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TECHNICAL LAB REPORT

ON
MATHEMATICS AND
MATHEMATICIANS
BY
SAPTARSHI SENGUPTA
EE(2ND YR)-A-50
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
This is to certify that the technical lab report
submitted by SAPTARSHI SENGUPTA of 2nd year
EE-A-50 has been successfully approved as
creditable and has been presented in a
satisfactorily manner to narrate its acceptance as a
prerequisite to the topic which has been discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Mathematics was used by God in creating
the universe .It is said that God has
written the world in the language of
mathematics. Man has just discovered the
rules by which God has created the
universe. These rules mostly comprise of
numbers ,formulas ,equations
,inequations and identities. These things
together form the game called
mathematics. Even brushing a teeth needs
a certain angle at which the brush has to
be driven ,maths exists in every aspects of
life ,knowingly or unknowingly.
MATHEMATICS BEFORE ISAAC NEWTON
Mathematics in india
The Indians were also responsible for another hugely important development in
mathematics. The earliest recorded usage of a circle character for the number zero
is usually attributed to a 9th Century engraving in a temple in Gwalior in central India.
But the brilliant conceptual leap to include zero as a number in its own right (rather
than merely as a placeholder, a blank or empty space within a number, as it had
been treated until that time) is usually credited to the 7th Century Indian
mathematicians Brahmagupta - or possibly another Indian, Bhaskara I - even though
it may well have been in practical use for centuries before that. The use of zero as a
number which could be used in calculations and mathematical investigations, would
revolutionize mathematics.

Brahmagupta established the basic mathematical rules for dealing with zero: 1 + 0 =
1; 1 - 0 = 1; and 1 x 0 = 0 (the breakthrough which would make sense of the
apparently non-sensical operation 1 ÷ 0 would also fall to an Indian, the 12th Century
mathematician Bhaskara II). Brahmagupta also established rules for dealing with
negative numbers, and pointed out that quadratic equations could in theory have two
possible solutions, one of which could be negative. He even attempted to write down
these rather abstract concepts, using the initials of the names of colours to represent
unknowns in his equations, one of the earliest intimations of what we now know as
algebra.

The so-called Golden Age of Indian mathematics can be said to extend from the 5th
to 12th Centuries, and many of its mathematical discoveries predated similar
discoveries in the West by several centuries, which has led to some claims of
plagiarism by later European mathematicians, at least some of whom were probably
aware of the earlier Indian work. Certainly, it seems that Indian contributions to
mathematics have not been given due acknowledgement until very recently in
modern history.

As early as the 6th Century CE, the great Indian mathematician and astronomer
Aryabhata produced categorical definitions of sine, cosine, versine and inverse sine,
and specified complete sine and versine tables, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to
an accuracy of 4 decimal places. Aryabhata also demonstrated solutions to
simultaneous quadratic equations, and produced an approximation for the value
of π equivalent to 3.1416, correct to four decimal places. He used this to estimate the
circumference of the Earth, arriving at a figure of 24,835 miles, only 70 miles off its
true value. But, perhaps even more astonishing, he seems to have been aware
that π is an irrational number, and that any calculation can only ever be an
approximation, something not proved in Europe until 1761.
Euclid(Father of Geometry)
Euclid is often referred to as the “Father of Geometry”, and he wrote perhaps the most
important and successful mathematical textbook of all time, the “Stoicheion” or “Elements”,
which represents the culmination of the mathematical revolution which had taken place in
Greece up to that time. He also wrote works on the division of geometrical figures into into
parts in given ratios, on catoptrics (the mathematical theory of mirrors and reflection), and on
spherical astronomy (the determination of the location of objects on the "celestial sphere"),
as well as important texts on optics and music .

Among many other mathematical gems, the thirteen volumes of the “Elements”
contain formulas for calculating the volumes of solids such as cones, pyramids and
cylinders; proofs about geometric series, perfect numbers and primes; algorithms for
finding the greatest common divisor and least common multiple of two numbers; a
proof and generalization of Pythagoras’ Theorem, and proof that there are an infinite
number of Pythagorean Triples; and a final definitive proof that there can be only five
possible regular Platonic Solids.

