Stanislaw Ulam

Stanislaw Ulam's work spanned both applied and fundamental mathematics, use of probability for building workaday commodities like the H-bomb, and finding intriguing problems in number theory. He also left a well-written biography which includes his escape from Poland in the nick of time down to the mid-1970's when he was a math professor at the University of Colorado.

Although volumes are generally easy to find, many of us tend to shy away from mathematical autobiographies. An alternative is to click here and read a bit more about Stan plus a little about one of the more interesting "conjectures" of number theory that often bears his name.