Famous Canadian Mathematicians

Part of the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 list of young scientists, Canadian-American mathematician John Urschel has previously had an illustrious football career as part of the NFL team Baltimore Ravens. He played with the Ravens without revealing that he was a full-time graduate student at MIT.

Canadian mathematician Robert Langlands is best known for his Langlands program. The Yale alumnus later taught at Yale and Princeton. His contributions include research on number theory and representation theory, and he has received several honors, including an Abel Prize and the Order of Canada.

Canadian mathematician Albert W. Tucker is remembered for his contribution to the field of operations research, primarily non-linear programming and game theory. The Princeton alumnus was also associated with Harvard as a research fellow and later taught math at Princeton. John Nash was one of his PhD students.

A.M. Turing Award-winning American-Canadian computer scientist Stephen Cook is known for his contribution to the development of the computational complexity theory and laid down the Cook–Levin theorem. The Harvard alumnus has also taught at institutes such as the University of Toronto. He is also an avid sailor and violinist.

Initially a herbalist’s apprentice, Simon Newcomb later deviated to mathematics and astronomy. Born to a schoolteacher, he had loved math since age 5 but wasn’t formally educated. He later joined Harvard University, taught math at the US Navy, detected locations of celestial bodies, and wrote a science-fiction novel, too.

Born to working-class parents who were employed with the upkeep of the Fitzroy House stables, W. T. Tutte completed his high school studies on scholarships. Initially interested in physical chemistry, he later focused on math and became a genius codebreaker. He deciphered several intricate German military codes, such as FISH.

British-Canadian mathematician Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter is regarded as one of the most influential geometers ever born. He showed immense skill in both math and music as a child. During his 6 decades at the University of Toronto, he wrote several books. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society.

A.M. Turing Award-winning Canadian computer scientist William Kahan was the man behind the IEEE 754-1985 specification for floating-point calculation, which makes sure computations on different computers produce identical results. He also laid down the Kahan summation algorithm. The University of California, Berkeley professor is also an ACM Fellow.

Born to working-class Polish immigrants in Canada, Irving Kaplansky later became one of the first to get a Putnam Fellowship to Harvard University. A mathematics professor, he made major contributions to areas such as group theory. A skilled musician, too, he had played in bands and composed math-themed songs.

Nathan Divinsky was a Canadian chess master, mathematician, chess official, and university professor. Divinsky achieved international recognition when he married Kim Campbell who served as the 19th Prime Minister of Canada. As a chess player, Divinsky represented his country at the Chess Olympiad on two occasions. As a chess writer, Nathan Divinsky contributed to several Canadian chess magazines.