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. Helen Popova Alderson
  3. William (Red) Alford
  4. Nesmith Ankeny
  5. Roger Apéry
  6. Peter Friedrich Arndt (Wikipedia)
  7. Cahit Arf (MacTutor)
  8. 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)
  9. Oliver Atkin
  10. Frederick Valentine Atkinson (Angelo B. Mingarelli)
  11. L. Aubry
  12. James Burton Ax (1937-2006)
  13. A. A. Krishnaswami Ayyangar
  14. Paul Gustav Heinrich Bachmann (MacTutor)
  15. Mark Borisovich Barban (RMS)
  16. Eric Stephen Barnes
  17. Felix Behrend
  18. Eric Temple Bell (MacTutor)
  19. Gennadii Vladimirovich Belyi (1951-2001) Russ. Math. Surv. 57 981 (2002)
  20. Anne-Marie Bergé died on September 20th, 2008
  21. Joseph Louis François Bertrand (MacTutor)
  22. William Edward Hodgson Berwick (JLMS)
  23. Arne Karl August Beurling
  24. Bhaskara (MacTutor)
  25. Jacques de Billy (MacTutor)
  26. Hans Frederick Blichfeldt (MacTutor. Also see Stanford University memorial page)
  27. Fritz Blumer (1904-1988)
  28. Stjepan Bohnicek (1872-1956)
  29. Alfred Theodore Brauer (MacTutor)
  30. Joel Lee Brenner (1912-1997)
  31. Robert Breusch (1907-1995)
  32. Béla Brindza (1958-2003)
  33. 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)
  34. Aleksandr Adol'fovich Bukhshtab (RMS)
  35. Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (MacTutor)
  36. Leonard Carlitz
  37. Robert Daniel Carmichael (Wikipedia)
  38. Eugène Charles Catalan (MacTutor)
  39. Claude Chabauty
  40. John H.H. Chalk
  41. David Gawen Champernowne (ICGA Journal 23 December 2000)
  42. Nikolai Grigorievich Chebotaryov (MacTutor)
  43. Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (MacTutor)
  44. Thyagaraju Chelluri
  45. Chen Jingrun (Acta Mathematica Sinica, New Series (1996) 12, No. 3, 225-233)
  46. Claude Chevalley (MacTutor)
  47. Sarvadaman Chowla
  48. Nikolai Grigor'evich Chudakov
  49. Paul Cohen (LMS newsletter), Paul Cohen biography (Wikipedia), Paul J. Cohen memorial web page
  50. George E. Cooke
  51. Albert Everett Cooper
  52. Harald Cramér (MacTutor)
  53. Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham (JLMS)
  54. Harold Davenport
  55. Clive Selwyn Davis (1916-2009)
  56. Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn (MacTutor)
  57. Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (MacTutor)
  58. Hubert Delange (1913-2003)
  59. Boris Nikolaevich Delone
  60. 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)
  61. Leonard Eugene Dickson (MacTutor)
  62. Diophantus of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  63. Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
  64. Bohuslav Diviš (Ohio collection) (Also see J. Number Theory 9 1977, v-vii)
  65. Mary Dolciani
  66. Alain Durand (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1415)
  67. Bernard Dwork
  68. Martin Eichler
    • Martin Eichler (AA)
    • Leben und Werk von Martin Eichler, Elemente der Mathematik 49 (1994) 45-60 (by Jürg Kramer)
  69. Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (MacTutor)
  70. Otto Endler (1929-1988)
  71. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (MacTutor)
  72. Paul Erdös
  73. Theodor Estermann (BLMS)
  74. Dennis Estes (June 18, 1941- Feb. 1, 1999)
  75. Euclid of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  76. Leonhard Euler
  77. Graham Everest (1958-2010)
  78. Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev
  79. Naum Il'ich Feldman
  80. Pierre de Fermat
  81. Nathan Fine (NAMS)
  82. Ernests Fogels
  83. Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (MacTutor)
  84. Albrecht Fröhlich
  85. Wolfgang Fuchs (NAMS)
  86. Karl Rudolf Fueter
  87. Philipp Furtwängler (1869-1940) (Obituary: JDMV 50 1940, 167-178)
