Waclaw Sierpinski
Waclaw Franciszek Sierpinski was born March 14, 1882 in the capital city of Warsaw, Poland. He attended school in Warsaw where his talent for mathematics was quickly spotted by his first mathematics teacher. This was the phase of Russian occupation of Poland and it was a complicated time for the talented Sierpinski to be educated in Poland. The Russians had enforced their language and culture on the people in Poland in sweeping changes to all secondary schools implemented between 1869 and 1874. (websource)The Russian aim was to keep illiteracy in Poland as high as possible, so they discouraged learning and the number of students fell. Then despite all of the hardships Sierpinski was able to finish up his pre college education with out any problems.
Sierpinski then would enter the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Warsaw in 1899. (websource) While at the University of Warsaw, the Department of Mathematics and Physics offered a prize for the best essay from a student on Voronoy's contribution to number theory. Sierpinski was awarded a gold medal for his essay, thus laying the foundation for his first major mathematical contribution. Because he didn't want his work to be published in Russia he waited until 1907 to get his materials published by a mathematics magazine. Once he graduated, he then taught math and physics in Warsaw. Once the school he was working in closed; he then started to pursue a doctorates degree from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He then studied astronomy and philosophy and received his doctorates in 1908. From 1908 to 1914 Sierpinski lectured at the University of Lvov, followed by three years at the University of Moscow. After the end of World War I he returned to the University of Warsaw and spent the rest of his career there. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher.
Two well-known fractals are named after him the Sierpinski triangle and the Sierpinski carpet, as are Sierpinski numbers and the associated Sierpinski problem. The Sierpinski triangle, also called the Sierpinski gasket, is a fractal, named after Sierpinski who described it in1915.Originally constructed as a curve; this is one of the basic examples of self-similar sets. The Sierpinski triangle has Hausdorff dimension log (3)/log (2) ≈ 1.585, which follows from the fact that it is a union of three copies of itself, each scaled by a factor of ½.
While the studies at Governor’s School are noticeably more advanced and require more effort than at regular public schools, I see this rigor as the key to my academic success. For me, the classes I take that constantly introduce new thoughts that test my capability to “think outside the box”, are the ones that capture all my attention and interest. For example, while working with the Sierpinski Triangle at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth geometry camp, I was struck with a strong determination to figure out the secret to the pattern. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the Sierpinski Triangle is “a fractal based on a triangle with four equal triangles inscribed in it. The central triangle is removed and each of the other three treated as the original was, and so on, creating an infinite regression in a finite space.” By constructing a table with the number black and white triangles in each figure, I realized that it was easier to see the relations between the numbers. At Governor’s School, I expect to be provided with stimulating concepts in order to challenge my exceptional thinking.
“He who puts his hand out to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed” -Lech Wałęsa (www.brainyquote.com).
July 9th, 1856 (famousscientists.org). He earned degrees in law and started to practice as an ecclesiastical lawyer. After obtaining his formal degrees, he took private lessons in mathematics and sciences, including chemistry. He later became the professor of mathematic physics at the University of Turin. Unfortunately, that time for him was shortcoming because of political mayhem. He lost his job in 1823. He then was reappointed to his post and retired in 1850, at the age of 74.
Felix Klein’s father was part of the Prussian government. His father was secretary to the head of the government. After Felix Klein graduated from the gymnasium in Düsseldorf, he went to the University of Bonn and studied math and physics from 1865-1866. Before Felix Klein had studied non-Euclidean geometry, he first wanted to be a physicist. While still at the University of Bonn he was appointed to lab assistant to Julius Plücker (Felix Klein German Mathematician). Felix Klein got his doctorate, which was supervised by Plücker. Plücker had interest in geometry, which made Felix Klein start to study geometry. Plücker died a few months after Felix Klein got his doctorate, which left Plücker’s work incomplete, and only one person could finish his work (O’Conner and Robertson). That person would be Felix Klein.
His write books; "Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik " (1876-94, "Lectures on Mathematical Physics") and " Gesammelte Abhandlungen " (1882; supplement, 1891, "Collected Essays").
Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010), scientist and mathematician who also worked at IBM, is known as the father of fractal geometry. Mandelbrot coined the word fractal in the late 1970s. Before the invention of computers, Fractals have come up as an important question. Fractal is a set, which is self–similar under magnification.[27] It is, however, remarked that many of the fractals and their similes go back to traditional mathematics and mathematicians of the past like George Cantor(1872), Giuseppe Peano(1890), David Hilbert(1891), HelgeVon Koch(1904), Waclaw Sierpinski(1916), Gaston Julia (1918), Felix Hausdorff (1919) and others.
His Notable awards are the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921, which is an award that is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish academy of sciences, it is one of five Nobel awards the other four are in chemistry, literature, peace, and physiology, another award is the Metteucci Medal 1921, which is an Italian award for physicists, it was created to award physicists for fundamental contributions, the Copley Medal 1925, is a scientific award given by the royal society for outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science, the Max Planck Medal 1929, is the highest award for German society it is recognized for extra ordinary achievements in theory physics, the Time Person of the Century 1999, is recognized for being the 20th century’s 100 most influenced people.
She ended up passing her work on to this russian guy named Yuri Matiyasevich. He was a prodigy for math. He won many awards and also used Hilbert’s tenth problem to figure out more of the problem and
His pursuit of knowledge became even more important when he entered the university of Ingolstadt. He "read with ardour" (35) and soon become "so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of the morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory" (35). He was a proud product of the Enlightenment...
Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. He spent most of his childhood in and around London, and was always a bit of a self-educator. He was interested in the stars, and his family used to lie out on the grass looking at the stars. His writing was appalling, and he was one of the only people at school to be issued with a copybook. He was never really good with his hands, and gave the impression of nervousness, being lanky and awkward in movement. Stephen Hawking wanted to study mathematics and physics in a university, but his father believed that there would not be any jobs in mathematics and thus Hawking took physics and chemistry, and only a bit of math.
Maria was born on Warsaw. For her to study she had to go to Paris to study physics and
In 1812, he began his formal education at Trinity College and the University of Cambridge where he discovered his ability and interest in mathematics history. During that same year, he helped found the Analytical Society, whose object was to introduce developments from the European continent into English mathematics. He graduated from Peterhouse in 1814. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1816 and was active in the founding of the Royal Astronomical and the Statistical societies. He received his Masters in 1817 and began working as a mathematician, concentrating in calculating functions. It was his work with these complex calculations that led him to his most significant inventions: The Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. By previous standards, these engines were monumental in conception, size, and complexity.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was born April 30, 1777 in Brunswick, Germany to a stern father and a loving mother. At a young age, his mother sensed how intelligent her son was and insisted on sending him to school to develop even though his dad displayed much resistance to the idea. The first test of Gauss’ brilliance was at age ten in his arithmetic class when the teacher asked the students to find the sum of all whole numbers 1 to 100. In his mind, Gauss was able to connect that 1+100=101, 2+99=101, and so on, deducing that all 50 pairs of numbers would equal 101. By this logic all Gauss had to do was multiply 50 by 101 and get his answer of 5,050. Gauss was bound to the mathematics field when at the age of 14, Gauss met the Duke of Brunswick. The duke was so astounded by Gauss’ photographic memory that he financially supported him through his studies at Caroline College and other universities afterwards. A major feat that Gauss had while he was enrolled college helped him decide that he wanted to focus on studying mathematics as opposed to languages. Besides his life of math, Gauss also had six children, three with Johanna Osthoff and three with his first deceased wife’s best fri...
It is constructed by taking an equilateral triangle, and after many iterations of adding smaller triangles to increasingly smaller sizes, resulting in a "snowflake" pattern, sometimes called the von Koch snowflake. The theoretical result of multiple iterations is the creation of a finite area with an infinite perimeter, meaning the dimension is incomprehensible. Fractals, before that word was coined, were simply considered above mathematical understanding, until experiments were done in the 1970's by Benoit Mandelbrot, the "father of fractal geometry". Mandelbrot developed a method that treated fractals as a part of standard Euclidean geometry, with the dimension of a fractal being an exponent. Fractals pack an infinity into "a grain of sand".
He also as a young boy about in primary school had many amazing intellectual breakthroughs, at least for a young boy of his age, such as when his teacher, Mr. Buttner, in order to punish him for miss behaving gave him an assignment that he figured would take up most of the class. His assignment was to add up all the numbers on to one-hundred on his slate in arithmetic prog...