Mathematics History II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gauss

German mathematician Carl Friederich Gauss said this famous quote. A number of other prominent mathematicians believe so, too.

Gauss is widely regarded as the greatest mathematician to have lived.

Many top mathematicians enjoy working on ideas like Number Theory that seem to have no relevance to our daily life.

Answer: Konigsberg

The Bridges of Konigsberg is a well-known problem in mathematics.

In a complicated circuit of bridges, rivers, and islands, is it possible make a tour of the town returning to the original point with crossing each bridge only once? That was the question that Swiss mathematician Euler answered and proved.

Konigsberg is located on the River Pregel in Germany.

Graph theory is only one of the many fields that the great Euler researched in. His research interests ranged from Number Theory to Analysis to even Physics and Music. He was certainly one of the greatest and most prolific polymaths ever.

Answer: Godel

Godel's Completeness Theorem forms the basis of a number of advanced mathematical topics. It is especially important in the world of calculus and analysis.

Kurt Godel was an Austrian mathematician whose prime interests were on logic and philosophy.

Like many other mathematicians Godel had a curious end to his life. As he became older, he became more and more paranoid to the point that it killed him. He would wear warm, winter clothing in the middle of summer. In the middle of winter, he would leave all of the windows open in his home because he believed that conspirators were trying to assassinate him with poison gas. He wouldn't eat food cooked by anyone but his wife (not even himself), and when he was ill he wouldn't go to doctors since he mistrusted them. When his wife became incapacitated due to illness Godel died of starvation weighing only 65 pounds.

However, the legacy he left behind is simply amazing.

Answer: Selberg

Atle Selberg is one of the greatest mathematicians to have lived. His name is placed alongside greats like Gauss, Euler, Riemann, etc.

Due to his extensive research, which he usually kept to himself, he is known to say things like, "I have already solved that 40 years ago!", at the end of lectures by other mathematicians.

He is also the oldest living Fields medallist today, despite being exceptionally young when he received the award. Truly a great genius.

Answer: "Collaborative Distance" between him/her and Erdos

Erdos had the habit of publishing several co-authored papers. He was so prolific that almost every mathematician has published a paper that is directly or indirectly linked to him.

The formal definition of Erdos Number is:
"In order to be assigned an Erdős number, an author must co-write a mathematical paper with an author with a finite Erdős number. Paul Erdős has an Erdős number of zero. If the lowest Erdős number of a coauthor is X, then the author's Erdős number is X + 1."

However, because he recently passed away, the maximum Erdos any young mathematician can possibly receive is 2.

Answer: Perelman

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians younger than 40. It is considered as the Nobel prize for mathematics (incidentally Alfred Nobel clearly refused to give a prize to mathematicians due to a quarrel with a mathematician who allegedly courted his wife!).
This time around, there were supposed to four winners of the Fields Medal, of which 40-year-old Russian genius Grigory Perelman was one of them. After proving an important hypothesis involving a famous problem called the Poincare Conjecture, Perelman insisted that the greatest reward was recognition for proof and that he needed no medal.

Another winner this time around, Terence Tao, is a name you might want to remember for he is perhaps one of the greatest, brightest mathematicians alive today. Currently he teaches at the UCLA.

Answer: Godel

Godel wrote both the Completeness and the Incompleteness Theorems. The latter shows the fallibility of mathematics and I strongly encourage you to read more about it. Visit :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorem

Answer: Gauss

It's Gauss. Many claim that he was the greatest mathematician to have lived; he certainly worked in numerous fields of mathematics.

His theorem of Quadratic Reciprocity was published and proven in Disquisitiones Arithmeticae along with many of his other assertions.

Answer: Grothendieck

French mathematician and Fields medallist Alexander Grothendieck is one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century; the significance of his work is enormous. He has done significant research on algebraic geometry, homological algebra, and functional analysis.
He has had a rather curious end to his career, though, and many attribute it to his supposed belief that the mathematical brain becomes useless after the age of 40. Many other mathematicians share this belief and that is perhaps one of the reasons why the Fields Medal is never awarded to people over 40.
However, don't forget other mathematicians, and the great Euler (or even Selberg) comes to mind rightaway, who have worked well beyond their "prime". It is interesting that even though Euler was blind and well-beyond 70, he continued to publish papers at a faster rate than when he was younger.

Answer: Gregory

Contrary to popular belief (that gives either Newton or Leibniz the credit), seventeenth-century Scottish astronomer and mathematician James Gregory was the first to publish a proof of this crucial theorem.

It is also interesting that a very useful infinite series namely the Taylor series should also be attributed to him and not Taylor himself.

However, most of Gregory's work was done in the field of astronomy, and was one of the first to use mathematics extensively to plot stellar objects.

Such is the importance of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus that without it almost all calculus would be redundant.