Evolution of Mathematics as a Universal Language

Evolution of Mathematics

as a Universal

Language

Hi friends,

This is my first blog on this site.

This blog is not quite mathematical, it just traces the vibrant history of a 'language  that has explored and still exploring darkest corners of human wisdom'.

Mathematics as a subject is known to man from the beginning of civilization.

"Common Sense" is the seed of Mathematics. It's when human race realised that every step of development requires common sense and logic which ultimately led to the growth of Mathematics.

Reports by many historians show that counting was known to early man even when they were living in caves.

India was one of the early contributors to the Preliminary Mathematics along with Egyptians and Chinese. But later due to the trade ties that existed between Indians and Arabs as well as Chinese and Arabs, early works in Mathematics spread to Middle East and Europe.

The Indian Mathematicians who lived then named art of counting as "Bijaganitham", which later became Algebra, thanks to the Arabs.

The art of counting wouldn't have been possible if there was no '0' and it's invention is credited to Brahmagupta, an Indian Mathematician.

The value of 'pi' was also calculated by another Indian Mathematician and Astronomer Aryabhatta who also proved that Earth is round and calculated it's Circumference along with occurrences of Eclipses.

During the same period Mathematics was developing with the same pace in Greece and surrounding places.

The Greek Mathematicians however concentrated more on Geometry, foundations of it was laid down by Euclid who is considered as "Father of Geometry".

The type of Geometry which was started by him was called as "Euclidean Geometry".

Famous Greek Mathematicians who contributed to Euclidean Geometry were Archimides(287 BC-212 BC) who calculated 'pie' value and was also instrumental in developing Archimides Principle.

Thales (624 BC- 546 BC) who is well known for developing Similarity of Triangles concept and Thales Theorem.

Pythagoras (570 BC-495 BC) who is well known for developing Pythagoras Theorem.

 Their exceptional knowledge in Euclidean geometry allowed them to contribute heavily in geometric optics also.

Egyptians and Romans also proved that they were not behind anyone with some very important contributions.

As time passed, Mathematics snailed  on with changing civilization.

Not many inventions happened in the period between 1st Century till 12th-13th Century. That's when Science started to develop exponentially and due to that many developments started coming up in Mathematics too.

These developments were hugely concentrated in Europe as that was the period of Renaissance and the birth of "Illuminati"(a group consisting of scholarly people) who questioned all false beliefs.

This sect wanted proofs to disprove the false beliefs which were imposed on people, so they resorted to Mathematics for a solution. That's when major breakthroughs happened in this field.

Mathematics and Science grew parallely and exponentially ever since.

Science was never possible without Mathematics which is why it's called as a tool of communication of Science or Language of Science.

Mathematicians like Newton,Laplace,Jacobi,Euler and Gauss made great contributions and took Mathematics to unscalable heights. This was the period when new branches in Mathematics developed like Co-Ordinate Geometry, Calculus,Cryptography,Topology etc.. This rapid progress in the subject  pushed it way ahead into the future.

This brought a whole new dimension to the way humans lived on this planet. These Rapid Developments fuelled the growth of Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Medical Science, Economics, Architecture and various other fields that our life is either directly or indirectly related.

Isaac Newton(1642-1726) was one of the most important figure in this field at that time. Eventhough he's renowned around the world for his apple and gravitational laws, his contribution in Mathematics is unmatched. He developed Calculus, "the study of change" which has reshaped the human evolution.

Leonhard Euler(1707-1783) is considered as the greatest mathematician of all time. His contributions are not limited to a particular field/fields. There's hardly any topic in Mathematics in which his name doesn't come. Euler in his life time  has published more papers than anyone else in Mathematics.

Carl Gustav Jacobi(1804-1851) was one of the elite Mathematicians of this period.

He made significant contributions in elliptic functions, differential equations etc...

When you look back at the history of Mathematics, Jacobi and Euler are placed on the same level. The common phrase: "Like Jacobi and Euler" became popular.

Jacobi has left behind a legacy which is still inspirational for many of them in this field.

Carl Friedrich Gauss(1777-1855) is considered as "The Prince of Mathematics".

Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians along with Leonhard Euler.

That was an overview of Mathematics of the Medieval Period. 

By the late 19th and early 20th Century, Mathematicians began working in partnership.

