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< ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Leonhard Euler was born on April 15,1707,in Basel, Switzerland, the son of a mathematician and Caivinist pastor who wanted his son to become a pastor as well. Although Euler had different ideas, he entered the University of Basel to study Hebrew and theology, thus obeying his father. His hard work at the university and remarkable ability brought him to the attention of the well-known mathematician Johann Bernoulli (1667—1748). Bernoulli, realizing Euler’s talents, persuaded Euler’s father to change his mind, and Euler pursued his studies in mathematics.</FONT></P>
< ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>At the age of nineteen, Euler’s first original work appeared. His paper failed to win the Paris Academy Prize in 1727; however this loss was compensated for later as he won the prize twelve times.</FONT></P>
< ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>At the age of 28, Euler competed for the Pairs prize for a problem in astronomy which several leading mathematicians had thought would take several months to solve.To their great surprise, he solved it in three days! Unfortunately, the considerable strain that he underwent in his relentless effort caused an illness that resulted in the loss of the sight of his right eye.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>At the age of 62, Euler lost the sight of his left eye and thus became totally blind. However this did not end his interest and work in mathematics; instead, his mathematical productivity increased considerably.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>On September 18, 1783, while playing with his grandson and drinking tea, Euler suffered a fatal stroke.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Euler was the most prolific mathematician the world has ever seen. He made significant contributions to every branch of mathematics. He had phenomenal memory: He could remember every important formula of his time. A genius, he could work anywhere and under any condition.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>George cantor (March 3, 1845—June 1,1918),the founder of set theory, was born in St. Petersburg into a Jewish merchant family that settled in Germany in 1856.He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy in Zurich and at the University of Berlin. After receiving his degree in 1867 in Berlin, he became a lecturer at the university of Halle from 1879 to 1905. In 1884,under the strain of opposition to his ideas and his efforts to prove the continuum hypothesis, he suffered the first of many attacks of depression which continued to hospitalize him from time to time until his death.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The thesis he wrote for his degree concerned the theory of numbers; however, he arrived at set theory from his research concerning the uniqueness of trigonometric series. In 1874, he introduced for the first time the concept of cardinal numbers, with which he proved that there were “more” transcendental numbers than algebraic numbers. This result caused a sensation in the mathematical world and became the subject of a great deal of controversy. Cantor was troubled by the opposition of L. Kronecker, but he was supported by J.W.R. Dedekind and G. Mittagleffer. In his note on the history of the theory of probability, he recalled the period in which the theory was not generally accepted and cried out “ the essence of mathematics lies in its freedom!” In addition to his work on the concept of cardinal numbers, he laid the basis for the concepts of order types, transfinite ordinals, and the theory of real numbers by means of fundamental sequences. He also studied general point sets in Euclidean space and defined the concepts of accumulation point, closed set and open set. He was a pioneer in dimension theory, which led to the development of topology.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Kantorovich was born on January 19, 1912, in St. Petersburg, now called Leningrad. He graduated from the University of Leningrad in 1930 and became a full professor at the early age of 22.At the age of 27, his pioneering contributions in linear programming appeared in a paper entitled Mathematical Methods for the Organization and planning of production. In 1949, he was awarded a Stalin Prize for his contributions in a branch of mathematics called functional analysis and in 1958, he became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Interestingly enough, in 1965,kantorovich won a Lenin Prize for the same outstanding work in linear programming for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Since 1971, he has been the director of the Institute of Economics of Management in Moscow.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Paul R. Halmos is a distinguished professor of Mathematics at Indiana University, and Editor-Elect of the American Mathematical Monthly. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and has held positions at Illinois, Syracuse, Chicago, Michigan, Hawaii, and Santa Barbara. He has published numerous books and nearly 100 articles, and has been the editor of many journals and several book series. The Mathematical Association of America has given him the Chauvenet Prize and (twice) the Lester Ford award for mathematical exposition. His main mathematical interests are in measure and ergodic theory, algebraic, and operators on Hilbert space.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Vito Volterra, born in the year 1860 in Ancona, showed in his boyhood his exceptional gifts for mathematical and physical thinking. At the age of thirteen, after reading Verne’s novel on the voyage from earth to moon, he devised his own method to compute the trajectory under the gravitational field of the earth and the moon; the method was worth later development into a general procedure for solving differential equations. He became a pupil of Dini at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and published many important papers while still a student. He received his degree in Physics at the age of 22 and was made full professor of Rational Mechanics at the same University only one year later, as a successor of Betti.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Volterra had many interests outside pure mathematics, ranging from history to poetry, to music. When he was called to join in 1900 the University of Rome from Turin, he was invited to give the opening speech of the academic year.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Volterra was President of the Accademia dei Lincei in the years 1923-1926. He was also the founder of the Italian Society for the Advancement of Science and of the National Council of Research. For many years he was one of the most productive scientists and a very influential personality in public life. When Fascism took power in Italy, Volterra did not accept any compromise and preferred to leave his public and academic activities.</FONT></P>
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