1288-1344
Levi ben Gershon
Provence
Levi ben Gershon was Jewish mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher. He worked on combinatorics, harmonic numbers, astronomy, and an instrument for measuring angular separation.
Documented historical recordMath Adventures
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Showing 91–108 of 244 matching heroes.
1839-1903
Josiah Willard Gibbs
United States
Josiah Willard Gibbs was mathematical physicist. He founded chemical thermodynamics and helped develop vector analysis and statistical mechanics.
Documented historical record1928-2021
Gloria Ford Gilmer
United States
Gloria Ford Gilmer was mathematician and ethnomathematics researcher. She studied mathematical thinking in everyday cultural practices and worked to broaden participation in mathematics education.
Documented historical record1924-2023
Evelyn Boyd Granville
United States
Evelyn Boyd Granville was mathematician, programmer, and educator. She worked on orbital calculations and computer programming for space projects and later strengthened mathematics education.
Documented historical record1928-2014
Alexander Grothendieck
France
Alexander Grothendieck was mathematician. He rebuilt algebraic geometry using schemes, categories, sheaves, and cohomology.
Documented historical record1562-1633
Xu Guangqi
China
Xu Guangqi was scholar, administrator, and agricultural writer. He collaborated with Matteo Ricci on the first Chinese translation of portions of Euclid’s Elements.
Documented historical record1906-1978
Kurt Gödel
Austria and the United States
Kurt Gödel was logician and mathematician. His incompleteness theorems showed limits on what sufficiently strong formal systems can prove about themselves.
Documented historical record1805-1865
William Rowan Hamilton
Ireland
William Rowan Hamilton was mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He created quaternions and reformulated mechanics through characteristic functions and energy.
Documented historical record1877-1947
G. H. Hardy
England
G. H. Hardy was mathematician. He contributed to analysis and number theory and collaborated extensively with J. E. Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Documented historical record1923-1983
Harish-Chandra
India and the United States
Harish-Chandra was mathematician and physicist. He transformed representation theory for Lie groups and connected it with harmonic analysis.
Documented historical record1890-1980
Euphemia Lofton Haynes
United States
Euphemia Lofton Haynes was mathematician, educator, and civic leader. She became the first African American woman known to earn a doctorate in mathematics and worked for equitable schooling.
Documented historical record1850-1925
Oliver Heaviside
England
Oliver Heaviside was self-taught mathematician and electrical theorist. He reformulated Maxwell’s equations with vector methods and developed operational techniques for circuit problems.
Documented historical record78-139
Zhang Heng
China
Zhang Heng was astronomer, engineer, and mathematician. He worked on celestial models, instruments, calendar questions, and approximations involving pi.
Documented historical recordc. 10-c. 70 CE
Hero of Alexandria
Alexandria, Egypt
Hero of Alexandria was engineer and mathematician. He wrote on measurement, mechanics, surveying, and devices powered by air, water, and steam.
Documented historical recordBiblical era; date uncertainFeatured
King Hezekiah
Jerusalem and ancient Judah
Hezekiah is associated with water engineering, fortified-city planning, storehouses, and organized distributions. Those projects required distance, slope, capacity, inventory, and scheduling.
Direct biblical text with mathematical inference1862-1943
David Hilbert
Germany
David Hilbert was mathematician. He influenced geometry, algebra, analysis, mathematical physics, and foundations through problems and axiomatic methods.
Documented historical recordc. 190-c. 120 BCE
Hipparchus
Nicaea and Rhodes
Hipparchus was astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He developed chord tables for astronomy and is often linked with the foundations of trigonometry.
Documented historical recordc. 470-c. 410 BCE
Hippocrates of Chios
Chios and Athens
Hippocrates of Chios was Greek geometer. He studied geometric constructions and the areas of lunes, early work toward comparing curved regions.
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