George Pólya (December 13, 1888 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian mathematician (natively: Pólya György) who worked in many fields of mathematics, including combinatorics, analysis, probability and arithmetic. He was the author of a number of books on the heuristics of mathematical research, that is, methods to formulate and solve problems. Against the trend of considering mathematical reasoning to be wholly deductive, Pólya wrote on analogical and inductive reasoning in mathematics. He was also writing about mathematics education.