9 posters · c. 300 BC to 1913
Mathematics
Founding texts of mathematics: Euclid’s Elements, Euler’s bridges of Königsberg, Pascal’s triangle, Fermat, Galois, Riemann, Cantor, Hilbert and Ramanujan.
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Mathematics
Euclid’s Elements, Book I: definitions, postulates and common notions
Euclid, c. 300 BC
The 23 definitions, five postulates and common notions that open Euclid’s Elements, in Heiberg’s Greek text.
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Mathematics
Traitté du Triangle Arithmetique
Blaise Pascal, 1665
Excerpt of Pascal’s treatise on the arithmetical triangle: its construction, the rule of its numbers and the first consequence.
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Mathematics
Observatio Domini Petri de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat, 1670
Fermat’s note that no cube or higher power splits into two like powers, with the question of Diophantus it annotates.
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Mathematics
Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis
Leonhard Euler, 1736
Euler shows that no walk crosses each of the seven bridges of Königsberg exactly once, and gives the general rule.
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Mathematics
Lettre de Galois à M. Auguste Chevalier
Évariste Galois, 1832
Dated 29 May 1832, two days before his death, Galois’s letter summarizes his work on equations, groups and algebraic integrals.
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Mathematics
Ueber die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse
Bernhard Riemann, 1859
Extends the zeta function to complex values, relates its zeros to the count of primes and states the Riemann hypothesis.
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Mathematics
Ueber eine elementare Frage der Mannigfaltigkeitslehre
Georg Cantor, 1891
Cantor’s diagonal argument: the sequences of two symbols cannot be listed, and no set has the greatest cardinality.
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Mathematics
Mathematische Probleme
David Hilbert, 1900
Excerpt of the printed text of Hilbert’s 1900 Paris lecture, which sets out 23 problems for the new century.
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Mathematics
Letter to G. H. Hardy, 16 January 1913
Srinivasa Ramanujan, 1913
Ramanujan, a clerk in Madras, introduces himself to Hardy and sends him his theorems.
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