John Napier

1550 – 1617
Scottish

• Born in Merchiston Castle,

Edinburgh
• Father of Logarithm

• Invented the first system of

logarithms, described in his book
“Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis
Descriptio” (1614).
 John Napier
• Improved the decimal notation
and was the first who used and
popularized the decimal point
to separate the whole number
part from the fractional part of
a number
 John Napier
• Invented the “Napier’s Bones”
~A form of rod by which two numbers can
be multiplied in a mechanical way.
Napier’s Bones
Napier’s Bones
 Father Marin Mersenne
1588 – 1648
French

• Jesuit-educated and a friar of

the Order of Minims
• Held the earliest-noted
instance of a regular gathering
of mathematicians

• Discovered the Mersenne primes

René Descartes
1596 – 1650
French
• Born in La Haye en Touraine,
Kingdom of France
• Father of Modern Philosophy
• Published “Discours de la
méthode” (“Discourse on
Method”, 1937), contained
three appendices: La
dioptrique, Les météories,
and La géométrie
René Descartes
• Father of
Analytic Geometry
• Father of
Modern Mathematics
 Descartes: La Géométrie
• Invention of the superscript
notation for showing powers or
exponents
• Founded Analytical Geometry or
Cartesian Geometry
• Described the Cartesian system
and introduced what has become
known as the standard algebraic
notation
Cartesian Coordinate System
Cartesian Coordinate System
Cartesian Coordinate System
Cartesian Coordinate System
 Descartes: Discours de la Méthode
• Showed how to use
developments in algebra
since the Renaissance to
investigate the geometry
of curves. Descartes
maintained that an
acceptable curve is one
that can be expressed by
a unique algebraic
equation in x and y.
René Descartes
I think,
therefore
I am.
Pierre de Fermat
1601 – 1665
French
• Born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne

• Father of modern theory

• Was inspired by Diophantus’

“Arithmetica”
 Pierre de Fermat
• Two-Square Theorem • Little Theorem
“If p is a prime, then

is divisible by p for any

integer a.”
Fermat’s Famous Last Theorem

n>2
 Blaise Pascal
1623 – 1662
French

• Born in Clermont-Ferrand
• Formulated one of the basic
theorems in geometry,
known as “Pascal’s Mystic
Hexagon Theorem” described
on his “Essai pour les
coniques” (1639).
Pascal’s Mystic Hexagon Theorem
 Pascal: Pascaline
• In 1642, he invented the first functional
mechanical calculating machine, known as
“Pascaline”, able to perform additions and
subtractions.
 Pascal’s Triangle
• A convenient tabular
presentation of
binomial coefficient,
where each number
is the sum of the two
numbers directly
above
Pascal’s Triangle
 Pascal: Mathematical Theory of
Probability
• This was the idea of equally probable
outcomes, that the probability of something
occurring could be computed by enumerating
the number of equally likely ways it would
occur, and dividing this by the total number of
possible outcomes of the given situation. This
allowed the use of fractions and ratios in the
calculation of the likelihood of events, and the
operation of multiplication and addition on
these fractional probabilities.