thumbnail

98 mathematicians and physicists

Name 200 mathematicians and physicists in 30 minutes! If you want me to add people to the list, write it down in the comments.
Quiz by
prolibek
Rate:
Last updated: August 31, 2024
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedAugust 31, 2024
Times taken470
Average score45.9%
Report this quizReport
20:00
Enter answer here
0
 / 98 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
Hint
Lifespan
Origin
Answer
"If a triangle is inscribed in a circle and one of its sides is the diameter of the circle, then the angle opposite that side is a right angle."
624 BCE – 546 BCE
Greek
Thales

"In a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides."

570 BCE – 495 BCE
Greek
Pythagoras
One of the earliest hypotheses about atoms.
460 BCE – 370 BCE
Greek
Democritus
Developed theory of four elements which dominated until other discoveries made by other great scientists.
384 BCE – 322 BCE
Greek
Aristotle
The "father of geometry".
300 BCE
Greek
Euclid
"An object submerged in a fluid experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces."
287 BCE – 212 BCE
Greek
Archimedes
Calculated Earth's diameter using stick and the Sun.
276 BCE – 194 BCE
Greek
Eratosthenes
Known for his work on conic sections.
c. 262 BCE – c. 190 BCE
Greek
Apollonius
For a triangle with side lengths a, b, and c, and semi-perimeter s (which is half of the perimeter), the area can be found by taking the square root of s multiplied by (s minus a), (s minus b), and (s minus c).
c. 10 CE – c. 70 CE
Greek
Heron
"If a line intersects the sides of a triangle (or their extensions), the product of the ratios of the segments it divides each side into is equal to -1."
70 CE – c. 140 CE
Greek
Menelaus
"In a cyclic quadrilateral (a quadrilateral inscribed in a circle), the product of the lengths of the diagonals is equal to the sum of the products of the lengths of the opposite sides."
c. 100 CE – c. 170 CE
Greek
Claudius Ptolemy
The "father of algebra".
c. 201 CE – c. 285 CE
Greek
Diophantus
Introduced systematic equations of quadratic equations.
c. 780 CE – c. 850 CE
Persian
al-Khwarizmi
The "father of modern optics".
965 – 1040
Arabic
Ibn al-Haytham
The "father of modern geodesy".
973 – 1048
Persian
Al-Biruni
Introduced the sequence of in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones.
c. 1170 – c. 1250
Italian
Fibonacci
Formulated the heliocentric model of the solar system.
1473 – 1543
Polish
Nicolaus Copernicus
Discovered the solution for the cubic equation.
1500 – 1557
Italian
Nicolo Tartaglia
Published the solution for the cubic equation.
1501 – 1576
Italian
Gerolamo Cardano
The father of "modern science" and scientific method.
1564 – 1642
Italian
Galileo Galilei
Discovered laws of planetary motion.
1571 – 1630
German
Johannes Kepler
Developed a coordinate system that laid the foundation for analytical geometry.
1596 – 1650
French
Rene Descartes
"There are no three positive integers that can satisfy the equation x^n+y^n=z^n when n is greater than 2."
1601 – 1665
French
Pierre de Fermat
One of the founders of probability theory.
1623 – 1662
French
Blaise Pascal
Discovered the law describing the relationship between pressure and volume of confined gas.
1627 – 1691
Irish
Robert Boyle
Invented modern microscope.
1635 – 1703
English
Robert Hooke
Was first to discover laws of motion and gravity.
1643 – 1727
English
Isaac Newton
Developed present day notation for the differential and integral calculus.
1646 – 1716
German
Gottfried Leibniz
Discovered a general method to determine evolutes of a curve as the envelope of its circles of curvature.
1654 – 1705
Swiss
Jacob Bernoulli
Summed series, and discovered addition theorems for trigonometric and hyperbolic functions using the differential equations they satisfy.
1667 – 1748
Swiss
Johann Bernoulli
Formulated series that express functions as infinite sums of their derivatives.
1685 – 1731
English
Brook Taylor
Proved the equality of mixed second-order partial derivatives.
1687 – 1759
Swiss
Nicolaus Bernoulli
Сontributed to the study of elliptic integrals, reducing many intractable integrals to problems of finding arcs for hyperbolas.
1698 – 1746
Scottish
Colin Maclaurin
"An increase in the speed of a parcel of fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in either the pressure or the height above a datum."
1700 – 1782
Swiss
Daniel Bernoulli
Established a mathematical basis for probability inferenceю
1702 – 1761
British
Thomas Bayes
Known for his experiments with electricity.
1706 – 1790
American
Benjamin Franklin
One of the most important constants is named after him.
1707 – 1783
Swiss
Leonhard Euler
The "father of Russian science".
1711 – 1765
Russian
Mikhail Lomonosov
Measured Earth's density.
1731 – 1810
British
Henry Cavendish
Found special-case solution for the three body problem.
1736 – 1813
Italian / French
Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Invented battery.
1745 – 1827
Italian
Alessandro Volta
"An all-knowing intellect which, if it knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe at a given time, could predict the future and retrodict the past with absolute certainty."
1749 – 1827
French
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Provided basic analytical tools for mathematical physics.
1752 – 1833
French
Adrien-Marie Legendre
Introduced atomic theory into chemistry.
1766 – 1844
British
John Dalton
"A periodic signal is composed of a superposition of pure sine waves, with suitably chosen amplitudes and phases, whose frequencies are harmonics of the fundamental frequency of the signal."
1768 – 1830
French
Joseph Fourier
The "father of electrodynamics".
1775 – 1836
French
Andre-Marie Ampere
The "Prince of Mathematicians".
1777 – 1855
German
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Known for his work in probability theory.
1781 – 1840
French
Siméon Denis Poisson
The electric current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points.
1789 – 1854
German
Georg Ohm
Formalized and proved key theorems of calculus.
1789 – 1857
French
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Greatest experimental physicist.
1791 – 1867
English
Michael Faraday
Independently developed non-Euclidean geometry.
1792 – 1856
Russian
Nikolai Lobachevsky
Known for his pioneering work in the theory of elliptic functions and for proving the insolvability of the general quintic equation by radicals.
1802 – 1829
Norwegian
Niels Henrik Abel
One of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry.
1802 – 1860
Hungarian
János Bolyai
Devised an electromagnetic telegraph.
1804 – 1891
German
Wilhelm Eduard Weber
“If more than n rabbits must be put into n hutches, then at least in one hutch there will be more than one (so, at least 2) rabbits.”
1805 – 1859
German
Dirichlet
Invented quaternions.
1805 – 1865
Irish
William Rowan Hamilton
Founded abstract algebra and group theory.
1811 – 1832
French
Evariste Galois
True / False.
1815 – 1864
English
George Boole
The "father of modern analysis".
1815 – 1897
German
Karl Weierstrass
Established that the various types of energy are the same.
1818 – 1889
English
James Joule
Proved that the Earth rotates on its axis.
1819 – 1868
French
Léon Foucault
Invented international system of absolute temperature.
1824 – 1907
British (Scottish)
(William Thomson) Lord Kelvin
Put forward a hypothesis on zeta function that stays unproved till these days.
1826 – 1866
German
Bernhard Riemann
The founder of electromagnetic theory.
1831 – 1879
Scottish
James Maxwell
One of the founders of statistical mechanics.
1844 – 1906
Austrian
Ludwig Boltzmann
One of the founders of set theory.
1845 – 1918
German
Georg Cantor
Discovered X-rays.
1845 – 1923
German
Wilhelm Röntgen
Clarified connections between electricity, light and magnetism.
1853 – 1928
Dutch
Hendrik Lorentz
"Every three-dimensional topological manifold which is closed, connected, and has trivial fundamental group is homeomorphic to the three-dimensional sphere."
1854 – 1912
French
Henri Poincare
Contributed to development of AC electrical systems.
1856 – 1943
Serbian / American
Nikola Tesla
Proved the existence of electromagnetic waves.
1857 – 1894
German
Heinrich Hertz
Creator of quantum theory.
1858 – 1947
German
Max Planck
"Pioneered research on radioactivity alongside his wife."
1859 – 1906
French
Pierre Curie
23 unsolved problems.
1862 – 1943
German
David Hilbert
First to win two Nobel Prizes.
1867 – 1934
Polish / French
Marie Curie
The "father of nuclear physics".
1871 – 1937
New Zealand
Ernest Rutherford
Co-author of Principia Mathematica.
1872 – 1970
British
Bertrand Russell
"Energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared."
1879 – 1955
German / American
Albert Einstein
"For any continuous function f mapping a nonempty compact convex set to itself, there is a point x such that f(x)=x."
1881 – 1966
Dutch
L.E.J. Brouwer
Proposed a model of atom.
1885 – 1962
Danish
Niels Bohr
The Man Who Knew Infinity.
1887 – 1920
Indian
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Made a thought experiment involving a cat.
1887 – 1961
Austrian
Erwin Schrödinger
Found galaxies other than Milky Way.
1889 – 1953
American
Edwin Hubble
 
