No Excuses

You success is determined not by your parents, not your friends, not your colleagues but by you! In this instalment of the Story of Maths entitled Frontiers of space, the show discussed some people who have contributed to advanced math like calculus, higher geometry, and such. Some of us may have impressions that these prodigies are geniuses right away but most of us does not know that many of them experienced difficult childhood but that did not stop them from being great, in fact they used that situation to be a stepping stone of success.

In summary of the movie, I will start with Piero della Francesca. He was a wonderful artist and a mathematician and he was the first to full understand perspective. He was able to create 3-dimensional paintings in a 2-dimensional canvass as a result of his brilliance. Next person in focus was Rene Descartes, famously known for the Cartesian Coordinate Plane. He was a sickly child and due to that, he stayed in longer in the morning and this time is like his meditation. When he was in adulthood, he decided to become a soldier but the twist is that he wasn’t really a soldier but a kind of mercenary, like in the video game Grand Theft Auto except it was like a million centuries ago. One night he was drunk, he dreamt of understanding the key was to build philosophy on the indisputable facts of mathematics. This was the evidence that his first true love is mathematics not being a soldier/ mercenary. Then he continued with math doing it in his past time and some ideas he has are rejecting the idea that the sun revolved around the world and merged algebra and geometry (sort of dictionary- radical thoughts in merging algebra and geometry). He also had insight on geometry needing algebra to fully unlock the potential of geometry and he was able to do that. But this guy had some sort of a problem, he was not the ‘good guy next door’ type of guy and he was a drunkard so you know what to expect about this guy.

The next mathematician is Marin Mersenne, a God-fearing and a math-loving person. He sees that mathematics and science are the evidences that God exists and I approve of this though I will not elaborate this here. Marin, if he was living in these times, was a frequent status updater in social media. He liked to share his ideas and thought to his friends and also urged people to read Descartes’ work on geometry but his most significant discovery in math is the new properties of numbers. The next person in focus is Pierre de Fermat, a rival of Descartes. He considered the fun out of mathematics worthless (KJ over here). He virtually invented number theory and formulated a theory on prime numbers stating  that if you've got a prime number which when you divide it by four it leaves remainder one, then Fermat showed you could always rewrite this number as two square numbers added together. This will work even with larger prime number as long as it satisfies the conditions. Lastly, people who have accounts or transactions online should thank this man because through him, internet encryption of our passwords and information was made possible.

                This next person is quite familiar maybe throughout the whole world. This guy is famous for his falling apples while sitting in an apple tree but little does the world knows that he was one pioneer of calculus. Sir Isaac Newton was known mostly for his three laws of physics but he was among the first ones to discover calculus. He came from the same town of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher a first-woman and longest British Prime Minister known for her uncompromising leadership and politics style. Anyways, going back to Newton, his father died when he was very young and hated his stepfather but this caused him to excel in mathematics and prevented him to be a shepherd but no discrimination against shepherds. They are great people. His highlight in math is calculus where allows us to make sense of this calculation. It enables us to work out the exact speed and also the precise distance travelled at any moment in time. Calculus helps us understand the moving world changing world, the orbits of planets, motion of fluids. Through the power of the calculus, we have a way of describing, with mathematical precision, the complex, ever-changing natural world. Then Newton becamse part of the Royal Society and although he didn’t focus on calculus because of overwhelming ideas other than calculus, it all changed when he heard someone had the same idea as him which became his rival Gottfried Leibniz. Gottfried Leibniz is a brilliant person, how can I say. Oh he just developed differential and integral calculus in 2 months. He loves math and do math in his past time. He was one of the few to invent calculating machines like a very ancient calculator and had ideas like to reunite catholic and protestants, France to conquer Egypt, and philosophy and logic. Leibniz walk in parks frequently, the time where he can think and developed a theory on solving a maze where you just stick you left hand and follow it and you can get out. He was first to publish calculus and that’s where trouble walked in on him. Newton does not want to share the credit of the discovery so he was credited for the first discovery and Leibiniz for the first publication. Shortly, he was accused of plagiarism but the report was written by the president of the Royal Society. A man named is Sir Isaac Newton. Leibniz was hurt because he looked up to Newton and he didn’t want a fight. Leibniz’s notations in calculus are more easy and the one being used today unlike Newton's which is clumsy and difficult.

