By Jen Breitegan‍ Stephen Hawking is considered one of the greatest theoretical physicists of our time. His work changed our understanding of the universe and black holes.‍ Hawking published best-selling books that made difficult theoretical concepts easy to understand. He earned thirteen honorary degrees and many awards, including the U.S…

By Jen Breitegan Helen Adams Keller was born June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small town in northwestern Alabama on the Tennessee River. When she was 18 months old, Keller developed a very high fever that lasted for several days that left her deaf and blind. Over the next few…

By Jen Breitegan‍ Giuseppe Peano was a brilliant and multi-talented Italian mathematician, professor, and scholar. While his contributions to math were plentiful, he did have a personality quirk that upset some of his peers. He liked to publicly point out their mistakes. Harshly, at times.‍ The history of math is…

By Jen Breitegan‍ Lorenzo Mascheroni was an 18th-century Italian mathematician best-known for his work in geometry. Interestingly, one of his biggest claims to fame, the Mascheroni Theorem, was a discovery that should not have been credited to him at all.‍ The reason? Georg Mohr, a Danish mathematician, proved the same…

By Jen Breitegan‍ Eudoxus of Cnidus (pronounced Ny-dus) was a Greek mathematician who lived in Asia Minor from 390–337 BCE. His work, called Method of Exhaustion, is regarded by modern mathematicians to be the forerunner of calculus today.‍ This distinction contradicts assumptions that were held for many years about who…

By Jen Breitegan‍ Diophantus was a Hellenistic Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt from ca. 201–285.‍ Diophantus is often referred to as the “father of algebra.” …

By Jen Breitegan‍ Christian Goldbach was an 18th-century Russian mathematician. He famously postulated that every integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of three prime numbers.‍ Goldbach’s claim, first proposed in 1742 (and known today as the Goldbach conjecture), has been widely considered true for centuries. However…

By Ashley Langham‍ Eratosthenes was a Greek scientist, writer, astronomer, mathematician, and poet. Little of his life is known. Though he made two significant findings in mathematics. With only a two percent error, he was able to find the circumference of the Earth. And, through his own methodology, he was…

By Ashley Langham‍ Archimedes was a Grecian mathematician, who was more famous for his mechanical inventions than his mathematical skills, during his time; yet, he was extremely skilled and enthralled with the study of geometry. He was also a skilled physicist, engineer, and astronomer.‍ He had many achievements in mathematics…