However, the “Elements” also includes a series of theorems on the properties of

numbers and integers, marking the first real beginnings of number theory. For
example, Euclid proved what has become known as the Fundamental Theorem of
Arithmethic (or the Unique Factorization Theorem), that every positive integer
greater than 1 can be written as a product of prime numbers (or is itself a prime
number). Thus, for example: 21 = 3 x 7; 113 = 1 x 113; 1,200 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 5 x
5; 6,936 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 17 x 17; etc. His proof was the first known example of a
proof by contradiction (where any counter-example, which would otherwise prove an
idea false, is shown to makes no logical sense itself).

He was the first to realize - and prove - that there are infinitely many prime numbers.
The basis of his proof, often known as Euclid’s Theorem, is that, for any given (finite)
set of primes, if you multiply all of them together and then add one, then a new prime
has been added to the set (for example, 2 x 3 x 5 = 30, and 30 + 1 = 31, a prime
number) a process which can be repeated indefinitel
PIERRE DE FERMAT
Another Frenchman of the 17th Century, Pierre de Fermat, effectively invented
modern number theory virtually single-handedly, despite being a small-town amateur
mathematician. Stimulated and inspired by the “Arithmetica” of
the Hellenistic mathematician Diophantus, he went on to discover several new
patterns in numbers which had defeated mathematicians for centuries, and
throughout his life he devised a wide range of conjectures and theorems. He is also
given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus, and for early

progress in probability theory.

Fermat identified a subset of numbers, now known as Fermat numbers, which are of
the form of one less than 2 to the power of a power of 2, or, written mathematically,
22n + 1. The first five such numbers are: 21 + 1 = 3; 22 + 1 = 5; 24 + 1 = 17; 28 + 1 =
257; and 216 + 1 = 65,537. Interestingly, these are all prime numbers (and are known
as Fermat primes), but all the higher Fermat numbers which have been painstakingly
identified over the years are NOT prime numbers, which just goes to to show the
value of inductive proof in mathematics.

Fermat's pièce de résistance, though, was his famous Last Theorem, a conjecture
left unproven at his death, and which puzzled mathematicians for over 350 years.
The theorem, originally described in a scribbled note in the margin of his copy
of Diophantus' “Arithmetica”, states that no three positive integers a, b and c can
satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two (i.e.
squared). This seemingly simple conjecture has proved to be one of the world’s
hardest mathematical problems to prove.
MATHEMATICS IN THE HANDS OF
NEWTON AND AFTER NEWTON
The initial problem Newton was confronting was that, although it was easy enough to
represent and calculate the average slope of a curve (for example, the increasing
speed of an object on a time-distance graph), the slope of a curve was constantly
varying, and there was no method to give the exact slope at any one individual point
on the curve i.e. effectively the slope of a tangent line to the curve at that point.

Intuitively, the slope at a particular point can be approximated by taking the average
slope (“rise over run”) of ever smaller segments of the curve. As the segment of the
curve being considered approaches zero in size (i.e. an infinitesimal change in x),
then the calculation of the slope approaches closer and closer to the exact slope at a
point (see image at right).

Without going into too much complicated detail, Newton (and his
contemporary Gottfried Leibnizindependently) calculated a derivative function f ‘(x)
which gives the slope at any point of a function f(x). This process of calculating the
slope or derivative of a curve or function is called differential calculus or
differentiation (or, in Newton’s terminology, the “method of fluxions” - he called the
instantaneous rate of change at a particular point on a curve the "fluxion", and the
changing values of x and y the "fluents"). For instance, the derivative of a straight line
of the type f(x) = 4x is just 4; the derivative of a squared function f(x) = x2 is 2x; the
derivative of cubic functionf(x) = x3 is 3x2, etc. Generalizing, the derivative of any
power function f(x) = xr is rxr-1. Other derivative functions can be stated, according to
certain rules, for exponential and logarithmic functions, trigonometric functions such
as sin(x), cos(x), etc, so that a derivative function can be stated for any curve without
discontinuities. For example, the derivative of the curve f(x) = x4 - 5x3 + sin(x2) would
be f ’(x) = 4x3 - 15x2 + 2xcos(x2).

Having established the derivative function for a particular curve, it is then an easy
matter to calcuate the slope at any particular point on that curve, just by inserting a
value for x. In the case of a time-distance graph, for example, this slope represents
the speed of the object at a particular point.

The “opposite” of differentiation is integration or integral calculus (or, in Newton’s

terminology, the “method of fluents”), and together differentiation and integration are
the two main operations of calculus. Newton’s Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
states that differentiation and integration are inverse operations, so that, if a function
is first integrated and then differentiated (or vice versa), the original function is
retrieved.