This was the period of great collaborations like Hardy-Littlewood, Hardy-Ramanujan to name a few.

These collaborations gave astonishing and quick results. The trend continued in Science also like the famous Bose-Einstein collaboration.

This was the period of fast computing and birth of machines and the idea of artificial intelligence was 'floating' in the air. So mathematics was integrated with these fields to start a whole new chapter in human advancement.

Mathematicians like Alan Turing, Srinivasa Ramanujan, G H Hardy, Paul Erdos added lot of value to the never ending development of Mathematics.

Alan Turing(1912-1954) was a computer scientist and a mathematician who is considered as "Father of Artificial Intelligence" and was one of the first men to integrate Mathematics with Computer Science.

He's very famous for decoding German messages through Enigma code.

Srinivasa Ramanujan(1887-1920) was one of the greatest Indian Mathematicians. With no formal education in Mathematics, he was an absolute prodigy. He proved already existing theorems and found out new theorems on his own. Today many of his findings are still  not proved and remains as an area for further research. The famous British Mathematician 

G H Hardy once said about Ramanujan that

he can be compared only with Euler or Jacobi.

G H Hardy(1877-1947) was a British Mathematician known for his achievements in Number theory and Mathematical Analysis.

His collaboration with Ramanujan and Littlewood brought new insights about Prime Numbers and it's distribution and also about Partition of Numbers.

G H Hardy later on in his life said that his greatest discovery was finding Ramanujan.

Paul Erdos(1913-1996) was one of the most prolific Mathematicians of 20th Century. He has collaborated with the most number of mathematicians in the history of Mathematics.He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came only hours after solving a geometry problem in a conference in Warsaw.

The Time magazine called him as "The Oddball's Oddball".

So Finally into the 21st Century, that's the modern period of Mathematics and still it's no different from its past glory years.

It's still vibrant and rich with lot of new innovations every day and its still very much ahead of its time.

The turn of Century saw lot of recognised Mathematical Competitions like International Mathematics Olympiad and Putnam Competition which produced great Mathematicians of present time like Grigori Perelman, Terence Tao, Manjul Bargava, Sir Andrew Wiles and Maryam Mirzakhani to name a few.

Grigori Perelman(1966- ), the Russian Mathematician who's considered as one of the modern greats in Mathematics. He is a gold medalist with a perfect score in International Mathematics Olympiad for Soviet Union.

He solved the Poincaré Conjecture which is one of the seven greatest unsolved Millennium problems listed by Clay Institute. So far it's the only solved problem from the list of seven unsolved problems.

Unlike many, he doesn't like to get the spotlight for his achievements.

He went on to decline many awards which includes Field's Medal, the most coveted prize in Mathematics. Eventhough he declined awards for his achievements, he's still a source of inspiration for all modern day Mathematics geeks.

Terence Tao (1975- ) is an Australian-American Mathematician who primarily works in partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, analytical number theory etc.. A child prodigy, who won Gold, Silver, Bronze medals for Australia in International Mathematics Olympiad before turning 14. He has collaborated with Ben Green and proved Green-Tao theorem on arbitrarily long arithmetic progression of prime numbers.

For his contributions, he was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006.

Currently working at UCLA as Professor in Mathematics department.

Sir Andrew Wiles(1953- ) is an English Mathematician who's widely considered as one of the greatest Mathematicians of modern period. As a child he grew his interest in Mathematics when he saw a book about Fermat's Last theorem in a library which was then unproved. 

He made up his mind that one day he would prove it and took it as a challenge.

After he completed his graduation, In complete isolation, he spent seven years proving Fermat's Last Theorem and he succeeded in it. Fermat's Last theorem is considered as one of the toughest problems ever in Mathematics. 

However, as his age was more than 40 years when he proved Fermat's Last Theorem, he couldn't get Fields Medal but a special silver plate was given by Mathematical Union for his achievement.

Some of his students went on to win Fields Medal like Manjul Bhargava.

The glories of Mathematics are never ending it's like a river which is flowing endlessly and ultimately joining the ocean of knowledge. Mathematics was created by the "absolute faith" and it was perceived by the consciousness of human race and now they r using it as the language to contact and understand the so called "absolute faith". So Mathematics is immortal, it always existed and never seizes to exist.