Interesting Stories about mathematicians and mathematics

Isaac Newton (1643—1727)

Some people said Newton was the greatest physicist and Einstein was the smartest physicist in human history, but many mathematicians disagreed.  The reason was: there was no physics (the subject) at that time, so Newton should be the greatest mathematician instead.

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777—1855)

Gauss was one of the greatest mathematicians in human history.  He was born in a poor family in Germany.  His talent in mathematics was showed when he was less than 3 year old.  One day, his father was calculating the wages for his workers and it took a while for him to get the answers.  Little Gauss told his father that the answers were wrong and told him the way how he should calculate.  His father re-calculated and found Gauss was correct.  The amazing part was there was no one taught Gauss how to calculate, he just listened and learnt.

When he was in elementary school, one day his teacher gave the class a problem to solve:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + .......... + 98 + 99 + 100 ＝ ?

As soon as the teacher had told the question, Gauss wrote down the correct answer 5050 on his stone board (Do you know the way to find it out?).  All other students could not get the right answer and Gauss was the only one who could solve the problem.  Gauss was a prodigy in mathematics, just like Mozart in music. 

Pierre de Fermat (1601—1665)

The greatest 'amateur' mathematician, Fermat was a lawyer in career.  He had great contributions to calculus, number theory, analytic geometry, probability, and optics.  One of his famous theorems is Fermat's Last Theorem, which states that:

The equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ has no solution for all integer n > 2 and for all non-zero integers a, b, and c.

When n =2, it is the Pythagoras' theorem where we can find integers to fit the equation a² + b² = c².  For example 3² + 4² = 5². However, Fermat believed that there would be no solution for all integer n > 2.

This theorem had interested mathematicians for more than 300 years as the proof was not found from Fermat although he claimed he had proven it in 1637.  It was finally proven by a British mathematician Andrew John Wiles in 1995.