The integral of a curve can be thought of as the formula for calculating the area
bounded by the curve and the xaxis between two defined boundaries. For example,
on a graph of velocity against time, the area “under the curve” would represent the
distance travelled. Essentially, integration is based on a limiting procedure which
approximates the area of a curvilinear region by breaking it into infinitesimally thin
vertical slabs or columns. In the same way as for differentiation, an integral function
can be stated in general terms: the integral of any power f(x) = xr is xr+1⁄r+1, and there
are other integral functions for exponential and logarithmic functions, trigonometric
functions, etc, so that the area under any continuous curve can be obtained between
any two limits

LEIBNITZ-A COMPETITOR OF NEWTON

Like Newton, Leibniz was a member of the Royal Society in London, and was almost
certainly aware of Newton’s work on calculus. During the 1670s (slightly later
than Newton’s early work), Leibniz developed a very similar theory of calculus,
apparently completely independently. Within the short period of about two months he
had developed a complete theory of differential calculus and integral calculus (see
the section on Newtonfor a brief description and explanation of the development of
calculus).

Ironically, it was Leibniz’s mathematics that eventually triumphed, and his notation
and his way of writing calculus, not Newton’s more clumsy notation, is the one still
used in mathematics today.
EULER
Despite a long life and thirteen children, Euler had more than his fair share of
tragedies and deaths, and even his blindness later in life did not slow his prodigious
output - his collected works comprise nearly 900 books and, in the year 1775, he is
said to have produced on average one mathematical paper every week - as he
compensated for it with his mental calculation skills and photographic memory (for
example, he could repeat the Aeneid of Virgil from beginning to end without
hesitation, and for every page in the edition he could indicate which line was the first
and which the last).

Today, Euler is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His
interests covered almost all aspects of mathematics, from geometry to calculus to
trigonometry to algebra to number theory, as well as optics, astronomy, cartography,
mechanics, weights and measures and even the theory of music.

Much of the notation used by mathematicians today - including e, i, f(x), ∑, and the
use of a, b and c as constants and x, y and z as unknowns - was either created,
popularized or standardized by Euler. His efforts to standardize these and other
symbols (including π and the trigonometric functions) helped to internationalize
mathematics and to encourage collaboration on problems.

He even managed to combine several of these together in an amazing feat of

mathematical alchemy to produce one of the most beautiful of all mathematical
equations, eiπ = -1, sometimes known as Euler’s Identity. This equation combines
arithmetic, calculus, trigonometry and complex analysis into what has been called
"the most remarkable formula in mathematics", "uncanny and sublime" and "filled
with cosmic beauty", among other descriptions. Another such discovery, often known
simply as Euler’s Formula, is eix = cosx + isinx. In fact, in a recent poll of
mathematicians, three of the top five most beautiful formulae of all time were Euler’s.
He seemed to have an instinctive ability to demonstrate the deep relationships
between trigonometry, exponentials and complex numbers.

The discovery that initially sealed Euler’s reputation was announced in 1735 and
concerned the calculation of infinite sums. It was called the Basel problem after
the Bernoulli’s had tried and failed to solve it, and asked what was the precise sum
of the of the reciprocals of the squares of all the natural numbers to infinity
i.e. 1⁄12+ 1⁄22 + 1⁄32 + 1⁄42 ... (a zeta function using a zeta constant of 2). Euler’s
friend Daniel Bernoulli had estimated the sum to be about 13⁄5, but Euler’s superior
method yielded the exact but rather unexpected result of π2⁄6. He also showed that
the infinite series was equivalent to an infinite product of prime numbers, an identity
which would later inspire Riemann’s investigation of complex zeta functions.
CARL FREDRICH GAUSS
At 15, Gauss was the first to find any kind of a pattern in the occurrence of prime
numbers, a problem which had exercised the minds of the best mathematicians
since ancient times. Although the occurrence of prime numbers appeared to be
almost competely random, Gauss approached the problem from a different angle by
graphing the incidence of primes as the numbers increased. He noticed a rough
pattern or trend: as the numbers increased by 10, the probability of prime numbers
occurring reduced by a factor of about 2 (e.g. there is a 1 in 4 chance of getting a
prime in the number from 1 to 100, a 1 in 6 chance of a prime in the numbers from 1
to 1,000, a 1 in 8 chance from 1 to 10,000, 1 in 10 from 1 to 100,000, etc). However,
he was quite aware that his method merely yielded an approximation and, as he
could not definitively prove his findings, and kept them secret until much later in life.

