Famous Mathematicians in Rhyme

See if you agree with me that each of the following poetry quatrains summarises the accomplishments of the mathematician described.

The father of geometry as we all know

was Euclid, axioms in tow.

Euclidean geometry is his legacy

explained in his Elements quite easily.

Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist formidable

whose research and musings were quite incredible.

Treatises on Calculus and his Principia delight

and for his laws of motion he was made a knight.

Using right triangles with sides a, b and hypotenuse c

Pythagoras showed relationships for you and me.

By squaring a and b and finding the total

you get c squared and become quite vocal.

Archimedes of Syracuse was a man of invention

whose thoughts and deeds often flouted convention.

After pondering the water displaced in his bath

He cried ‘Eureka, I now know the path’.

Mass times the square of the speed of light

Einstein did say has energy full of might.

On relativity which was once a mystery

he used frames of reference to find its history.

In ancient Alexandria Hypatia resided,

In mathematics and philosophy her life’s work decided.

Paving the way for female eminence

Her downfall was from religious intolerance.

Fibonacci’s number sequence astounds

by appearing in nature without any bounds.

The ratio of consecutive terms we know

leads to the Golden Ratio.

‘I think, therefore I am’ stated Descartes philosophically

and expounded on cartesian axes vertically and horizontally.

As the father of analytical geometry he tendered

much mathematics that will be remembered.

Born in 1777 of German extraction,

in matters mathematical Gauss took much action.

His proficiency is well known here and far

especially for the fundamental theorem of Algebra.

Introduced in studies of logic and set theory

John Venn’s circles never were dreary.

Representing relationships in this fashion

was truly his one and only passion.

In the field of complex analysis it is said

Cauchy’s work was complex bred.

And his residue theorem was without parity

since it required no singularity.