List of mathematicians
- Chapter 1: Mersenne
- Chapter 2: Fermat
- Chapter 3: Lagrange
- Chapter 4: Euclid
- Chapter 5: Cauchy
- Chapter 6: Galois
- Chapter 7: Euler
- Chapter 8: Schreier
- Abel
- Adleman
- Artin (see Exercise 37)
- Bose
- Cayley (see Exercise 19)
- Cauchy
- Chaudhuri
- Clarkson
- Descartes
- Diophantus
- Eratosthenes
- Euclid
- Euler
- Fano
- Fermat
- Fibonacci
- Galois
- Gauss
- Hadamard
- Hadamard
- Hamilton (see Quaternions)
- Hasse
- Hocquenghem
- Klein (see Exercise 14)
- Kronecker
- Lagrange
- Lenstra
- Mersenne
- Petersen
- Pythagoras (see Exercise 11)
- Rivest
- Schreier
- Shamir
- Sylow
- Taylor
- De la Vallée-Poussin
- Wiles
Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) investigated prime numbers
of the form 2p -1, with p prime. Mersenne claimed
these numbers to be prime for
p = 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 67, 127 and 257 but composite for the other 44 primes smaller
than 257. Although this statement is not correct (there are 5 mistakes),
prime numbers of the form 2p -1 still retrieve a lot of attention. 
Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) was a French laywer and government official
best remembered for his work in number theory. In particular,
Fermat's last theorem stating that, for n at least 3, there are no non-zero integer solutions x,
y and z to the equation
is famous.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813)
worked in many areas of mathematics,
including analysis,
number theory and algebra.
Euclid of Alexandria (around 325-265 BC)
is the most prominent mathematician of antiquity.
Euclid's most famous work is his treatise on mathematics The Elements.
The book was a compilation of knowledge that became the centre of
mathematical teaching for 2000 years.
Augustin Cauchy (1789-1857)
was a pioneer in several areas of mathematics.
He played a major role in the development of the theory of permutations.
He introduced concepts like powers, cycle notation and order for permutations.
Evariste Galois (1811-1832) is the founder of group theory.
He associated a group to a polynomial equation, this group being a group
of permutations of the roots of the equation.
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was one of the most brilliant mathematicians.
He made many contributions to almost every part of mathematics
and is probably published more mathematical articles than anyone else.
In his short life, Otto Schreier (1901-1929) made many important contributions to group theory. In particular, his habilitation thesis is considered to be one of the most important papers on combinatorial group theory.