As of my last knowledge update in October 2021, there isn't a widely recognized scientist named Robert E. Johnson in the scientific community. It's possible that there are individuals with that name, but they may not have come to prominence in a specific field. If you're referring to a particular Robert E.
The study of mathematicians can be categorized by their countries of origin or the nations they were associated with during their careers. Here’s a brief overview of some notable mathematicians by former country: ### Ancient Greece - **Euclid**: Often referred to as the "father of geometry." - **Pythagoras**: Known for the Pythagorean theorem. - **Archimedes**: Made significant contributions to geometry, calculus, and the understanding of physical laws.
"Moldovan mathematicians" generally refers to mathematicians from Moldova, a country in Eastern Europe. While the nation may be small, it has produced a number of notable mathematicians who have contributed to various fields of mathematics. The country has a history of engagement in mathematics education and research, especially during the Soviet era when many Moldovan mathematicians were active in academia and participated in international mathematical communities.
New Zealand has a rich history of contributions to mathematics and is home to several notable mathematicians. Some prominent New Zealand mathematicians include: 1. **A. W. (Alex) W. Pycroft** - Known for his work in combinatorial geometry and mathematics education. 2. **Marilyn Anne S. Hawkes** - Noted for her research in algebra and group theory.
Robert McMahan might refer to several individuals, as it is not an uncommon name. Without more specific context, it's difficult to identify exactly which Robert McMahan you are referring to. If you have a particular field (such as academia, business, arts, etc.
South African mathematicians have made significant contributions to various fields of mathematics, both historically and in contemporary research. They include prominent figures who have excelled in theoretical mathematics, applied mathematics, mathematical physics, statistics, and more. Some notable South African mathematicians include: 1. **George P. E. M. Van der Linde** - Known for his work in the field of algebra.
The term "Spanish mathematicians" refers to individuals from Spain or of Spanish descent who have made significant contributions to the field of mathematics. Throughout history, Spain has produced several notable mathematicians who have influenced various areas of mathematics. Here are a few prominent Spanish mathematicians: 1. **Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios** (1548–1614) - Known for his work in algebra and for publishing several important mathematical texts during the Renaissance.
Tajikistani mathematicians are mathematicians from Tajikistan or those who have roots in Tajik culture and heritage. Tajikistan, a country in Central Asia, has a rich history of intellectual contributions, including in the field of mathematics. Throughout history, mathematicians and scholars from the region have made notable contributions to various mathematical disciplines.
Tunisian mathematicians have made significant contributions to various fields of mathematics, and Tunisia has a rich intellectual tradition in mathematics. Some notable aspects include: 1. **Historical Contributions**: Historically, the region has been influenced by the mathematics of ancient civilizations, including the Greeks and Arabs. The Islamic Golden Age saw substantial advancements in mathematics, and Tunisian scholars participated in this tradition.
Venezuelan mathematicians are individuals from Venezuela who specialize in the field of mathematics, contributing to various branches such as algebra, analysis, topology, applied mathematics, and more. The country has produced several notable mathematicians who have made significant contributions to their respective fields. Some prominent Venezuelan mathematicians include: 1. **Carlos D. Castillo-Chavez** - Known for his work in mathematical biology, particularly in epidemiology and the study of infectious diseases.
Sara Imari Walker is an American astrophysicist known for her work in astrobiology, the study of life in the universe, and the origins of life. She is particularly interested in understanding the conditions under which life might arise and evolve, particularly in extraterrestrial environments. Walker has been involved in research related to the search for biosignatures, the characteristics of life that can be detected on other planets, and the development of theoretical frameworks for the emergence of life.
FreeFem by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Started in 1987 and written in Pascal, by the French from Pierre and Marie Curie University, the French are really strong in numerical analysis.
Ciro wasn't expecting it to be as old. Ported to C++ in 1992.
The fact that French wrote it can be seen in the documentation, for example doc.freefem.org/tutorials/index.html uses file extension mycode.edp instead of mycode.pde where dep stands for "Équation aux dérivées partielles".