Gauss gave the first clear exposition of complex numbers and of the investigation of
functions of complex variables in the early 19th Century. Although imaginary
numbers involving i(the imaginary unit, equal to the square root of -1) had been used
since as early as the 16th Century to solve equations that could not be solved in any
other way, and despite Euler’s ground-breaking work on imaginary and complex
numbers in the 18th Century, there was still no clear picture of how imaginary
numbers connected with real numbers until the early 19th Century. Gauss was not
the first to intepret complex numbers graphically (Jean-Robert Argand produced his
Argand diagrams in 1806, and the Dane Caspar Wessel had described similar ideas
even before the turn of the century), but Gauss was certainly responsible for
popularizing the practice and laos formally introduced the standard notation a + bi for
complex numbers. As a result, the theory of complex numbers received a notable
expansion, and its full potential began to be unleashed.

At the age of just 22, he proved what is now known as the Fundamental Theorem of
Algebra (although it was not really about algebra). The theorem states that every
non-constant single-variable polynomial over the complex numbers has at least one
root (although his initial proof was not rigorous, he improved on it later in life). What it
also showed was that the field of complex numbers is algebraically "closed" (unlike
real numbers, where the solution to a polynomial with real co-efficients can yield a
solution in the complex number field).
REIMANN
Riemann developed a type of non-Euclidean geometry, different to the hyperbolic
geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky, which has come to be known as elliptic
geometry. As with hyperbolic geometry, there is no such thing as parallel lines, and
the angles of a triangle do not sum to 180° (in this case, however, they sum to more
than 180º). He went on to develop Riemannian geometry, which unified and vastly
generalized the three types of geometry, as well as the concept of a manifold or
mathematical space, which generalized the ideas of curves and surfaces.

A turning point in his career occurred in 1852 when, at the age of 26, have gave a
lecture on the foundations of geometry and outlined his vision of a mathematics of
many different kinds of space, only one of which was the flat, Euclidean space which
we appear to inhabit. He also introduced one-dimensional complex manifolds known
as Riemann surfaces. Although it was not widely understood at the time, Riemann’s
mathematics changed how we look at the world, and opened the way to higher
dimensional geometry, a potential which had existed, unrealized, since the time
of Descartes.

With his “Riemann metric”, Riemann completely broke away from all the limitations of
2 and 3 dimensional geometry, even the geometry of curved spaces of Bolyai and
Lobachevsky, and began to think in higher dimensions, extending the differential
geometry of surfaces into ndimensions. His conception of multi-dimensional space
(known as Riemannian space or Riemannian manifold or simply “hyperspace”)
enabled the later development of general relativity, and is at the heart of much of
today’s mathematics, in geometry, number theory and other branches of
mathematics.

He introduced a collection of numbers (known as a tensor) at every point in space,

which would describe how much it was bent or curved. For instance, in four spatial
dimensions, a collection of ten numbers is needed at each point to describe the
properties of the mathematical space or manifold, no matter how distorted it may be.

Riemann’s big breakthrough occurred while working on a function in the complex

plane called the Riemann zeta function (an extension of the simpler zeta function
first explored by Euler in the previous century). He realized that he could use it to
build a kind of 3-dimensional landscape, and furthermore that the contours of that
imaginary landscape might be able to unlock the Holy Grail of mathematics, the age-
old secret of prime numbers.
Riemann’s big breakthrough occurred while working on a function in the complex plane
called the Riemann zeta function (an extension of the simpler zeta function first explored
by Euler in the previous century). He realized that he could use it to build a kind of 3-
dimensional landscape, and furthermore that the contours of that imaginary landscape might
be able to unlock the Holy Grail of mathematics, the age-old secret of prime numbers.

Riemann noticed that, at key places, the surface of his 3-dimensional graph dipped
down to height zero (known simply as “the zeroes”) and was able to show that at
least the first ten zeroes inexplicably appeared to line up in a straight line through the
3-dimensional landscape of the zeta-function, known as the critical line, where the
real part of the value is equal to ½.

With a huge imaginative leap, Riemann realized that these zeroes had a completely
unexpected connection with the way the prime numbers are distributed. It began to
seem that they could be used to correct Gauss’ inspired guesswork regarding the
number of primes as numbers as one counts higher and higher.

