I have compiled a (very) short list of some of the important Welsh scientists and mathematicians throughout history. They are in no particular order.

Alfred Russel Wallace
Born 8 January 1823, Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales.
Died 7 November 1913 (aged 90) Broadstone, Dorset, England.

He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection, which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species.

Brian David Josephson
Born 4 January 1940 Cardiff, Wales.

He is known as a pioneer of the theoretical undesrstanding of superconductivity. He was awarded 1/2 share of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics for “his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects”.

William Jones
Born 1675, Llanfihangel Tre’r Beirdd, Isle of Anglesey
Died 3 July 1749

He proposed the use of the symbol π (the Greek letter pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Robert Recorde
Born ca. 1512, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales
Died 1558 London, England

He introduced the “equals” sign (=) and also the “plus” sign(+) in 1557.

Elmer Gethin Rees
Born 1941 Llandybie, Carmarthenshire, Wales

A mathematician who has published in a diverse range of areas including topology, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, linear algebra and Morse theory.

Lyndon Evans
Born 1945 Aberdare Wales

Project leader of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Born 18 May 1872 Trellech, Monmouthshire, UK
Died 2 February 1970 (aged 97) Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK

He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, which was an attempt to set all mathematics on the basis of logic.

The Institute of Physics has commissioned an artistic partnership between physicist Ben Still and artist Lyndall Phelps. A Victorian ice well beneath the London Canal Museum is to become a subterranean physics-inspired art installation this summer.

London Canal Museum, image by Oxyman.

Ben Still is a particle physicist based at Queen Mary, University London. He works on Super-Kamiokande, a neutrino detector which is part of the T2K experiment in Japan.

Link
Victorian ice well to be home for detector-inspired art, IOP News

As you may remember, back in 2010 Science is Vital organised a petition to protect the UK science budget. Thankfully funding for science and engineering was ring-fenced and frozen instead of being slashed.

However, inflation and cuts elsewhere in the UK government research budgets have eroded investment in science. This is making it difficult for the UK to maintain its reputation for scientific research. In June, the Government will announce its budget for 2015–16. As such Science is Vital has organised another petition to urge the Government to set a long-term target of raising R&D spending to at least 0.8% of GDP.

Science is Vital published a letter in the Daily Telegraph signed by over 50 leading scientists in the UK including Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox.

You do not have to be a scientist or similar to support this campaign, all you need to help is have some concern about how the UK may loose its world standing as a hub of scientific knowledge.

So on behalf of Dr Jenny Rohn (Chair Science is Vital) and all other interested parties I ask you to sign the petition and let the Government know that Science is Vital. (Follow the link below)

The current spend
According to Science is Vital [1]

• The current UK spend on public-funded research is 0.57% of GDP.
• The eurozone average is 0.74% of GDP, whilst the EU-27 average is 0.69%.

Reference
[1] Show me the numbers, Science is Vital Blog

Link
Petition: increase Governmental spend on R&D to 0.8% GDP