Famous Mathematicians

Dr James Grime takes an Enigma machine in to schools. Here he describes how the code-breaking work of Turing and his contemporaries helped to win the war.

Florence Nightingale may be well known for her role as a nurse, but she was also an excellent mathematician, collecting and analysing data to help improve hospital conditions.

Find out about Emmy Noether, whose ideas linked physics and algebra, and whom Einstein described as a 'creative mathematical genius'.

Read about Ada Lovelace, one of the pioneers of computer programming.

Read about David Hilbert who proved that any polygon could be cut up into a certain number of pieces that could be put back together to form any other polygon of equal area.

What would you do if your teacher asked you add all the numbers from 1 to 100? Find out how Carl Gauss responded when he was asked to do just that.

This short article gives an outline of the origins of Morse code and its inventor and how the frequency of letters is reflected in the code they were given.