How to pronounce the names of some mathematicians and physicists

This page is an attempt to gather some pronunciations of mathematicians and physicists who are sometimes mispronounced, and give a loose guide to the approximately correct pronunciations in English.

The approximate pronunciations are based on British English. For example the "NERT" in Noether is pronounced without an R sound. The word stress is indicated by capitals.

This page arose from learning the names of people used in Japan, written phonetically, and noticing that they were often different from what people seemed to be using. For example Greta Thunberg turns into "Gureta Toonberi" in Japanese, which is closer to the original pronunciation, but on the other hand Sylvester Stallone used to be called "Shirubesuta- Sutaro-ne" with a false "ne" on the end, so the Japanese versions can't be regarded as definitive.

Abel: AH-bell (Not EY-bell)

The pronounciation of Abel's name is preserved in the word "abelian", but with the stress on the second syllable.

Bernoulli: burn-OO-ee (Not burn-OO-lee)

Cauchy: CO-she (Not Cow-she)

Descartes: DAY-car (Not des carts)

Despite this, "cartesian" is pronounced "car-TEASE-ian".

Dirichlet: di-REEK-lay (Not di-REESH-lay)

Euler: OIL-er (Not YOU-ler)

Fermat: FIRM-ah (Not FIRM-at)

Fermi: FAIR-me (Not FIRM-me)

In practice the "FIRM-me" pronounciation has become standard, and is widely used in terms like fermion, Fermi energy, and Fermi-Dirac statistics, but in the interests of pedantry I added this.

Fibonacci: fib-on-ARCHIE

Galois: GAL-wah

Jacobi: YACK-oh-bee (Not JACK-oh-bee)

Lebesgue: le-BEG

Leibniz: LIBE-nits (Not LEEB-nits)

Lie: Lee

The pronunciation is preserved in "Lie groups", pronounced "lee groups".

Liouville: lee-OO-ville

Mach: Mark (Not Mack)

Noether: NERT-er (Not Noh-ther, Now-ther)

German doesn't have a "th" sound.

Polya: POH-yah

The L is silent in the original Hungarian.

Runge: RUNG-er

Stieltjes: STILL-chess

Sylow: SIGH-love

Von Neumann: von NOY-man

Web links

Pronunciation of Mathematicians' Names
Most of the recordings are OK, but some of them are a bit wrong, e.g. Kakutani is not pronounced by a Japanese person.
Names of prominent European mathematicians and how to pronounce them (PDF)
PDF file