Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827) was a French mathematician and scientist. He is sometimes called the "Newton of France", because of his wide range of interests, and the enormous impact of his work.

In a five-volume book, Laplace translated problems in celestial mechanics from geometry to calculus.

This opened up a wide range of new strategies for understanding our universe. He proposed that the solar system developed from a rotating disk of dust.

Laplace also pioneered the field of probability, and showed how probability can help us understand data from the physical world.

Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736 – 1813) was an Italian mathematician who succeeded Leonard Euler as the director of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

He worked on analysis and the calculus of variations, invented new methods for solving differential equations, proved theorems in number theory, and laid the foundations of group theory.

Lagrange also wrote about classical and celestial mechanics, and helped establish the metric system in Europe.

Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783) was one the greatest mathematicians in history. His work spans all areas of mathematics, and he wrote 80 volumes of research.

Euler was born in Switzerland and studied in Basel, but lived most of his life in Berlin, Prussia, and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Euler invented much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, and made important discoveries in calculus, analysis, graph theory, physics, astronomy, and many other topics.

Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866) was a German mathematician working in the fields of analysis and number theory. He came up with the first rigorous definition of integration, studied differential geometry which laid the foundation for general relativity, and made groundbreaking discoveries regarding the distribution of prime numbers.

Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) was an English mathematician and is often called the "father of computer science".

During the Second World War, Turing played a critical role in breaking the Enigma code used by the German military, as part of the "Government Code and Cypher School" at Bletchley Park. This helped the Allies win the war, and may have saved millions of lives.

He also invented the Turing machine, a mathematical model of a general purpose computer, and the Turing test, which can be used to judge the ability of artificial intelligence.

Turing was gay, which was still a crime during his life, and meant that his groundbreaking accomplishments were never fully recognised. He committed suicide at the age of 41.

The French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912) is often described as the last universalist, meaning that he worked in every field of mathematics known during his lifetime.

Poincaré is one of the founders of the field of Topology, and he came up with the Poincaré conjecture. This was one of the famous unsolved problems in mathematics, until it was proven in 2003 by Grigori Perelman

He also found a partial solution for the "three body problem", and discovered that the motion of three stars or planets in space can be completely unpredictable. This laid the foundation for modern Chaos theory.

Poincaré was the first to propose gravitational waves, and his work on Lorentz transformations was the basis upon which Albert Einstein built his theory of special relativity.

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) was an English writer and mathematician. Together with Charles Babbage, she worked on the Analytical Engine an early, mechanical computer.

She also wrote the first algorithm to run on such a machine (to calculate Bernoulli numbers), making her the first computer programmer in history.

Lovelace described her approach as "poetical science", and spent much time thinking about the impact of technology on society.