The Unique Mathematicians

Summary:

Marcus du Sautoy made his way to Northern Italy where an artist named Piero Della Francesca live. According to Sautoy, Piero is the first major painter who deeply understand perspective. The master piece of Piero is the Flagellation of Christ.

 After visited Italy, he proceeded to Europe. Europe had been the world’s powerhouse of mathematical ideas. In fact, some or most of the mathematician were native in this country. One of this was Rene Descartes. He is a sickly boy but he had a passion in mathematics. He usually do his work on bed because for him this is the best place. One of the interesting piece of work that Descartes did was the merging of algebra and geometry.

On the 17^th century, another mathematician named Marin Mersenne. He came from the same school of Descartes. One of his discoveries was prime numbers that was named after him. But the greatest mathematician that became Descartes’ rival was Pierre de Fermat. One of his greatest contribution was Modern Number Theory. His utmost contribution was Proof. Fermat was fund of patterns. He also made codes that protects cards on internet.

 Another competitor came from Britain. Guess who he is? He is Isaac Newton who developed Theory of Light and discovered Gravitation. He also developed calculus. From the start he never thought of publishing calculus until he heard a rival. This was Gottfried Leibniz who coincidently had the similar idea as him. He is the first who invented Practical Calculating Machine. This machine was for Binary System. The first calculus was heard from him but not in Newton, which made things trouble. Royal Society awarded Newton for first discovery of calculus and Leibniz for first publication but in the end plagiarism was accused to Leibniz. But ironically calculus of Leibniz succeed over Newton. Leibniz work was concise over Newton that is why it was used today.

On his journey to Switzerland, he found out a family of mathematician. The Bernoullis family, who came from Basel. Johan and Jakob Bernoullis were the one who spread the calculus of Leibniz. One of their contribution is the calculus that solve problems.

The next journey he took was in Russia where Euler live. His contributions was the numbers like e and i and also pi.

Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician whose contribution was sound waves.

Another great mathematician which called Prince of Mathematics was named Carl Friedrich Gauss. How incredible it was because at 15, he discovered a new pattern of prime numbers. Gauss showed pictures to explain how imaginary numbers worked. He disproved the Euclid’s geometry. According to Euclid, universe was flat but for Gauss it is curve.

Another mathematician named Janos Bolyai made his wok in Translyvania. He offered himself as a tutor boy but Gauss declined so he joined army but his passion and love in mathematics endured. He published his work but Gauss disapproved his work. Two years before him, another mathematician published the same idea as him named Nicholas Lobachevsky. From then on he didn’t published anything then later on he gone crazy then died. Benhard Reiman, a mathematician, has a great contribution. This was the lecture on the Foundations of Geometry.

Comments/Reactions:

 What is today is because of yesterday and today and yesterday will be a part of tomorrow. This is my outlook in mathematics because the concepts in mathematics that were introduced by different mathematician were still existing and yet we are using it today.

I admired mathematician especially Fermat’s work. He specialized a code that protects cards on internet. In this way, security and protection are both insured. But there were some bad points in the movie. One of this was about the competition between Newton and Leibniz in Calculus. Both of them were good but in the end Leibniz work succeed.

As what I observed, mathematicians came from unfortunate family. Their life became better because of their work. Some of them were not totally mannered when they prosper.  They were almost the same because they preferred to work on bed or kitchen or any place they were comfortable in. Marcus du Sautoy’s line caught my attention. He said not all mathematician has a son whose mathematician also. Why do their genes were not acquired by them? Well.. It puzzled me a lot. Anyway, every person has its own passion and I know they only follow what their heart desires.

As I continued watching it up to the end, I’m delighted with the different works formed or develop by them. They were like scientist. They were observant, critical thinkers and many words to describe. Their passion in math and ability makes them unique in many ways. They have different ideas and outlook on things like Euclid and Gauss. I salute them for their hardwork and great contributions that makes things easier.