The famous Riemann Hypothesis, which remains unproven, suggests that ALL the
zeroes would be on the same straight line. Although he never provided a definitive
proof of this hypothesis, Riemann’s work did at least show that the 15-year-
old Gauss’ initial approximations of the incidence of prime numbers were perhaps
more accurate than even he could have known, and that the primes were in fact
distributed over the universe of numbers in a regular, balanced and beautiful way.

The discovery of the Riemann zeta function and the relationship of its zeroes to the
prime numbers brought Riemann instant fame when it was published in 1859. He
too, though, died young at just 39 years of age, in 1866, and many of his loose
papers were accidentally destroyed after his death, so we will never know just how
close he was to proving his own hypothesis. Over 150 years later, the Riemann
Hypothesis is still considered one of the fundamental questions of number theory,
and indeed of all mathematics, and a prize of $1 million has been offered for the final
solution.

SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN

Meanwhile, in 1913, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a 23-year old shipping clerk from

Madras, India, wrote to Hardy (and other academics at Cambridge), claiming, among
other things, to have devised a formula that calculated the number of primes up to a
hundred million with generally no error. The self-taught and obsessive Ramanujan
had managed to prove all of Riemann’s results and more with almost no knowledge
of developments in the Western world and no formal tuition. He claimed that most of
his ideas came to him in dreams.

Hardy was only one to recognize Ramanujan's genius, and brought him to
Cambridge University, and was his friend and mentor for many years. The two
collaborated on many mathematical problems, although the Riemann Hypothesis
continued to defy even their joint efforts.
A common anecdote about Ramanujan during this time relates how Hardy arrived at
Ramanujan's house in a cab numbered 1729, a number he claimed to be totally
uninteresting. Ramanujan is said to have stated on the spot that, on the contrary, it
was actually a very interesting number mathematically, being the smallest number
representable in two different ways as a sum of two cubes. Such numbers are now
sometimes referred to as "taxicab numbers".

It is estimated that Ramanujan conjectured or proved over 3,000 theorems, identities

and equations, including properties of highly composite numbers, the partition
function and its asymptotics and mock theta functions. He also carried out major
investigations in the areas of gamma functions, modular forms, divergent series,
hypergeometric series and prime number theory.

Among his other achievements, Ramanujan identified several efficient and rapidly
converging infinite series for the calculation of the value of π, some of which could
compute 8 additional decimal places of π with each term in the series. These series
(and variations on them) have become the basis for the fastest algorithms used by
modern computers to compute π to ever increasing levels of accuracy (currently to
about 5 trillion decimal places).
BEAUTY OF THE MATHEMATICS
STRANGE EQUATIONS

CONSIDERED BY GOOGLE AS THE MOST STRANGE EQN AS IT CONSISTS OF

THE STRANGE NO.S 0,1,i,π.

RAMANUJAN FAMOUS EQN FOR EVALUATIN VALUE OF π

SOME INTERESTING TIDBITS

SOME BEAUTIFUL QUOTES ON
MATHEMATICS
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. ABSTRACT
3. MATHEMATICS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT BEFORE
NEWTON
a)Indian mathematicians
b)Euclid
c)Pierre de Fermat
4. MATHEMATICS IN HANDS OF NEWTON AND AFTER
NEWTON
a)Isaac Newton
b)Gottfried Leibnitz
c)Euler
d)Carl Fredrich Gauss
e)Reimann
f)Srinivasa Ramanujan

5. BEAUTY OF MATHEMATICS-EQUATIONS AND

IDENTITIES

6. SOME INTERESTING TIDBITS

7. FAMOUS QUOTES ON MATHEMATICS

8.BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABSTRACT
This is a technical report on MATHEMATICS AND
MATHEMATICIANS.As a voracious maths lover and a maths
aficionado I have tried to depict here the beauty of the
mathematics. My main aim is to feel that beauty and essence
and let them be felt through the report. It consists of the
contributions of the great mathematicians in this field, who has
showed through their works the brilliance of mathematics.Later
I have added some interesting facts and some weird equations
to make this project more interesting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In this project , I have mainly taken the help of internet and a
book named Rudiments of mathematics. The interesting tidbits
was taken from the book whereas the part on mathematicians
was taken from the internet.
Reference
1. Wikipedia
2. Rudiments of mathematics
3. Mathematics analysis-GN Berman
4. storyofmathematics.com