                Moving on, there are a family of Math prodigy which had a very significant discovery in calculus. The Bernoulli brothers Johann and Jakob was a fan of Leibniz and because of that, they spread the calculus of Gottfried Leibniz. Johann was the smartest among the mathematicians because he found elegant solutions while his brother Jakob have deeper insight into problems. They developed calculus of variation and this discovery helped a lot of people like businessmen, engineers, designers and a lot more. Marcus de Sautoy met with Leonhard Euler, yes you heard it right but yes you are also wrong. He did not rse from the dead you silly, He is the 9th generation from the original Leonhard Euler the star pupil of Johann Bernouilli. Leonhard Euler got a job at Russia in St. Petersburg and that’s where he found his 'place of mathematics'. He created modern math like analysis and topology and notations. Many notations the Euler created is still used today like i, e, or pi and combined these notations which resulted to e^ipi =-1. What I liked about him is that he widened his field not just only mathematics and many considered him as a Mozart of math, and also developed the Basel problem (google it up).When he was started to lose his eyesight, he took this positively saying that since there are less distractions he can now focus on math even more, such a great guy. 

                The next guy on the list is Carl Friedrich Gauss, the prince of mathematics. His potential in mathematics is discovered by his mother and his mother really worked hard for him to have the best possible education there is. At the age of 12 he was criticizing Euclid's geometry, 15 discovered new patterns in prime numbers, 19 discovered a 17 sided figure. I cannot imagine doing those at a very young age mainly because back then they don’t have a lot of media to distract them. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise for them. He kept a diary of just about everything and some of Gauss' ideas were ahead by 100 years of their time. He developed Riemann zeta function and elliptic functions, discovered imaginary numbers which help a lot like in bulding bridges, understanding radio waves, and build aeroplanes. This provided a map to let us see how things really are. The Gauss explained clearly the other direction of the number line giving people and idea or a picture how these imaginary numbers work.  Then something happened. His character became inversely proportional to his character because as he became more famous, his character got bad. He became the mr. grumpy old man you cannot trust. Many young people regarded him as a god, making his head a balloon. Then he ventures into surveying to get some ideas of the shape of the earth but he had a revolutionary speculation about the shape of space instead.  The next mathematician is Janos Bolyai. He was a lone wolf like Chuck Norris. His father discovered that his son is a prodigy of math and sent a letter to his friend, mr. Gauss, but he declined because he was so prideful so the young Bolyai joined the army instead. During his days on the army, he did math during his spare time and imaginary geometries and developed today as the hyperbolic geometry. Bolyia published his work and his father, not giving up, sent mr. grumpy old man, a copy of his son's work and immideately approved to tutor his son. Gauss, being mean, refuses to praise Janos because he should be the on praised but Gauss sent a letter to another friend regarding Bolyia that he is a genius. He never told the young Bolyai so the young boy was disheartened. And adding more, there was one person who had the same idea as Janos but was published 2 years before him. That was it for the mathematical career of Janos Bolyai, such a sad story. Finally, the last person discussed is Bernhard Riemann. He found security and identity in mathematics from his difficult life. His head teacher in his school saw potential in him and let him access to the library. Then he became a great mathematician and had a famous lecture on the foundations of geometry, he described geometry and the relationship of it with the world. Then he imagined what geometry could be. This began a revolution of how we view our world. Then higher geomerty appeared from the imagination of Reimann. He didn’t put restrictions to his imagination and because of this some of his work are everywhere. Also he made hyperspace from fiction to fact. Through mr. Bernhard Reimann and his math, we have ideas to explore those imaginary ideas.

                Many of these mathematicians had a share of their troubles but that didn’t stop them. They helped us see what the world really is and not to be hated. And a great thing about mathematics is you can do it anywhere. You don't have to have a laboratory. You don't even really need a library. What you need is a heart of learning and the determination to continue. Many of them had difficulties and some were poor so don’t let anything or anyone stop you from achieving what you want.