Explanation: In our math building is a bulletin board titled "This Week in Mathematics" -- you can see both a web version of the bulletin board and a more detailed explanation. The bulletin board has several sections: this week's cool math link, this week's birthday, this week's math problem, and our department's calendar for the week. I change the four sheets each week; that's one of my duties as our department's webmaster.
I've mostly been taking the biographies from the MacTutor website. They have the biographies of 1100 famous mathematicians from history, indexed alphabetically and also chronologically. That averages around 20 per week, so I follow my own taste in choosing one of those approximately 20 for this week's birthday. I don't always choose the "best mathematician" -- other criteria enter into my decisions too, such as who has the most interesting biography.
The purpose of the bulletin board is to attract the attention of students walking past it, and perhaps lure some of them into mathematics. It recently occurred to me that one of the other purposes is to provide role models. Consequently, it would be a good idea to give additional weight to famous mathematicians from ethnic groups that have been underrepresented in our history books and/or denied opportunities to achieve in the past. For instance, until recently, women were mostly prevented from doing mathematics, so relatively few women have become famous in mathematics. We want to end this sort of discrimination, so those few famous women mathematicians should be publicized; they provide role models and give present-day young women the message that they can become mathematicians too. For this reason, Sofia Kovalevskaya (born January 15) gets precedence over all the mathematicians of comparable or greater level of achievement who have birthdays during the same week -- e.g., Schur (Januar 10) and Tarski (January 14).
In addition to women, I would like to collect biographies of other famous mathematicians who were not male white Caucasians. I am in the process of doing this now. I would be grateful for any suggestions that anyone has. (At present, I'm working from the list gathered by The Math Forum.) However, I will stress the word "famous" in this criterion; I will not list anyone simply because he or she belongs to an underrepresented ethnic group. This makes it admittedly rather difficult for me to form my list, since I must exercise some subjectivity in deciding who is sufficiently "famous." ... Also, for my purposes, the mathematician must have a known birthday; this excludes most mathematicians who lived more than a thousand years ago.
The links below are arranged to make it easier for me to find the biographies that I need. Each week, when choosing the week's birthday, I check the last list on this page and see if I want to give extra priority to the person on that list. At present, most of these links go to the Mactutor site; but I may add other links as I find them.
Famous women mathematicians, arranged alphabetically
(Taken from the MacTutor website, which has a web page devoted to
femaile
mathematicians. After a while, perhaps I'll add some links from the huge
Agnes Scott
College collection, but unfortunately they have an intermittent
server.)
| May 16, | Agnesi |
| Nov 19, | Bari |
| Dec 17, | Cartwright |
| Dec 17, | Chatelet |
| Mar 15, | Chisholm-Young |
| Jan 13, | Cox |
| Jul 16, | Flügge-Lotz |
| Apr 1, | Germain |
| Jul 24, | Hamill |
| Mar 16, | Herschel, C. |
| Dec 9, | Hopper |
| about 370 a.d., | Hypatia |
| Jan 31, | Janovskaja |
| Aug 10, | Karp |
| Jan 15, | Kovalevskaya |
| Dec 10, | Lovelace |
| Apr 23, | Macintyre |
| Jan 10, | Moufang |
| Feb 12, | Neumann, H. |
| Mar 23, | Noether |
| in 1905, | Péter |
| Jun 20, | Rasiowa |
| Dec 8, | Robinson |
| Jun 8, | Scott |
| Jun 8, | Stott |
| Dec 26, | Somerville |
| Jun 8, | Stott |
| Mar 22, | Swain |
| Aug 30, | Taussky-Todd |
| May 5, | Wheeler |
Famous black mathematicians, arranged alphabetically
I hope to add to this list soon. Unfortunately, the MacTutor website
hasn't been very helpful on this question. Most of these links are
taken from the
Mathematicians
of the African Diaspora web site, or from the
Faces of
Science website.
| Nov 9, | Banneker |
| Feb 22, | Bharucha-Reid |
| Apr 24, | Blackwell |
| May 1, | Granville |
| Aug 26, | Johnson |
| Jan 3, | Pierre |
| Sep 1, | Roberts |
| Jul 22, | St.Mary |
| Nov 27, | Wilkins |
| Sep 20, | Williams, Floyd |
| Apr 22, | Williams, Scott |
Other famous minority mathematicians, arranged alphabetically
(I hope to add to this list soon. The word "minority" may not be
an entirely accurate one. What I mean, simply, is other mathematicians
who are not white Caucasian males from Europe or USA or Canada.)
| Dec 22, | Ramanujan |
All of the links above, listed by birthday
| Jan 3, | Pierre |
| Jan 10, | Moufang |
| Jan 13, | Cox |
| Jan 15, | Kovalevskaya |
| Jan 31, | Janovskaja |
| Feb 12, | Neumann, Hanna |
| Feb 22, | Bharucha-Reid |
| Mar 15, | Chisholm Young |
| Mar 16, | Herschel, Caroline |
| Mar 22, | Swain |
| Mar 23, | Noether, Emmy |
| Apr 1, | Germain |
| Apr 22, | Williams, Scott |
| Apr 23, | Macintyre |
| Apr 24, | Blackwell |
| May 1, | Granville |
| May 5, | Wheeler |
| May 16, | Agnesi |
| Jun 8, | Scott |
| Jun 8, | Stott |
| Jun 20, | Rasiowa |
| Jul 16, | Flügge-Lotz |
| Jul 22, | St.Mary |
| Jul 24, | Hamill |
| Aug 10, | Karp |
| Aug 26, | Johnson |
| Aug 30, | Taussky-Todd |
| Sep 1, | Roberts |
| Sep 20, | Williams, Floyd |
| Nov 9, | Banneker |
| Nov 19, | Bari |
| Nov 27, | Wilkins |
| Dec 8, | Robinson |
| Dec 9, | Hopper |
| Dec 10, | Lovelace |
| Dec 17, | Cartwright |
| Dec 17, | Chatelet |
| Dec 22, | Ramanujan |
| Dec 26, | Somerville |