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 (Wikipedia)
  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)
    • Creating a life: Emil Artin in America, Della Dumbaugh and Joachim Schwermer, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc 50 (2013), 321-330
  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. Paul Bateman
  18. Mihály Bauer (MacTutor)
  19. Felix Behrend
  20. Eric Temple Bell (MacTutor)
  21. Gennadii Vladimirovich Belyi (1951-2001) Russ. Math. Surv. 57 981 (2002)
  22. Anne-Marie Bergé died on September 20th, 2008
  23. Joseph Louis François Bertrand (MacTutor)
  24. William Edward Hodgson Berwick (JLMS)
  25. Arne Karl August Beurling
  26. Bhaskara (MacTutor)
  27. Jacques de Billy (MacTutor)
  28. Hans Frederick Blichfeldt (MacTutor. Also see Stanford University memorial page)
  29. Fritz Blumer (1904-1988)
  30. Stjepan Bohniček (1872-1956)
  31. Alfred Theodore Brauer (MacTutor)
  32. Joel Lee Brenner (1912-1997)
  33. Robert Breusch (1907-1995)
  34. Béla Brindza (1958-2003)
  35. 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 (Sigmund Selberg: Norske Vid. Selsk. Forh. (Trondheim) (1979) 57-61 - in Norwegian)
  36. Aleksandr Adol'fovich Bukhshtab (RMS)
  37. Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (MacTutor)
  38. David G. Cantor passed away on November 19, 2012
  39. Leonard Carlitz
  40. Robert Daniel Carmichael (Wikipedia)
  41. Eugène Charles Catalan (MacTutor)
  42. Claude Chabauty
  43. John H.H. Chalk
  44. David Gawen Champernowne (ICGA Journal 23 December 2000)
  45. Albert Châtelet (MacTutor)
  46. François Châtelet (Wikipedia)
  47. Nikolai Grigorievich Chebotaryov (MacTutor)
  48. Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev (MacTutor)
  49. Thyagaraju Chelluri
  50. Chen Jingrun (Acta Mathematica Sinica, New Series (1996) 12, No. 3, 225-233)
  51. Claude Chevalley (MacTutor)
  52. Sarvadaman Chowla
  53. Nikolai Grigor'evich Chudakov
  54. Paul Cohen (LMS newsletter), Paul Cohen biography (Wikipedia), Paul J. Cohen memorial web page
  55. George Erskine Cooke (21/5/1942-19/12/1976)
  56. Albert Everett Cooper
  57. Harald Cramér (MacTutor)
  58. Richard Crandall (1947-2012)
  59. Allan Joseph Champneys Cunningham (JLMS)
  60. Harold Davenport
  61. Clive Selwyn Davis (1916-2009)
  62. Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn (MacTutor)
  63. Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (MacTutor)
  64. Hubert Delange (1913-2003)
  65. Boris Nikolaevich Delone
  66. 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)
  67. Leonard Eugene Dickson (MacTutor)
  68. Diophantus of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  69. Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
  70. Bohuslav Diviš (Ohio collection) (Also see J. Number Theory 9 1977, v-vii)
  71. Mary Dolciani
  72. Alain Durand (Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1415)
  73. Bernard Dwork
  74. Martin Eichler
    • Martin Eichler (AA)
    • Leben und Werk von Martin Eichler, Elemente der Mathematik 49 (1994) 45-60 (by Jürg Kramer)
  75. Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (MacTutor)
  76. Otto Endler (1929-1988)
  77. Paul Epstein
  78. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (MacTutor)
  79. Paul Erdös
  80. Theodor Estermann (BLMS)
  81. Dennis Estes (June 18, 1941- Feb. 1, 1999)
  82. Euclid of Alexandria (MacTutor)
  83. Leonhard Euler
  84. Graham Everest (1958-2010)
  85. Dmitrii Konstantinovich Faddeev
  86. Naum Il'ich Feldman
  87. Pierre de Fermat
  88. Nathan Fine (NAMS)
  89. Ernests Fogels
  90. Giovanni Frattini (MacTutor)
  91. Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (MacTutor)
  92. Albrecht Fröhlich
  93. Wolfgang Fuchs (NAMS)
  94. Karl Rudolf Fueter