  88. Steve Galovich
  89. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
  90. Leopold Bernhard Gegenbauer (MacTutor)
  91. M.A. Gel'bke
  92. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  93. Aleksandr Osipovich Gelfond
  94. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  95. Marie-Sophie Germain (MacTutor)
  96. Frank Emmett Gerth III
  97. James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (MacTutor)
  98. Herbert James Godwin (1922-2005)
  99. Christian Goldbach (MacTutor)
  100. Franz Goldscheider (1852-1926)
  101. Irving John (Jack) (1916-2009) (Virginia Tech)
  102. Basil Gordon (1931-2011) Also see On the work of Basil Gordon
  103. William Sealey Gosset (MacTutor)
  104. Jorgen Pedersen Gram (MacTutor)
  105. George Greaves
    • George Greaves (LMS Newsletter)
    • George Greaves (BLMS 43, (2011) 203-205)
  106. Emil Grosswald
  107. Fritz Grunewald died on March 21, 2010; homepage of Fritz Grunewald
  108. Andrew Paul Guinand (MacTutor)
  109. Stan Gurak
  110. Jacques Salomon Hadamard (MacTutor)
  111. Marshall Hall Jr. Marshall Hall Jr(MacTutor)
  112. Harris Hancock
  113. Godfrey Harold Hardy
  114. Colin Brian Haselgrove (MacTutor)
  115. Helmut Hasse
  116. David Hayes 1937-2011
  117. Erich Hecke
  118. Kurt Heegner
  119. Hans Arnold Heilbronn (MacTutor)
  120. Kurt Hensel (MacTutor)
  121. Jacques Herbrand (MacTutor)
  122. Charles Hermite (MacTutor)
  123. Gustav Herglotz (MacTutor)
  124. David Hilbert
  125. Edmund Hlawka, born on Nov 5th 1916 in Bruck an der Mur (Styria), died on Feb 19th 2009 in Vienna
  126. Ludwig Holzer (1891-1968) (Rudolf Einhorn: Rostock. Math. Kolloq. No. 27, (1985) 23-30)
  127. Loo-keng Hua
  128. Adolf Hurwitz
  129. Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda (MacTutor)
  130. Albert Edward Ingham
  131. Kustaa Inkeri
  132. Kenkichi Iwasawa
  133. Shokichi Iyanaga (Also see Mactutor biography)
  134. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
  135. Ernst Jacobsthal
  136. 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)
  137. Michael Kalecki
  138. Pierre Kaplan
  139. Irving Kaplansky
  140. Erich Kamke
  141. Shri Dattathreya Ramachandra Kaprekar
  142. Anatolii Alexeevich Karatsuba (1937-2008) (photo)
  143. Robert M. Kauffman
  144. Aubrey J. Kempner
  145. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (MacTutor)
  146. Hendrik Douwe Kloosterman
  147. Stanislaw Knapowski (Paul Turán, Coll. Math. 23 (1971) 309-318)
  148. John Knopfmacher
  149. Marvin Knopp (1933-2011)
  150. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  151. Jurjen Ferdinand Koksma (MacTutor)
  152. Kjell Kolden
  153. Ivan Korec
  154. Alexander Nikolaevich Korkine (in Russian) (english translation by Bob Burns)
  155. Miloš Kössler
  156. Leopold Kronecker (MacTutor)
  157. Jonas Kubilius (July 27, 1921-October 30, 2011)
  158. Ernst Eduard Kummer (MacTutor)
  159. Sigekatu Kuroda (J. Number Theory 7 1975, 1-4)
  160. R.O. Kuz'min
  161. Nikolai Vasil'evitch Kuznetsov (1939-2010)
  162. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
  163. Gabriel Lamé (MacTutor)
  164. Edmund Georg Hermann Landau
  165. Serge Lang
  166. Bob Laxton (1933-2002)
  167. Victor Amédée Lebesgue (1791-1875)
  168. Adrien-Marie Legendre
  169. Derrick Henry Lehmer (AA)
  170. Emma Lehmer
  171. Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker
  172. Mathias Lerch (MacTutor)
  173. William Judson LeVeque (NAMS)
  174. Norman Levinson (MacTutor)
  175. Richard P. Lewis (LMS newsletter)
  176. Frederick Lindemann - Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) (Wikipedia)
  177. Edward Hubert Linfoot (J.H. Bell: BLMS 16 (1984) 52-58); J. Linfoot: Math. Intelligencer 15 (1993) 39-43
