Ask HN: Help me choose a mathematician to write about

You should write about Lagrange: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange

I kept running across things named after him or invented by him in different areas (Lagrange points in orbital mechanics, the Lagrange Method in my Calc IV class, variation of parameters in my Diff Equ class.)

He isn't such an obvious choice like Goedel, Euler or Newton, yet he has made contributions of a pretty amazing breadth and depth. That combination could make for a paper that's presents refreshingly new info while also allowing you to talk about a lot of different areas.

Clickable http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3ydcK31R-ctMmFiZGI1NGUt...

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3ydcK31R-ctOGJiZTRjZGQt...

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3ydcK31R-ctYzcyMjY0NzEt...

For a mathematician with an interesting and unusual life story, I'd go with Srinivasa Ramanujan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Of course, there are more traditional "greats" like Leonhard Euler, Leibniz, Euclid, or Riemann.

I vote for Leonhard Euler.

Paul Erdős would probably be fun to write about.

Benoit Mandelbrot best known for his fractels but a contributor in a number of other fields.

Kurt Godel, most definitely

hands down, John von Neumann: the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. Information theory, computer architecture, quantum mechanics, game theory, pure math - he did just about everything.