  95. Philipp Furtwängler (1869-1940) (Obituary: JDMV 50 1940, 167-178)
  96. Steve Galovich
  97. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
  98. Leopold Bernhard Gegenbauer (MacTutor)
  99. Aleksandr Osipovich Gelfond
  100. Angelo Genocchi (MacTutor)
  101. Marie-Sophie Germain (MacTutor)
  102. Frank Emmett Gerth III
  103. James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (MacTutor)
  104. Herbert James Godwin (1922-2005)
  105. Christian Goldbach (MacTutor)
  106. Irving John (Jack) Good (1916-2009) (Virginia Tech)
  107. Basil Gordon (1931-2011) Also see On the work of Basil Gordon
  108. William Sealey Gosset (MacTutor)
  109. Jorgen Pedersen Gram (MacTutor)
  110. George Greaves
    • George Greaves (LMS Newsletter)
    • George Greaves (BLMS 43, (2011) 203-205)
  111. Emil Grosswald
  112. Fritz Grunewald died on March 21, 2010; homepage of Fritz Grunewald
  113. Andrew Paul Guinand (MacTutor)
  114. Stan Gurak
  115. Jacques Salomon Hadamard (MacTutor)
  116. Marshall Hall Jr. (MacTutor)
  117. Harris Hancock
  118. Godfrey Harold Hardy
  119. Colin Brian Haselgrove (MacTutor)
  120. Helmut Hasse
  121. David R. Hayes: Some remarks on his life and work, J. Number Theory, Volume 133, March 2013 (Michael Rosen)
  122. Erich Hecke
  123. Kurt Heegner
  124. Hans Arnold Heilbronn (MacTutor)
  125. Kurt Hensel (MacTutor)
  126. Jacques Herbrand (MacTutor)
  127. Charles Hermite (MacTutor)
  128. Gustav Herglotz (MacTutor)
  129. David Hilbert
  130. Edmund Hlawka, born on Nov 5th 1916 in Bruck an der Mur (Styria), died on Feb 19th 2009 in Vienna
  131. Ludwig Holzer (1891-1968) (Rudolf Einhorn: Rostock. Math. Kolloq. No. 27, (1985) 23-30)
  132. Loo-keng Hua
  133. Adolf Hurwitz
  134. Masatoshi Gündüz Ikeda (MacTutor)
  135. Albert Edward Ingham
  136. Kustaa Inkeri
  137. Kenkichi Iwasawa
  138. Shokichi Iyanaga
  139. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
  140. Ernst Jacobsthal
  141. 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)
  142. Michał Kalecki (Wikipedia)
  143. Pierre Kaplan
  144. Irving Kaplansky
  145. Erich Kamke
  146. Shri Dattathreya Ramachandra Kaprekar
  147. Anatolii Alexeevich Karatsuba (1937-2008) (photo)
  148. Robert M. Kauffman
  149. Aubrey J. Kempner
  150. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (MacTutor)
  151. Hendrik Douwe Kloosterman
  152. Stanislaw Knapowski (Paul Turán, Coll. Math. 23 (1971) 309-318)
  153. John Knopfmacher
  154. Marvin Knopp (1933-2011)
  155. Chao Ko (Wikipedia)
  156. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  157. Jurjen Ferdinand Koksma (MacTutor)
  158. Kjell Kolden
  159. Ivan Korec
  160. Alexander Nikolaevich Korkine (in Russian) (english translation by Bob Burns)
  161. Miloš Kössler
  162. Leopold Kronecker (MacTutor)
  163. Jonas Kubilius (July 27, 1921-October 30, 2011)
  164. Ernst Eduard Kummer (MacTutor)
  165. Sigekatu Kuroda
    • Sigekatu Kuroda (MacTutor)
    • Sigekatu Kuroda (J. Number Theory 7 1975, 1-4)
  166. Rodion Osievich Kuz'min (Wikipedia)
  167. Nikolai Vasil'evitch Kuznetsov (1939-2010)
  168. Joseph-Louis Lagrange
  169. Gabriel Lamé (MacTutor)
  170. Edmund Georg Hermann Landau
  171. Serge Lang
  172. Bob Laxton (1933-2002)
  173. Victor Amédée Lebesgue (1791-1875) (Les-mathematiques.net)
  174. Adrien-Marie Legendre
  175. Derrick Henry Lehmer (AA)
  176. Emma Lehmer
  177. Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker (Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde)
  178. Heinrich-Wolfgang Leopoldt (obituary by Peter Roquette)
  179. Mathias Lerch (MacTutor)
  180. William Judson LeVeque (NAMS)
  181. Norman Levinson (MacTutor)
  182. Richard P. Lewis (LMS newsletter)
  183. Frederick Lindemann - Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) (Wikipedia)
