Selected Plus articles on mathematicians and their life and work

• Mathematical lives — a selection of mathematicians through the ages.



• Ada Lovelace: visions of today — the pioneering woman mathematician Ada Lovelace foresaw computer-generated music and graphics, despite living long before the computer era.



• Games, life and the game of life — When we finally meet the Martians, John Conway believes they are going to want to talk mathematics. He talks to Plus about his Life game, artificial life and what we will have in common with extraterrestrials.



• The origins of proof: Kepler's proofs — Johannes Kepler is now chiefly remembered as a mathematical astronomer who discovered three laws that describe the motion of the planets. This article explores Kepler's astronomy.



• Against the odds — A look at the remarkable life of pioneering mathematician Emmy Amalie Noether. Despite her constant struggles to make her way in a man's world, she made significant contributions to the development of modern algebra.



• Genius, stupidity and genius again — an account of the tragically short but inspiringly productive life of a true original: Evariste Galois.



• Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all — a run-down of the life and work of Leonhard Euler, the most prolific mathematician of all time.



• We must know, we will know — an article on the revolutionary works of David Hilbert, and last year's Plus new writers award runner-up.



• Gödel and the limits of logic — Kurt Gödel is a tragic figure who established the limits of mathematics and is hailed as one of the founders of computer science.



• Einstein as icon — not much explaining needed for this one!



• A conversation with Freeman Dyson — The distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, tells Plus why he is an optimist, what makes life interesting and why old-fashioned maths is what you need for physics.



• Stephen Hawking's sixty years in a nutshell — Well, another one that needs no introduction!



• No place like home for Martin Rees — Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees gives Plus a whistlestop tour of some of the more extraordinary features of our cosmos, and explains how lucky we are that the universe is the way it is.



• Looking at life with Gerardus t'Hooft — Nobel Prizewinning Physicist Professor Gerardus 't Hooft has always been fascinated by the mathematical mysteries of nature. He tells Plus about his early life, and what our Universe might really be like.



• Roger Penrose: a knight on the tiles — Will we ever be able to make computers that think and feel? If not, why not? And what has all this got to do with tiles? Plus talks to Sir Roger Penrose about all this and more.



• Catching waves with Kip Thorne — What happens when one black hole meets another? Professor Kip Thorne shows us how to eavesdrop on these cosmic events by watching for telltale gravitational waves.



• RIP Claude Shannon — Claude Shannon was the founder of Information Theory, which is the basis of modern telecommunications.



• Daniel Bernoulli and the making of the fluid equation — Daniel Bernoulli discovered the relationship between the density of a fluid in a pipe, the speed it is travelling in the pipe and the pressure exerted by the fluid against the walls of the pipe. This is the story of what happened.

• Competition home page
• Guidelines for school entrants
• Guidelines for university student and general public entrants
• Download competition poster
• Download entry pack (PDF or Word) (includes guidelines, rules, entry form and copyright form)
• Subscribe to the Plus fortnightly newsletter for competition updates