Wednesday, July 01, 2020

Map of Mathematicians



My nearest mathematician is Edmond Halley, for whom Halley's comet is named. According to the Mathematicians Birthplace Map Halley was born in Shoreditch, London - just one mile from where I now live.

You can discover which famous mathematicians were born near you on the University of St Andrews School of Mathematics and Statistics interactive map. This map shows the birthplaces of nearly 3,000 mathematicians from all around the world. The mathematicians shown on the map are those listed in the university's MacTutor database, which includes biographies of famous mathematicians.

If you select a marker on the Mathematicians Birthplace Map you can click through to read their full biography on MacTutor. Beneath the map is a link to view all mathematicians by country. This link allows you to select an individual country to view all the MacTutor listed mathematicians who were born in that country.

The Mathematicians Birthplace Map is just a simple map showing where famous mathematicians were born around the world. I don't think that there is much that could be done to improve this map. Although I do think that a timeline control would be interesting as it would allow you to sort the mathematicians both geographically and historically. You could then use the map to see which mathematicians were alive during different historical periods and where they were living (born) around the world.

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