Charles Babbage

Dec 26 1792 - Oct 18 1871 Born Teignmouth, England. Died London, England.

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Babbage graduated from Cambridge and at the early age of 24 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1827 he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position he held for 12 years although Babbage never taught. He originated the modern analytic computer. By 1834 he invented the principle of the analytical engine, the forerunner of the modern electronic computer. In 1830 he published "Reflections on the Decline of Science in England", a controversial work that resulted in the formation, one year later, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1834 Babbage published his most influential work "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures", in which he proposed an early form of operational research. The computation of logarithms had made him aware of the inaccuracy of human calculation, and he became so obsessed with mechanical computation that he spent pounds 6000 in pursuit of it. A government grant of pounds 17000 was given but support withdrawn in 1842. Although Babbage never built an operational, mechanical computer, his design concepts have been proved correct and recently such a computer has been built following Babbage's own design criteria.

David Hilbert

Jan 23 1862 - Feb 14 1943 Born Knigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Died Gttingen, Germany.

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Hilbert received his Ph.D. from the University of Knigsberg and was a member of staff there from 1886 to 1895 In 1895 he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Gttingen, where he continued to teach for the rest of his life. Hilbert's first work was on invariant theory, in 1888 he proved his famous Basis Theorem. First he gave an existence proof but, after Cayley, Gordan, Lindemann and others were baffled, in 1892 Hilbert produced a constructive proof which satisfied everyone. In 1893 while still at Knigsberg he began a work "Zahlbericht" on algebraic number theory. The "Zahlbericht" (1897) is a brilliant synthesis of the work of Kummer, Kronecker and Dedekind but contains a wealth of Hilbert's own ideas. The ideas of the present day subject of 'Class field theory' are all contained in this work. Hilbert's work in geometry had the greatest influence in that area after Euclid. A systematic study of the axioms of Euclidean geometry led Hilbert to propose 21 such axioms and he analysed their significance. He published "Grundlagen der Geometrie" in 1899 putting geometry on a formal axiomatic setting. His famous 23 Paris problems challenged (and still today challenges) mathematicians to solve fundamental questions. In 1915 Hilbert discovered the correct field equation for general relativity before Einstein but never claimed priority. In 1934 and 1939 two volumes of "Grundlagen der Mathematik" were published which were intended to lead to a 'proof theory' a direct check for the consistency of mathematics. Gde's paper of 1931 showed that this aim is impossible.
Hilbert contributed to many branches of mathematics, including invariants, algebraic number fields, functional analysis, integral equations, mathematical physics, and the calculus of variations.