Brocard – Carathéodory BIOGRAPHIES

Brocard – Carathéodory BIOGRAPHIES

Brocard, Henri (1845–1922) French army officer and meteorologist who discovered the BROCARD POINTS and the BROCARD ANGLE . He also studied ALGEBRAIC CURVES .

Brouwer, L. E. J. (1881–1966) Dutch topologist and logician who was interested in the foundations of mathematics. He is famous for the Brouwer fixed point theorem, a cornerstone of modern topology.

Bruijn, N. G. de (b. 1918) Dutch mathematician who has made important contributions to the study of PERIODIC and APERIODIC TILINGS , geometry, NUMBER THEORY , combinatorics, computer science, mathematical language, and applied mathematics. He has been professor emeritus of the Technological University of Eindhoven since 1984.

Brunelleschi, Filippo (1377–1446) Italian architect and goldsmith who was the first Renaissance artist to use linear PERSPECTIVE . He invented the checkerboard grid as a tool for perspective.

Buffon, Georges (1707–88) French mathematician who studied probability and developed a probabilistic method for computing pi by throwing needles onto a tiled floor and counting how many of them landed on the lines of the tiling.

Calabi, Eugenio (b. 1923) Italian-born American mathematician who studies the DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY of COMPLEX MANIFOLDS . He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is

professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Cantor, Georg (1845–1918) German mathematician who founded SET

THEORY in order to solve some difficult problems in CALCULUS . Set theory is now used as the foundational theory for all of mathematics. He discovered the CANTOR SET , one of the earliest examples of a FRACTAL .

Carathéodory, Constantin (1873–1950) German mathematician of Greek heritage whose mathematical interests were in the CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS and its applications to geometric optics, PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS , and theoretical physics. Carathéodory studied in Germany and then taught in Turkey and Greece before returning to Germany.

Brocard – Carathéodory BIOGRAPHIES

BIOGRAPHIES

Cartan – Cayley

Cartan, Élie (1869–1951) French mathematician who made major contributions to LIE GROUPS , Lie algebras, geometry, DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY , and TOPOLOGY . He collaborated with his son HENRI CARTAN , also a mathematician.

Cartan, Henri (b. 1904) French mathematician who worked in many areas of mathematics including analytic functions, HOMOLOGICAL ALGEBRA , and ALGEBRAIC TOPOLOGY . He is the son of the mathematician ÉLIE CARTAN and has been retired since 1975.

Cassini, Giovanni Domenico (1625–1712) Italian astronomer and hydraulic engineer who studied the curves known today as the OVALS OF CASSINI . He was born in Italy, where he studied astronomy and hydraulics. Invited to France in 1669, he became the director of the Paris Observatory in 1671.

Catalan, Eugène (1814–94) Belgian mathematician who was the first to study the DUALS of the SEMIREGULAR SOLIDS . A student and later professor at the École Polytechnique, he studied continued fractions and NUMBER THEORY and discovered the Catalan numbers while considering dissections of polygons into triangles by nonintersecting diagonals.

Cauchy, Augustin-Louis (1789–1857) French mathematician who made significant contributions to many areas of mathematics and physics, many of which bear his name. He furthered the development of CALCULUS and was a founder of the theory of complex functions.

Cavalieri, Francesco Bonaventura (1598–1647) An Italian Jesuit priest, Cavalieri discovered ways of finding areas and volumes of geometric figures that provided a foundation for the later development of calculus. A friend of Galileo, he was also interested in astronomy.

Cayley, Arthur (1821–95) British algebraist who contributed many tools of great importance to geometry, including coordinates and metrics in PROJECTIVE GEOMETRY and matrices and MATRIX multiplication. Cayley was a founder of LINEAR ALGEBRA and the study of higher-dimensional geometries and the first to write about the OCTONIANS , which are also called the Cayley numbers.

BIOGRAPHIES

Cartan – Cayley