  184. Edward Hubert Linfoot (J.H. Bell: BLMS 16 (1984) 52-58); J. Linfoot: Math. Intelligencer 15 (1993) 39-43
  185. Yuri Vladimirovich Linnik
  186. Joseph Liouville (MacTutor)
  187. John Edensor Littlewood
  188. Wilhelm Ljunggren (MacTutor)
    • The Collected Papers of Wilhelm Ljunggren, Ed. Paulo Ribenboim, Queen's papers in pure and applied mathematics 115, 2003
  189. Robert Landis Long
  190. Salomon Lubelski (AA)
  191. François Edouard Anatole Lucas (MacTutor)
  192. Kurt Mahler
  193. Wilhelm Maier (1896-1990)
  194. Edmond Maillet
  195. Henry Mann (Ohio collection)
  196. Alla Lavrik-Männlin (March 2nd, 1964-February 14th, 2003)
  197. Andrei Andreyevich Markov (MacTutor)
  198. George Ballard Mathews
  199. Emile Léonard Mathieu (MacTutor)
  200. Daniel Friedrich Ernst Meissel (MacTutor)
  201. Puliyakot Kesava Menon (1917-1979) (Bull. Math. Assoc. India 18 (1986), no. 1-4, 21-24)
  202. Franz Mertens (MacTutor)
  203. 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, also Wikipedia article
  204. Hermann Minkowski
  205. Dimitry Mirimanoff
  206. Leon Mirsky (BLMS 18 (1986) 195-206)
  207. August Ferdinand Möbius (MacTutor)
  208. Louis Joel Mordell
  209. Taro Morishima (Wikipedia)
  210. Leo Moser
  211. Theodore Samuel Motzkin (J. Comb. Theory (A))
  212. Thomas Muir(MacTutor)
  213. Trygve Nagell (AA)
    • The Collected Papers of Trygve Nagell, Ed. Paulo Ribenboim, Queen's papers in pure and applied mathematics 121, 2003
  214. Christopher Eastick Nelson (?-1973)
  215. Jürgen Neukirch, (1937-1997) in memoriam by Theodor Bröcker
  216. Donald J. Newman (Wikipedia)
  217. Morris Newman
  218. Ivan Niven (obituary by Kenneth Ross)
  219. Břetislav Novák
  220. Robert Winston Keith Odoni (Sept 2003 issue, Glasgow Math. Journal)
  221. Carl Douglas Olds Vyacheslav Alekseevich Oleinikov (RMS)
  222. Alexander Oppenheim
  223. Hans-Heinrich Ostmann (Wikipedia), also (Obituary JDMV 86, 1984, 31-35)
  224. Oystein Ore
  225. Alexander Markowich Ostrowski
  226. Gordon Pall (no biography)
  227. Pan Chengdong
  228. William Parry
  229. Wilhelm Patz (no biography)
  230. William Barry Pennington (BLMS)
  231. Oskar Perron
  232. Hans Petersson (MacTutor)
  233. Walter Philipp
  234. Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (1929-2009)
  235. Jean François Théophile Pépin (Wikipedia)
  236. Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai
  237. Nils Pipping (1890-1982)
  238. Charles Pisot (AA)
  239. Peter Arthur Barry Pleasants (24th August 1939- 20th April 2008)
  240. Felix Pollaczek
  241. George Pólya (MacTutor)
  242. Alf van der Poorten (1942-2010)
  243. J. Popken (1905-1970) (H. Jager, C.G.Lekkerkerker: Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde 19 (1971) 1-9)
  244. Aleksei Georgievich Postnikov (RMS)
  245. Karl Prachar (1924-1994) (E. Hlawka: Monatshefte für Math. 121 (1996) 1-9)
  246. Hans Rademacher
  247. Steve Rallis died on April 17th 2012
  248. Kanakanahalli Ramachandra (Wikipedia)
  249. Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan
  250. Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam (MacTutor)
  251. Srinivasa Ramanujan
  252. Robert Alexander Rankin (MacTutor)
  253. Ramanujan website (Prof. K. Srinivasa Rao)
  254. László Rédei
  255. Hans Reichardt
  256. Robert Remak (MacTutor)
  257. Alfréd Rényi
  258. Giovanni Ricci (AA)
  259. Hans-Egon Richert
  260. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
  261. Raphael Robinson (MacTutor)
  262. Kirill Andreevich Rodosskii (1913-2004)
  263. Claude Ambrose Rogers
  264. Jonathan Rogawski (1955-2011)
  265. N.P. Romanov
  266. Arnold Ross (NAMS)
  267. John Barkley Rosser (Wikipedia)
  268. Louis Saalschütz (Wikipedia)
  269. Raphaël Salem
  270. Pierre Samuel (Wikipedia)
  271. Giovanii Sansone
