Joaquim Gomes de Souza

Joaquim Gomes de Souza "Souzinha" (15 February 1829, in Itapecuru Mirim – 1 June 1864, in London) was a Brazilian mathematician who worked on numerical analysis and differential equations. He was a pioneer on the study of mathematics in Brazil, and was described by José Leite Lopes as "the first great mathematician from Brazil".

In 1844, Gomes de Souza enrolled at the Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro (now a part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) to study medicine. He had a deep love for the natural sciences, which led him to also be interested in mathematics, and so he started to learn mathematics as a self-taught in parallel with his studies of medicine. (Dissertation about the means of investigating new celestial objects without the aid of direct observations).

He later went to the Sorbonne, in France, where he continued his mathematical studies. He was a personal friend of Cauchy, of whose classes he attended (in one of them, Souza spotted a mathematical mistake by Cauchy, he then asked his license and corrected it on the blackboard). In 1856, he obtained a doctorate in medicine from Paris Faculty of Medicine. In the same year, he presented his mathematical works at the Académie des sciences.

He died at the age of 35, in London. The cause of death was a disease of the lung.

Writings Resoluções das Equações Numéricas (1850, in Portuguese) Recuel de Memoires d’Analise Mathematiques (1857, in French) Anthologie universelle (1859, in French) Mélanges de calcul intégral (1882, posthumous, in French)