Fuller, Buckminster (1895–1983) American engineer and inventor who made extensive use of geometry in his work, which

Fuller, Buckminster (1895–1983) American engineer and inventor who made extensive use of geometry in his work, which

included the development of the GEODESIC DOME . Galois, Évariste (1811–32) French algebraist who was the first to

formalize the concept of SYMMETRY in terms of a GROUP of TRANSFORMATIONS . He was killed in a duel at the age of 20.

Garfield, James (1831–81) The 20th president of the United States. While a congressman in 1876, he found a new proof of the Pythagorean theorem that was based on the construction of a trapezoid containing a right triangle.

Gauss, Carl Friedrich (1777–1855) German mathematician who made great contributions to all areas of mathematics and was the

most commanding figure of 19th-century mathematics. He helped found DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY with his understanding of CURVATURE and GEODESICS . Independently of Lobachevsky and Bolyai, he discovered NON - EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY . Gauss gave the first proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, which states that any polynomial equation with complex coefficients has a complex root.

Gelfand, Israil Moiseevic (b. 1913) Ukrainian mathematician who has been interested in functional analysis, algebra, and DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS , as well as applications of mathematics to cell biology. He immigrated to the United

States in 1990 and received a MacArthur fellowship in 1994. Carl Friedrich Gauss He is now professor of mathematical methods in biology at (The Granger Collection, New Moscow State University. York)

Gergonne, Joseph Diaz (1771–1859) French military officer who devoted his life to mathematics. He gave an elegant solution to

the PROBLEM OF APOLLONIUS and, along with PONCELET , discovered the principle of DUALITY in PROJECTIVE GEOMETRY . The GERGONNE POINT and GERGONNE TRIANGLE are named after him.

Fuller – Gergonne BIOGRAPHIES

BIOGRAPHIES

Gibbs – Grothendieck

Gibbs, Josiah Willard (1839–1903) American physicist who made major contributions to thermodynamics, celestial mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. To further his work in physics, he developed vector calculus. He received the first doctorate in engineering to be awarded in the United States.

Girard, Albert (1595–1632) French-born Dutch mathematician and engineer who wrote a treatise on TRIGONOMETRY that

introduced the abbreviations sin, cos, and tan. He computed formulas for the area of a SPHERICAL TRIANGLE .

Gordon, Carolyn (b. 1950) American mathematician who works in RIEMANN GEOMETRY and LIE GROUPS . In 1991, she helped to construct two different drums that sound the same when struck. She is professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College and past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Graham, Ronald (b. 1935) American mathematician who has made significant contributions to combinatorics, GRAPH THEORY , NUMBER THEORY , COMBINATORIAL GEOMETRY , and the theory of algorithms. He received his doctorate from University of California at Berkeley and is now chief scientist at the

California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology at the University of California at San Diego.

Grassmann, Hermann Günther (1809–77) German schoolteacher and scholar who received recognition for his mathematical work

only after his death. His mathematical innovations included recursion, VECTOR SPACES , INNER PRODUCTS , and HIGHER - DIMENSIONAL geometry.

Grothendieck, Alexander (b. 1928) German-born French mathematician who made fundamental contributions to

ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY , TOPOLOGY , and abstract algebra. As a child he was taken by his mother from Germany to France,

where he was able to receive an education during World War