Important Math Results and Timeline of Mathematics
It's interesting to compile what are considered the most "important" math theorems or results over the years. One site combined a list together and I've taken that list and resorted it using a spreadsheet based on the approximate year. I hope to include more from other sources and to eventually work through the list and see about writing out a proof for them. If anything is incorrect or if there's a result you feel should be included, then please let me know.
Also related to this is mathigon's beautiful Timeline of Mathematics.
| Math Result | Author(s) | Approximate Year |
|---|---|---|
| Sum of an arithmetic series | Babylonians | 1700 B.C. |
| The Irrationality of the Square Root of 2 | Pythagoras and his school | 500 B.C. |
| Pythagorean Theorem | Pythagoras and his school | 500 B.C. |
| The Number of Platonic Solids | Theaetetus | 400 B.C. |
| The Infinitude of Primes | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Formula for Pythagorean Triples | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Sum of the Angles of a Triangle | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Product of Segments of Chords | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Isosceles Triangle Theorem | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Greatest Common Divisor Algorithm | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| The Perfect Number Theorem | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic | Euclid | 300 B.C. |
| Sum of a Geometric Series | Archimedes | 260 B.C.? |
| The Area of a Circle | Archimedes | 225 B.C. |
| Heron's Formula | Heron of Alexandria | 75 |
| Ptolemy's Theorem | Ptolemy | 120? |
| The Principle of Mathematical Induction | Levi ben Gerson | 1321 |
| Divergence of the Harmonic Series | Nicole Oresme | 1350 |
| The Solution of a Cubic | Scipione Del Ferro | 1500 |
| The Solution of the General Quartic Equation | Lodovico Ferrari | 1545 |
| The Law of Cosines | Francois Viete | 1579 |
| Pigeonhole principle | Jean Leurechon | 1624 |
| Descartes Rule of Signs | Rene Descartes | 1637 |
| Pascal's Hexagon Theorem | Blaise Pascal | 1640 |
| Desargues's Theorem | Gerard Desargues | 1650 |
| The Binomial Theorem | Isaac Newton | 1665 |
| Sum of the Reciprocals of the Triangular Numbers | Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz | 1672 |
| Leibnitz's Series for Pi | Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz | 1674 |
| Theorem of Ceva | Giovanni Ceva | 1678 |
| Fundamental Theorem of Integral Calculus | Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz | 1686 |
| L'Hopital's Rule | John Bernoulli | 1696? |
| Sum of kth powers | Jakob Bernouilli | 1713 |
| Taylor's Theorem | Brook Taylor | 1715 |
| DeMoivre's Theorem | Abraham DeMoivre | 1730 |
| Stirling's Formula | James Stirling | 1730 |
| Central Limit Theorem | Abraham DeMoivre, Laplace, Gauss, Chebyshev, Lyapunov | 1733-1901 |
| Buffon Needle Problem | Comte de Buffon | 1733 |
| Euler's Summation of 1 + (1/2)^2 + (1/3)^2 + ... | Leonhard Euler | 1734 |
| Divergence of the Prime Reciprocal Series | Leonhard Euler | 1734? |
| Konigsberg Bridges Problem | Leonhard Euler | 1736 |
| The Partition Theorem | Leonhard Euler | 1740 |
| Cramer's Rule | Gabriel Cramer | 1750 |
| Polyhedron Formula | Leonhard Euler | 1751 |
| Solutions to Pell's Equation | Leonhard Euler | 1759 |
| Euler's Generalization of Fermat's Little Theorem | Leonhard Euler (Pierre de Fermat) | 1760 (1640) |
| Four Squares Theorem | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | 1770 |
| Wilson's Theorem | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | 1773 |
| Fundamental Theorem of Algebra | Karl Frederich Gauss | 1799 |
| Law of Quadratic Reciprocity | Karl Frederich Gauss | 1801 |
| Order of a Subgroup | Joseph-Louis Lagrange | 1802 |
| Fourier Series | Joseph Fourier | 1811 |
| The Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality | Augustine-Louis Cauchy | 1814? |
| The Intermediate Value Theorem | Augustine-Louis Cauchy | 1821 |
| Feuerbach's Theorem | Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach | 1822 |
| The Mean Value Theorem | Augustine-Louis Cauchy | 1823 |
| Insolvability of General Higher Degree Equations | Niels Henrik Abel | 1824 |
| Green's Theorem | George Green | 1828 |
| The Impossibility of Trisecting the Angle and Doubling the Cube | Pierre Wantzel | 1837 |
| Dirichlet's Theorem | Peter Lejune Dirichlet | 1837 |
| The Isoperimetric Theorem | Jacob Steiner | 1838 |
| Liouville's Theorem and the Construction of Transcendental Numbers | Joseph Liouville | 1844 |
| Puiseux's Theorem | Victor Puiseux (based on a discovery of Isaac Newton of 1671) | 1850 |
| Stokes' theorem | Lord Kelvin and George Stokes | 1854? |
| The Cayley-Hamilton Theorem | Arthur Cayley | 1858 |
| Bertrand's Postulate | J.L.F. Bertrand | 1860? |
| The Denumerability of the Rational Numbers | Georg Cantor | 1867 |
| The Independence of the Parallel Postulate | Karl Frederich Gauss, Janos Bolyai, Nikolai Lobachevsky, G.F. Bernhard Riemann | 1870-1880 |
| Sylow's Theorem | Ludwig Sylow | 1870 |
| e is Transcendental | Charles Hermite | 1873 |
| The Non-Denumerability of the Continuum | Georg Cantor | 1874 |
| Pi is Transcendental | Ferdinand Lindemann | 1882 |
| The Hermite-Lindemann Transcendence Theorem | Ferdinand Lindemann | 1882 |
| The Ballot Problem | J.L.F. Bertrand | 1887 |
| Cantor's Theorem | Georg Cantor | 1891 |
| Prime Number Theorem | Jacques Hadamard and Charles-Jean de la Vallee Poussin (separately) | 1896 |
| Minkowski's Fundamental Theorem | Hermann Minkowski | 1896 |
| Morley's Theorem | Frank Morley | 1899 |
| Pick's Theorem | George Pick | 1899 |
| Lebesgue Measure and Integration | Henri Lebesgue | 1902 |
| Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem | L.E.J. Brouwer | 1910 |
| Banach fixed-point theorem | Stefan Banach | 1922 |
| Ramsey's Theorem | F.P. Ramsey | 1930 |
| Godel's Incompleteness Theorem | Kurt Godel | 1931 |
| Ascending or Descending Sequences | Paul Erdos and G. Szekeres | 1935 |
| Dissection of Cubes (J.E. Littlewood's 'elegant' proof) | R.L. Brooks | 1940 |
| The Undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis | Paul Cohen | 1963 |
| The Friendship Theorem | Paul Erdos, Alfred Renyi, Vera Sos | 1966 |
| The Four Color Problem | Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken | 1976 |
| Fermat's Last Theorem | Andrew Wiles | 1993 |
| Classification of finite simple groups | Daniel Gorenstein, Richard Lyons, and Ronald Solomon | 1955 and 2004 |
| QM-AM-GM-HM inequalities | ? | ? |