set of
problems ever presented by a mathematician. He presented these at the International Congress of
Mathematicians held in Paris in 1900. Out of these some were solved while others were
discussed during the course of the 20th century. Now few of the problems are known as too open
ended to have a definite answer however others out of them still remain a challenge for
mathematicians today. In 1920 Hilbert launched what became to be known as ‘Hilbert’s
Program’ which was based on principles that made mathematics a more logical based subject
rather than tasks determined by randomly postulated rules.

Hilbert did a lot of work for mathematics in various branches of the subject such as invariants,
functional analysis, algebraic number fields and the calculus of variations. His work in the
branch of integral equations in 1909 was the basis of the research carried out in the 20th century
in functional analysis. It also lay a foundation for his own work on infinite dimensional space
known now as Hilbert’s Space; a notion which is used in quantum mechanics.

Death
The last years of Hilbert’s life and of many of his colleagues and students was overshadowed by
the Nazi rule. The University of Göttingen was totally under the shadow of this regime and the
whole Jewish faculty was removed. Hilbert died having immensely contributed to mathematics
on 14th February in 1943. His death remained unknown to the rest of the world until six months
after his death. His tombstone is marked with his own words which he said when announcing his
retirement from the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in 1930.

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Democritus
Early Life
Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, born in 460 BC in Abdera in
Thrace, which was a colony of Teos. There is however a slight controversy on his birth dates.
According to John Burnet the date 460 BC is too early and it is somewhere near to 470 BC
instead. History tells us that Democritus was born to a rich family and the money that he
inherited from his father was spent on travels to several countries in his quest for knowledge. It is
said that he travelled to Asia, India and Ethiopia. He has written on Babylon and Meroe and he
says in ‘Diodorus Siculus’ that he lived in Egypt for five years. He specially mentions the
Egyptian mathematicians, praising their depth of knowledge.

After the end of his journey he also travelled throughout Greece to get an in depth knowledge
about his native land and his culture. He was a wealthy man and he used this wealth to acquire
the writings of many Greek philosophers. He was mostly impressed by Leucippus who was the
forefather of atomism.

Democritus has his share of anecdotes as with any ancient personality. ‘Diogenes Laërtius’ tells
us that he was a modest and simple man whose purpose of life was to gain knowledge. Another
interesting anecdote goes as far as saying that he purposely blinded himself so he could not be
swayed and tempted in his pursuits. However the truth is more likely that he lost his eye sight
due to old age. He was a happy go lucky person who always saw the amusing side of things, a
trait that was misinterpreted to ‘laughing at others’. He was thus known as the ‘Laughing
Professor’.
Philosophy and Science
The philosophy of atoms today is a branch of science however Democritus was not aware of the
empirical cognitive in his theory of atoms. He did not have the powerful telescopes that the
scientists after him had for their experiments on atoms. He used simple scenarios to explain that
nothing was the result of ‘nothing’ and that whatever object or anything for that matter in this
world is the outcome of a combination and then re combination of interminable bits of
undeniable things that are called ‘atoms’ that are not visible to the naked eye. ‘Atomos’, Greek
for atoms were indivisible, infinite in size and shape and totally solid; something we now know
to be untrue. He went as far as relating atoms with almost everything even the human soul.

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Diophantus

Diophantus was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician, born somewhere between 200 and 214
BC. Alexandria was the center of Greek culture and knowledge and Diophantus belonged to the
‘Silver Age’ of Alexandria. His life story is not known in detail however we do have some dates
acquired from a mathematical puzzle known as ‘Diophantus’s Riddle’. He got married when he
was 33, had a son who lived for 42 years and Diophantus’s age which according to the riddle
was 84 when he died. While his personal life remains secluded his works in mathematics is
recorded in ‘Arithmetika’ which originally had thirteen books out of which we only have six.
The information from these books tell us that Diophantus studied from Babylonian teachers as
his works are inspired from Greek and Babylonian observes.

Contribution to Mathematics
‘Arithmetika’ a major work of Diophantus, is considered to be the most noticeable and
influential work done on algebra in Greek history. His style was very different; he never used
general methods in working out a problem. A method used for one problem could not be used to
solve even another very similar problem. Diophantus wrote many books but unfortunately only a
few lasted. He did a lot of work in algebra, solving equations in terms of integers. Some of his
equations resulted in more than one answer possibility. There are now called ‘Diophantine’ or
‘Indeterminate’. It was none other than Diophantus who started the use of a symbol to specify
the unidentified quantities in his equations. His style of algebra is known as the ‘syncopated’
style of algebraic writing, in which he represented polynomials as one unknown. Before
Diophantus’s use of symbolism equations were written out completely. Mathematical historian
Kurt Vogel says regarding Diophantus’s symbolism:

‘The symbolism that Diophantus introduced for the first time, and undoubtedly devised himself,
provided a short and readily comprehensible means of expressing an equation… Since an
abbreviation is also employed for the word ‘equals,’ Diophantus took a fundamental step from
verbal algebra towards symbolic algebra.’

He also used fractions as numbers. His equations are the epitome of the number theory. Due to
this he is also known as the ‘Father of Algebra’. There are discrepancies in his work such as the
lack of the required notation in expression of more general methods. This isolated technique of
Diophantus restricted his work to only specific problems. He also did not have a symbol for the
general number n.

It is said that Diophantus wrote on polygonal numbers. There are some remains of a book with
the use of these numbers. ‘Preliminaries to the Geometric Elements’ was attributed to the ‘Hero
of Alexandria’ but a recent research by Wilbur Knorr suggests that it was in fact Diophantus who
was the author of this book.

