3. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
We start our list with Sir Isaac Newton, considered by many to be the greatest scientist
of all time. There aren't many subjects that Newton didn't have a huge impact in — he
was one of the inventors of calculus, built the first reflecting telescope and helped
establish the field of classical mechanics with his seminal work, "Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica." He was the first to decompose white light into its
component colors and gave us the three laws of motion, now known as Newton's laws.
(You might remember the first one from school: "Objects at rest tend to stay at rest
and objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.")
We would live in a very different worldhad Newton not been born. Other scientists
would probably have worked out most of his ideas eventually, but there is no telling
how long it would have taken and how far behind we might have fallen from our
current technological trajectory.
4. Pythagoras of Samos was a Greek mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, who inked a
new phase in Mathematics by bringing forth the famous Pythagoras Theorem, named after
him to honor this genius. This Theorem continues to be the basis of numerous other
theorems in Mathematics and Geometry and is of relevance in modern times too.
5. LEONARDO FIBONACCI
(1170 – 1250)
As Europe dawdled from Dark to the Middle Ages, Asia produced the best math centers, the most
advanced syllabuses, and the greatest mathematicians. Leonardo Bigollo Pisano (popularly known as
Fibonacci) was the most promising European mathematician of the Middle Ages. In order to make-up
for Europe’s deficiencies, he imported several publications from Arabia. The fact that his father was a
wealthy merchant with businesses in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula benefitted him. It was
through Abu-Kamil Shuja’s works that Fibonacci became acquainted with the more advanced Asian
curricula, on which he based the essays he later published and circulated in Europe. (Those imported
treatises were mostly Chinese and Indian-based texts which scholars like Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi
had translated, updated, and preserved). Thus, Fibonacci played a leading role in acquainting Europe
with advanced Asian syllabuses that included the decimal system, the lattice multiplication methods,
and the Indo-Arabic numerals which are (still) preferable to Roman ones: due to their ease of use. He
also revived the Greco-Egyptian methodologies: embodied by the works of Euclid and Diophantus.
Apart from updating Europe with better publications, Fibonacci used what he learned to author new
books. Most famous among these were the Liber Abaci and the Liber Quadratorum. He also worked
on various theorems, redefined their arithmetic congrua, and succeeded in solving several unresolved
problems. His contributions were among the precursors of scientific offshoot of the Renaissance.
Consequently, numerous concepts and items including: the Fibonacci numbers, the 6765
Fibonacci asteroid, and so on, were named after him.
6. Bernhard Riemann
The next name on the list of top 10 greatest mathematicians in the world is that of the
German scientist, Bernhard Riemann, who made great contributions in the field of number
theory and differential geometry and analysis. He came from a poor family but was a
brilliant mathematician, who is also credited with the introduction of Riemann Hypothesis,
which deals with distribution of prime numbers.
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9. Aryabhata is the great Indian mathematician from the ancient period who will always be
revered for his glorious contribution to the field. He was the first one to introduce the place
value system by denoting numbers with letters. He also discovered fats like the position of
the planet, their revolution around the sun and measured the number of days in a year.