1894 – 1974
Indian
Satyendra Nath Bose
The first to split the atom.
1901 – 1954
Italian / American
Enrico Fermi
"It is impossible to simultaneously know the exact position and exact momentum of a particle. The more precisely one of these properties is known, the less precisely the other can be known."
1901 – 1976
German
Werner Heisenberg
Formulated a fully relativistic quantum theory.
1902 – 1984
British
Paul Dirac
Outlined the design for modern electronic computers.
1903 – 1957
Hungarian / American
John von Neumann
The "father of atomic bomb".
1904 – 1967
American
J. Robert Oppenheimer
"In any consistent formal system that is capable of expressing basic arithmetic, there are true statements that cannot be proven within the system."
1906 – 1978
Austrian / American
Kurt Gödel
The "father of hydrogen bomb".
1908 – 2003
Hungarian / American
Edward Teller
Provided the concept that describes fundamental model of computations.
1912 – 1954
British
Alan Turing
Graphically represented interaction of light and matter.
1918 – 1988
American
Richard Feynman
Discovered particle that gives mass to other fundamental particles.
1929 – 2024
British
Peter Higgs
Graphically described black holes through relativity theory.
Born 1931
British
Roger Penrose
Discovered that black holes emit radiation.
1942 – 2018
British
Stephen Hawking
Solved one of the Millennium Prize problems.
Born 1966
Russian
Grigori Perelman
Save Your Stats
Your Next Quiz
Name all 50 states in the USA. Easy, right?
With the help of a map, can you name the countries which existed during the Revolution of 1848?
Drag the flag onto the correct state. Careful, though! One wrong move and the game ends.
Click the animals that live in Africa without clicking any of the ones that don't!
1 Comments
+1
Level 27
Dec 28, 2025
where is seaborg, flerov, fermi, pauli, mcmillan, meitner, hahn, and some other 20th century physicists