Death
Diophantus had his share of immense influence in mathematics especially algebra that later led
to major advances in the subject. Most of work was conserved by the Arabs. His works are also
translated in Latin later in the 16th century. The Diophantine equations are named after him. He
died in 284 AD.

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Edward Witten
Edward Witten was born on 26th August 1951 and teaches his field of expertise Mathematical
Physics as a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, to be more precise he is an American
theoretical physicist who mainly focuses on his specialization.

Areas of focus
Witten carries out research in theory of quantum gravity, super symmetric quantum field
theories, superstring theory and other areas in affiliation with mathematical physics.

Early life
The mathematician was born to a Jewish family in Baltimore, Maryland (United States of
America) to the couple Lorraine W. Witten and Louis Witten. The latter was a theoretical
physicist who was focused on specializing in gravitation and general relativity.

Academic details
He was initially educated at the Park School of Baltimore and was part of the class of 1968.
Later on he received his Bachelor of Arts where he had a major in History and minor in
Linguistics from Brandeis University. He also attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as
an economics graduate student for a single semester and then left. He then got enrolled at
Princeton University for ‘Applied Mathematics’, and after shifting departments he gained his
PhD in Physics (1976) with the supervision of David Gross (Nobel Laureate in Physics 2004).
Witten also held a fellowship at Harvard University during 1976-7 and a MacArthur foundation
fellowship in 1982, moreover he was part of the Harvard Society of fellows (1977-80). It is also
commendable that in 1990 he was the first physicist to be presented a Fields Medal by the
International Union of Mathematics. Time Magazine in 2004 proclaimed that Witten was
thought to be the world’s greatest theoretical physicist.

Publications
In 1986 he published an article in the Nation where he made it a point that the Left had no
strategy, this suggests he was politically motivated. He also worked for a while with the
Democratic Presidential Nominee, George McGovern.

He has more than 340 publications which mainly focus upon quantum field theory, string theory
and areas relative to topology and geometry. The man is also known for coming up with a natural
solution to the hierarchy problem in physics. Mathematicians around the world are aware that
Witten helped open up the string theory where at a conference at the University of California (in
the mid 90’s), he was able to solve a problem related to the string theory and he presented the
idea of dualities and versions of the problem which eventually led to the same theory. Witten has
left his academic imprint in numerous ways due to his dedicated research and brilliant mind
which was capable of opening gateways to new forms of thinking and solving issues as
challenging as ‘gauge gravity duality’.

Achievements
Apart from previous academic achievements already mentioned, he also received the Nemmers
Prize in Mathematics (2000) and the National Medal of Science (2002). He was also the recipient
of the Pythagoras Award (2005), Henri Poincare Prize (2006), the Crafoord Prize (2008),
Lorentz Medal (2010) and the Isaac Newton Medal (2010). He was also chosen as a member of
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2006) by Pope Benedict XVI.

Personal life
He is married to a physics professor who teaches at Princeton University, Chiara Nappi; they
have two daughters Ilana and Daniela and one son called Rafael. Their family also extends to a
granddaughter named Nava. Witten is also part of the ‘Americans for Peace Now’ board.

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Bernhard Riemann
Early Life
George Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was born on 17th September 1826, in the village of
Breselenz near Dannenberg, Germany. His father Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was a pastor and
his mother was Charlotte Ebell who died when he was just a child. Riemann was under confident
as a child with a fear of public speaking and had many nervous breakdown attacks. On the other
hand he was a gifted mathematic genius with exceptional calculation aptitude. He was married to
Elise Koch in 1862 and they had one daughter.

Education
In 1840 Bernhard Riemann went to middle school for which he had to live with his grandmother
in Hanover (now Germany). Inspired by his father he often read the Bible but his interest in
mathematics took over all other activities. He used to solve extremely complex math problems
surprising even his teachers. He took philology and theology in order to become a priest but
when he was sent to well-known University of Göttingen by his father his focus turned to
Mathematics. His teacher was Carl Friedrich Gauss who encouraged him to talk to his parents
and switch to a degree in Mathematics rather than theology. Once getting their approval,
Riemann transferred to the University of Berlin in 1847 and remained there for the next two
years.

Contributions to the Field of Mathematics

Riemann was pure genius and his phenomenal contributions to the Mathematical world are a
proof of his creativity and depth of knowledge. Despite his ailing health he was one of
the greatest mathematicians of all time. He had an extraordinary command over complex
analysis which he interconnected with topology and number theory. Other revolutionary
contributions include the tensor analysis, theory of functions, differential geometry and the most
notable being the theory of manifolds. His work in geometry defined new probabilities by
generalizing the notions of distance and curvature. Many theorems are named after him for
example the Reimann-Roch theorem. He pursued general actuality proofs, rather than
constructive proofs that actually produce the objects. He said that this method led to theoretical
clarity, making it easy for the mathematician and avoided getting confused with too much detail.
He was an outstanding and genuine mathematician. Even many principles of modern physics rely
on Reimann’s notions of the geometry of space. The base of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was
set up in 1854 when Riemann gave his first lectures.

Academia
Riemann became a lecturer on the recommendation of his teacher Gauss at the University of
Göttingen. Seeing the brilliance of Reimann, efforts were made in order to promote him to a
position of an extraordinary Professor. This, however, could not be done and he was paid like
any other professor in the University of Göttingen. He was later made the Head of Mathematics
Department.

Death
It is said that Riemann caught a cold which worsened to become tuberculosis. Although he made
several efforts in order to get better but all in vain. He spent the final days of his life in Italy in
the village of Selasca with his wife and daughter. Riemann died on 20th July 1866.

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