  178. Yuri Vladimirovich Linnik
  179. Joseph Liouville (MacTutor)
  180. John Edensor Littlewood
  181. Wilhelm Ljunggren (MacTutor)
  182. Robert Landis Long
  183. Salomon Lubelski (AA)
  184. François Edouard Anatole Lucas (MacTutor)
  185. Kurt Mahler
  186. Wilhelm Maier (1896-1990)
  187. Edmond Maillet
  188. Henry Mann (Ohio collection)
  189. Alla Lavrik-Männlin (March 2nd, 1964-February 14th, 2003)
  190. Andrei Andreyevich Markov (MacTutor)
  191. George Ballard Mathews
  192. Emile Léonard Mathieu (MacTutor)
  193. Daniel Friedrich Ernst Meissel (MacTutor)
  194. Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917-1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1-4, 21-24)
  195. Franz Mertens (MacTutor)
  196. 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
  197. Hermann Minkowski
  198. Dimitry Mirimanoff
  199. Leon Mirsky (BLMS 18 (1986) 195-206)
  200. August Ferdinand Möbius (MacTutor)
  201. Louis Joel Mordell
  202. Taro Morishima (Wikipedia)
  203. Leo Moser
    • Leo Moser (Canadian Math. Bulletin 15, 1-8, 1972)
    • Leo Moser (Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics1, 255-256, 1971)
  204. Theodore Samuel Motzkin (J. Comb. Theory (A))
  205. Thomas Muir(MacTutor)
  206. Trygve Nagell (AA)
  207. Christopher Eastick Nelson (?-1973)
  208. Jürgen Neukirch, (1937-1997) in memoriam by Theodor Bröcker
  209. Donald J. Newman (Temple University), Donald J. Newman (Wikipedia)
  210. Morris Newman
  211. Ivan Niven (obituary by Kenneth Ross)
  212. Břetislav Novák
  213. Robert Winston Keith Odoni (Sept 2003 issue, Glasgow Math. Journal)
  214. Carl Douglas Olds Vyacheslav Alekseevich Oleinikov (RMS)
  215. Alexander Oppenheim
  216. Hans-Heinrich Ostmann (1913-1959) (Obituary JDMV 86, 1984, 31-35)
  217. Oystein Ore
  218. Alexander Markowich Ostrowski
  219. Gordon Pall (no biography)
  220. Pan Chengdong
  221. William Parry
  222. Wilhelm Patz (no biography)
  223. William Barry Pennington (BLMS)
  224. Oscar Perron
  225. Hans Petersson (MacTutor)
  226. Walter Philipp
  227. Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (1929-2009)
  228. Théophile Pépin (1826-1904)
  229. Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai
  230. Nils Pipping (1890-1982)
  231. Charles Pisot (AA)
  232. Peter Arthur Barry Pleasants (24th August 1939- 20th April 2008)
  233. Felix Pollaczek
  234. George Pólya (MacTutor)
  235. Alf van der Poorten (1942-2010)
  236. J. Popken (1905-1970) (H. Jager, C.G.Lekkerkerker: Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde 19 (1971) 1-9)
  237. Aleksei Georgievich Postnikov (RMS)
  238. Karl Prachar (1924-1994) (E. Hlawka: Monatshefte für Math. 121 (1996) 1-9)
  239. Hans Rademacher
  240. Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan
  241. Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam (MacTutor)
  242. Srinivasa Ramanujan
  243. Robert Alexander Rankin (MacTutor)
  244. Ramanujan website (Prof. K. Srinivasa Rao)
  245. László Rédei
  246. Robert Remak (MacTutor)
  247. Alfréd Rényi
  248. Giovanni Ricci (AA)
  249. Hans-Egon Richert
  250. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
  251. Raphael Robinson (MacTutor)
  252. Kirill Andreevich Rodosskii (1913-2004)
  253. Claude Ambrose Rogers
  254. Jonathan Rogawski (1955-2011)
  255. N.P. Romanov
  256. Arnold Ross (NAMS)
  257. John Barkley Rosser (Wikipedia)
  258. Louis Saalschütz (1835-1913)
  259. Raphaël Salem
  260. Pierre Samuel (Wikipedia)
  261. Giovanii Sansone
  262. Mathieu Schaar (1817-1867)
  263. Peter Scherk (1910-1985)
  264. Theodor Schneider (MacTutor)
  265. Lev Genrikhovich Schnirel'mann (translation by Vladimir Drobot)
  266. Arnold Scholz
  267. Lowell Schoenfeld (John Ewing's tribute)
  268. Theodor Schönemann (1812-1868)
