Famous Mathematicians Through Time

1. Archimedes of Syracuse

1.1. Archimedes is universally acknowledged to be the greatest of ancient mathematicians. He studied at Euclid's school (probably after Euclid's death), but his work far surpassed the works of Euclid. His achievements are particularly impressive given the lack of good mathematical notation in his day.

2. Euclid of Megara & Alexandria

2.1. Euclid may have been a student of Aristotle. He founded the school of mathematics at the great university of Alexandria. He was the first to prove that there are infinitely many prime numbers; he stated and proved the unique factorization theorem; and he devised Euclid's algorithm for computing gcd. He introduced the Mersenne primes and observed that (M2+M)/2 is always perfect (in the sense of Pythagoras) if M is Mersenne.