Births on February 27

L. E. J. Brouwer, Dutch mathematician, philosopher, and academic (d. 1966)

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (; Dutch: [ˈlœy̯tsə(n) ɛɣˈbɛrtəs jɑn ˈbrʌu̯ər]; 27 February 1881 – 2 December 1966), usually cited as L. E. J. Brouwer but known to his friends as Bertus, was a Dutch mathematician and philosopher, who worked in topology, set theory, measure theory and complex analysis. Regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, he is known as the founder of modern topology, particularly for establishing his fixed-point theorem and the topological invariance of dimension.Brouwer also became a major figure in the philosophy of intuitionism, a constructivist school of mathematics in which math is argued to be a cognitive construct rather than a type of objective truth. This position led to the Brouwer–Hilbert controversy, in which Brouwer sparred with his formalist colleague David Hilbert. Brouwer's ideas were subsequently taken up by his student Arend Heyting and Hilbert's former student Hermann Weyl.