Unsung Heroes and Heroines
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Gladys Mae West
Gladys Mae West (née Brown; born October 27, 1930) is an American Mathematician. She is known for her contributions to mathematical modelling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of satellite geodesy models, that were later incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS).
West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018. She was awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for the development of satellite geodesy models.
Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam (1038 - 1131) was an Islamic scholar and polymath. Although he is today best known for his beautiful poem, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam", which was translated into English by Edward FitzGerald in 1859, he was also an outstanding Mathematician.
He compiled astronomical tables and contributed to calendar reform and discovered a geometrical method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle.
Khayyam measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days, a result which is outstandingly accurate. The length of the year today it is 365.242190 days.
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276 -195/4 BC) was a was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria.
He is now mostly remembered for the eponymous Sieve of Eratosthenes,
a simple algorithm for producing prime numbers.
He is less well known for his astonishingly accurate estimation of the earth's circumference.