Besides the painful build, using FreeFem is relatively simple, as can be seen from the examples on the website.
They do use a domain-specific language on the examples, which appears to be the main/only interface, which is a bad thing, Ciro would rather have a Python API as the "main API", which is more the approach taken by the FEniCS Project, but so be it. This domain-specific language business means that you always stumble upon basic stuff you want to do but can't, and then you have to think about how to share data between the simulation and the plotting. The plotting notably is super complex and they can't implement all of what people want, upstream examples often offload that to gnuplot. This is potentially a big advantage of FEniCS Project.
It nice though that they do have some graphics out of the box, as that allows to quickly debug common problems.
Uses variational formulation of a partial differential equation, which is not immediately obvious to beginners? The introduction doc.freefem.org/tutorials/poisson.html gives an ultra quick example, but your are mostly on your own with that.
On Ubuntu 20.04, the freefem is a bit out-of-date (3.5.8, there isn't even a tag for that in the GitHub repo, and refs/tags/release_3_10 is from 2010!) and fails to run the examples from the website. It did work with the example package though, but the output does not have color, which makes me sad :-)
sudo apt install freefem freefem-examples
freefem /usr/share/doc/freefem-examples/heat.pde
So let's just compile the latest v4.6 it from source, on Ubuntu 20.04:
sudo apt build-dep freefem
git clone https://github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources
cd FreeFem-sources
# Post v4.6 with some fixes.
git checkout 3df0e2370d9752801ac744b11307b14e16743a44

# Won't apply automatically due to tab hell.
# https://superuser.com/questions/607410/how-to-copy-paste-tab-characters-via-the-clipboard-into-terminal-session-on-gnom
git apply <<'EOS'
diff --git a/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile b/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile
index dc62ab06..13cd3253 100644
--- a/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile
+++ b/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile
@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ $(SRCDIR)/tag-make-real:$(SRCDIR)/tag-conf-real
 $(SRCDIR)/tag-install-real :$(SRCDIR)/tag-make-real
     cd $(SRCDIR) && $(MAKE) PETSC_DIR=$(PETSC_DIR) PETSC_ARCH=fr install
     -test -x "`type -p otool`" && make changer
-    cd $(SRCDIR) && $(MAKE) PETSC_DIR=$(PETSC_DIR) PETSC_ARCH=fr check
+    #cd $(SRCDIR) && $(MAKE) PETSC_DIR=$(PETSC_DIR) PETSC_ARCH=fr check
     test -e $(DIR_INSTALL_REAL)/include/petsc.h
     test -e $(DIR_INSTALL_REAL)/lib/petsc/conf/petscvariables
     touch $@
@@ -293,7 +293,6 @@ $(SRCDIR)/tag-tar:$(PACKAGE)
     -tar xzf $(PACKAGE)
     patch -p1 < petsc-hpddm.patch
 ifeq ($(WIN32DLLTARGET),)
-    patch -p1 < petsc-metis.patch
 endif
     touch $@
 $(PACKAGE):
EOS

autoreconf -i
./configure --enable-download --enable-optim --prefix="$(pwd)/../FreeFem-install"
./3rdparty/getall -a
cd 3rdparty/ff-petsc
make petsc-slepc
cd -
./reconfigure
make -j`nproc`
make install
cd ../FreeFem-install
PATH="${PATH}:$(pwd)/bin" ./bin/FreeFem++ ../FreeFem-sources/examples/tutorial/
Ciro's initial build experience was a bit painful, possibly because it was done on a relatively new Ubuntu 20.04 as of June 2020, but in the end it worked: github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources/issues/141
The main/only dependency appears to be PETSc which is used by default, which is a good sign, as that library appears to automatically parallelize a single input to several backends (single CPU, MPI, GPU) so you know things will scale up as you reach simulations.
The problem is that it compiling such a complex dependency opens up much more room for hard to solve compilation errors, and takes a lot more time.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact