Pi Day: meet four of the most outstanding Peruvian mathematicians

Concytec joined the big party for International Mathematics Day, also known as Pi Day, which is celebrated on 14 March all over the world. On this occasion, he paid tribute to four notable Peruvian mathematicians, including a woman: the outstanding and award-winning mathematician Yboon García Ramos.

Did you know that the success of Internet search engines comes from their brilliant mathematical algorithm? Or that your WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, thanks to number theory? What's more, did you know that decoding the human genome was also a triumph of mathematics? Mathematics is everywhere and thanks to its application we have achieved the technological revolution we are experiencing.

Throughout the history of Peru, great mathematicians have stood out who, from the field of research and teaching, have contributed to the development of the country. Here are four Peruvian mathematicians representative of this noble science.

One of the first was Mariano Damaso Beraun, who was born in Huánuco in 1813 and graduated as a Doctor of Mathematical Sciences in 1837, when he was 24 years old. Not only was he an extraordinary teacher at the Convictorio de San Carlos where he taught mathematics and physics, but in 1861 he published his famous “ESSAY ON THE TRISECTION OF THE ANGLE”, discovering a new method of dividing the angle into three parts. This great achievement made him Peru's first Mathematician Sage.

Another great national mathematician was Federico Villarreal (1850 — 1923). When he was 23, he discovered a method to raise any polynomial to any power. From there, Villarreal's formula was studied by several mathematicians, including the wise man Cristobal de Losada and Puga who considered it the perfect equation. He was an educator, engineer, physicist, soldier during the war and served as Dean and later Rector of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, where he was also the first doctor of mathematics to graduate from this house of studies.

In the 20th century, we highlight Harald Helfgott (Lima, 1977), the mathematician who solved a 271-year-old problem. In 2013, he managed to prove Goldbach's weak conjecture, which stated that any odd number greater than five can be expressed as the sum of three prime numbers. With this achievement, he managed to get his name around the world, becoming the first Latin American and youngest scientist to win the Humboldt Chair.

Finally, there is Yboon García Ramos, a leading mathematician graduated from UNI, who is an example of women's empowerment in a profession occupied mostly by men. She went on to specialize in applied mathematics, mathematical economics and nonlinear analysis.

For her career and work in research, with more than a dozen scientific publications, in 2019 Dr. Garcia received the prize “Sofia Kovalevskaya: Peruvian Outstanding Senior Researcher in Mathematics”.

On the subject of Pi Day, Concytec, through its Pop Ciencia program that is broadcast via Facebook, invites workshops, games and talks organized by the Community of Science Disseminators, Doing Science and ACS Peru, from Monday 14 to 19 march.

ABOUT PI DAY

PI is a number, which is obtained by dividing the length of a circle by its diameter. It is considered an irrational number, and also as a mathematical constant of great value. It is represented by the Greek letter π.

In addition, it is widely used to solve mathematical problems, physics and also in the world of engineering, cosmology and physics. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest representatives of the mathematical world.

On International Pi Day, celebrated on March 14 every year, mathematicians around the world commemorate the constant Pi. For millennia, mathematicians have enjoyed calculating the record digits of Pi. These calculations were done by hand until the 1900s and hit records in the 500s.

To understand Pi, we must go back a few thousand years and study this enigmatic number. Archimedes of Syracuse, one of the greatest mathematicians in the ancient world, was the first to calculate the value of Pi and the first to expose it to the world.

However, initially William Oughtred gave it the Greek letter name in a book published in 1647, and was later adopted by the scientific community when Leonhard Euler used the sign in 1737.

People around the world who have a great passion for mathematics are now commemorating this day.

A very interesting fact is that Pi Day not only stays in mathematics, but also reaches pop culture, with people from all over the world participating in events, jokes, observations and making food contests.

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