  272. Peter Scherk (1910-1985)
  273. Theodor Schneider (MacTutor)
  274. Lev Genrikhovich Schnirel'mann (translation by Vladimir Drobot)
  275. Arnold Scholz
  276. Lowell Schoenfeld (John Ewing's tribute)
  277. Theodor Schönemann (Wikipedia)
  278. Issai Schur (MacTutor)
  279. 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
  280. Stefan Schwarz (MacTutor)
  281. Sanford (Sandy) Segal (1937-2010)
  282. Beniamino Segre (AA)
  283. Atle Selberg
  284. Sigmund Selberg (Wikipedia)
  285. Clas-Olaf Selenius
  286. John Selfridge (1927-2010)
  287. Joseph Alfred Serret (MacTutor)
  288. 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
  289. Daniel Shanks
  290. Andrei Borisovich Shidlovsky (RMS)
  291. Takuro Shintani (J. Fac. Sci. Tokyo 28 (1981) iii-vi)
  292. Lev Genrikhovich Shnirelman (MacTutor)
  293. Carl Ludwig Siegel
  294. Waclaw Sierpinski
  295. Stanley Skewes (Wikipedia)
  296. Albert Thoralf Skolem
  297. 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)
  298. Henry John Stephen Smith
  299. Robert Arnold Smith (1937-1983) (E. Kani: Rocky Mountain J. 15 (1985) 413-415)
  300. Julius Sommer (Wikipedia)
  301. Vladimir Gennadievich Sprindzuk
  302. Paul Gustav Stäckel (MacTutor)
  303. Sergei Borisovich Stechkin (RMS)
  304. Rosemarie Stemmler (July 27, 1930-July 18, 2011)
  305. Moritz Abraham Stern (MacTutor)
  306. Ludwig Stickelberger (Wikipedia)
  307. Thomas Jan Stieltjes (MacTutor)
  308. Richard G. Stoneham (1920-1996)
  309. Carl Størmer (1874-1957) (Carl Størmer in memoriam, by Viggo Brun, Acta Math. 100, 1958, i-vii)
  310. Walter Wilson Stothers
  311. Ernst Gabor Strauss
  312. Erik Stridsberg (1871-1950)
  313. Matukumalli Venkata Subbarao, 1921-2006 (R. Balasubramanian)
  314. George Szekeres(1911-2005)
  315. Teiji Takagi (MacTutor)
  316. Ralph Tambs-Lyche (Obituary by Ernst S. Selmer, Normat 39 (1991))
  317. Yutaka Taniyama
  318. Olga Taussky-Todd (MacTutor)
  319. Paul Emery Thomas (Berkeley memorial)
  320. Axel Thue
  321. Heinrich Franz Friedrich Tietze (MacTutor)
  322. Nikolai Mikhailovich Timofeev (RMS)
  323. Edward Charles Titchmarsh
  324. Paul Turán
  325. Jerzy Urbanowicz
  326. James Victor Uspensky (1883-1947)
  327. Charles-Joseph de la Vallée Poussin
  328. Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput (AA)
  329. Harry Schultz Vandiver (MacTutor)
  330. Joost van Hamel
  331. Jacobus Hendricus van Lint (MacTutor)
  332. Boris Borisovich Venkov died in Aachen on November 10th, 2011
  333. Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan (JLMS 33 (1958) 252-255)
  334. Askol'd Ivanovich Vinogradov (1929-2005)
  335. Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov
  336. Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (MacTutor)
  337. Karl Georg Christian von Staudt (MacTutor)
  338. Sergei Mikhailovich Voronin (RMS)
  339. Georgy Fedoseevich Voronoi (MacTutor)
  340. Arnold Zel'manovich Walfisz
  341. Edward Waring (MacTutor)
  342. Morgan Ward
  343. George Neville Watson (MacTutor)
  344. George Leo Watson
  345. Heinrich Martin Weber (MacTutor)
  346. André Weil
  347. Alfred Edward Western (JLMS)
  348. Hermann Weyl
  349. Albert Leon Whiteman (NAMS)
  350. Arthur Wieferich
  351. Carl Severin Wigert (Wikipedia)
  352. John Raymond Wilton (Australian dictionary of Biography)
  353. Anders Wiman (Trygve Nagell, Acta Math. 103 (1960) I-VI)
  354. Aurel Friedrich Wintner (MacTutor)
  355. Jan Wójcik (1936-1994) (A. Schinzel, Wiadom. Math. 33 (1997), 199-203)
  356. Joseph Wolstenholme (MacTutor)
  357. Rod Worley died on 24th July 2011
  358. John Wrench Jr.
  359. Sir Edward Maitland Wright
  360. Hans Zassenhaus
  361. Egor Ivanovich Zolotarev

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Last modified 18th June 2013