  269. Issai Schur (MacTutor)
  270. 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
  271. Stefan Schwarz (MacTutor)
  272. Sanford (Sandy) Segal (1937-2010)
  273. Beniamino Segre (AA)
  274. Atle Selberg
  275. Sigmund Selberg (1910-1994)
  276. Clas-Olaf Selenius
  277. John Selfridge (1927-2010)
  278. Joseph Alfred Serret (MacTutor)
  279. Joseph Shalika (1941-2010), In Memoriam: Joseph A. Shalika 1941-2010, Freydoon Shahidi, American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 132, Number 6, December 2010, pp. iii-iv
  280. Daniel Shanks (NAMS), (Wikipedia)
  281. Andrei Borisovich Shidlovsky (RMS)
  282. Takuro Shintani (J. Fac. Sci. Tokyo 28 (1981) iii-vi)
  283. Lev Genrikhovich Shnirelman (MacTutor)
  284. Carl Ludwig Siegel
  285. Waclaw Sierpinski
  286. Stanley Skewes (Wikipedia)
  287. Albert Thoralf Skolem
  288. 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)
  289. Henry John Stephen Smith
  290. Robert Arnold Smith (1937-1983) (E. Kani: Rocky Mountain J. 15 (1985) 413-415)
  291. Julius Sommer
  292. Vladimir Gennadievich Sprindzuk
  293. Paul Gustav Stäckel (MacTutor)
  294. Sergei Borisovich Stechkin (RMS)
  295. Rosemarie Stemmler (July 27, 1930-July 18, 2011)
  296. Moritz Abraham Stern (1807-1894)
  297. Ludwig Stickelberger (1850-1936)
  298. Thomas Jan Stieltjes (MacTutor)
  299. Richard G. Stoneham (1920-1996)
  300. Carl Størmer (1874-1957) (Carl Størmer in memoriam, by Viggo Brun, Acta Math. 100, 1958, i-vii)
  301. Ernst Gabor Strauss
  302. Erik Stridsberg (1871-1950)
  303. Matukumalli Venkata Subbarao, 1921-2006 (R. Balasubramanian)
  304. George Szekeres(1911-2005)
  305. Teiji Takagi (MacTutor)
  306. Ralph Tambs-Lyche (Obituary by Ernst S. Selmer, Normat 39 (1991))
  307. Yutaka Taniyama (MacTutor)
  308. Tikao Tatuzawa
  309. M.F. Tano
  310. Olga Taussky-Todd (MacTutor)
  311. Paul Emery Thomas (Berkeley memorial)
  312. Axel Thue
  313. Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze (MacTutor)
  314. Nikolai Mikhailovich Timofeev (RMS)
  315. Edward Charles Titchmarsh
  316. Paul Turán
  317. James Victor Uspensky (1883-1947)
  318. Charles-Joseph de la Vallée Poussin
  319. Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput (AA)
  320. Harry Schultz Vandiver (MacTutor)
  321. Joost van Hamel died on January 12, 2008, notice by Andrew Mathas
  322. Jacobus Hendricus van Lint (MacTutor)
  323. Boris Borisovich Venkov died in Aachen on November 10th, 2011
  324. Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan (JLMS 33 (1958) 252-255)
  325. Askol'd Ivanovich Vinogradov (1929-2005)
  326. Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov
  327. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  328. Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (MacTutor)
  329. Sergei Mikhailovich Voronin (RMS)
  330. Georgy Fedoseevich Voronoi (MacTutor)
  331. Arnold Zel'manovich Walfisz
  332. Edward Waring (MacTutor)
  333. Morgan Ward
  334. George Neville Watson (MacTutor)
  335. George Leo Watson
  336. Heinrich Martin Weber (MacTutor)
  337. André Weil
  338. Alfred Edward Western (JLMS)
  339. Hermann Weyl
  340. Albert Leon Whiteman (NAMS)
  341. Arthur Wieferich
  342. John Raymond Wilton (Australian dictionary of Biography)
  343. Anders Wiman (Trygve Nagell, Acta Math. 103 (1960) I-VI)
  344. Aurel Friedrich Wintner (MacTutor)
  345. Jan Wójcik (1936-1994) (A. Schinzel, Wiadom. Math. 33 (1997), 199-203)
  346. Joseph Wolstenholme (MacTutor)
  347. Rod Worley died on 24th July 2011
  348. John Wrench Jr.
  349. Sir Edward Maitland Wright (MacTutor)
  350. Hans Zassenhaus
  351. Egor Ivanovich Zolotarev

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Last modified 18th April 2012