Thursday 18 April 2024
Pandigital Primes
In mathematics, a pandigital number is an integer that in a given base has among its significant digits each digit used in the base at least once. In base ten such a number might be 123456789098765444321. If the number is prime, which is really cool, it is called a pandigital prime. And if it uses the digits exactly once each, which is even cooler, .... Unfortunately, in base ten, which is where a lot of us hang out the most, you can't have such a number. Any ordering of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,and 0 will be divisible by three, and hence - NOT prime. Even if you leave out the zero, you can't make one with the first nine digits either for the same reason.( I know..."Ahhhhh".)(But you can have all of 1 through 9 if the tenth digit is not zero but 1, .... 1234567891 is Prime.)
On This Day in Math - April 18
It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
~Albert Einstein
The 108th day of the year; 108 can be written as the sum of a cube and a square (a^3 + b^2) in two ways. This is the smallest number with this property. *Prime Curios
AND 108 = 1¹ • 2² • 3³ *jim wilder @wilderlab
The concatenation of 108 with its previous and next number is prime, i.e., 108107 and 108109 are primes.
108 is the smallest possible sum for a set of six distinct primes such that the sum of any five is prime: {5, 7, 11, 19, 29, 37}. (Don't just sit there, there must be another that is larger. Find it.
Today and tomorrow are both examples of ambinumerals, numbers which form a different number when rotated 180o 108 becomes 801. Numerals like 181 which stay the same when rotated are called strobogrammatic numerals
EVENTS
1557 Maurolico completed the first volume of his Arithmetic at three o’clock in the morning on Easter Sunday. [Jean Cassinet, Mathematics from Manuscript to Print, 1300–1600, p. 162; Thanks to Dave Kullman]*VFR Throughout his lifetime, he made contributions to the fields of geometry, optics, conics, mechanics, music, and astronomy. He edited the works of classical authors including Archimedes, Apollonius, Autolycus, Theodosius and Serenus. He also composed his own unique treatises on mathematics and mathematical science.
His Arithmeticorum libri duo (1575) includes the first known proof by mathematical induction. (Yea!)
His De Sphaera Liber Unus (1575) contains a fierce attack against Copernicus' heliocentrism, in which Maurolico writes that Copernicus "deserved a whip or a scourge rather than a refutation". (Boo!)
His unpublished manuscript Compaginationes solidorum regularium (1537) includes a statement of Euler's formula V-E + F = 2 for the Platonic solids, long before Leonhard Euler formulated it more generally for convex polyhedra in 1752.
Maurolico's astronomical observations include a sighting of the supernova that appeared in Cassiopeia in 1572. Tycho Brahe published details of his observations in 1574; the supernova is now known as Tycho's Supernova. *Wik
Star map of the constellation Cassiopeia showing the position (labelled I) of the supernova of 1572; from Tycho Brahe's De nova stella
1694 An ad for William Leybourne's Pleasure with Profit appears in The Proceedings of the Old Bailey:
Pleasure with Profit: Consisting of Recreations of divers kinds, viz. Numerical, Geometrical, Mathematical, Astronomical, Arithmetical, Cryptographical, Magnetical, Authentical, Chymical, and Historical. Published to Recreate Ingenious Spirit, and to induce them to make further scrutiny how these (and the like) Sublime Sciences. And to divert them from following such Vices, to which Youth (in this Age) are so much inclin'd. By William Laybourn, Philomathes.
A nice discussion of the "Uphill Climber", one of the problems in the book, is explained by the excellent mathematical writer, Julian Havel. *http://plus.maths.org
1775 Paul Revere’s Ride. The revolutionary War began the next day. Now you probably think this has nothing to do with mathematics, but how do you suppose he got that lantern up in the church steeple? Easy, he used a key to get in. Since he was a change ringer, a highly mathematical activity, he needed a key to get up to the bells. *VFR
Revere was not in the church himself that night, and two families claim credit for their ancestor being the actual hanger of the lights. A plaque in the Old North Church (by his ancestors) credits Robert Newman, a Sexton of the church who probably had a key himself. (Maybe less math than we thought) And don't be fooled by the SEXton to think it is related to six, it is from the same root as sacred. PB
1796 Professor E. A. W. Zimmerman sends a short notice of Gauss’s work on constructibility of regular polygons (see March 30, 1796) to the Jenenser Intelligenzblatt. He adds, “It is worthy of notice that Herr Gauss is now in his 18th year and has devoted himself here in Brunswick to philosophy and classical literature with just as great success as to higher mathematics.” [Tietze, 204] *VFR (found this on Twitter from Matt Henderson....and loved it..
"Erdős believed God had a book of all perfect mathematical proofs.
God believes Gauss has such a book.")
1810 Gauss elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. *VFR
1831 Founding of the University of the City of New York. [Muller] *VFR
1831, Sophie Germain wrote a letter to her friend Libri which describes Galois' situation.
"... the death of M. Fourier, have been too much for this student Galois who, in spite of his impertinence, showed signs of a clever disposition. All this has done so much that he has been expelled form École Normale. He is without money ... They say he will go completely mad. I fear this is true."
Galois then took Cauchy's advice and submitted a new article On the condition that an equation be soluble by radicals in February 1830. The paper was sent to Fourier, the secretary of the Paris Academy, to be considered for the Grand Prize in mathematics. Fourier died in April 1830 and Galois' paper was never subsequently found and so never considered for the prize.
By 31 May, Galois was dead.
1853 Ana Roqué de Duprey (Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, April 18, 1853 - Río Piedras ,Puerto Rico October 5, 1933) was a writer , educator , activist for women's rights and one of the founders of the University of Puerto Rich . In addition, she is considered one of the precursors of feminism in Puerto Rico , and founded the Puerto Rican Women's League in 1917 , the first organization attached to this movement in that country.
Her mother died when she was only four years old and she was raised by her father, her aunt, and her grandmother, all of whom were educators. In 1860, when she was seven years old, she was sent to a regular school, and two years later she graduated. She left school and dedicated herself to sewing with her grandmother, Ana María Tapia de Roque, who had also been a teacher, and continuing arithmetic with her father. She continued her education at home and in 1864, at the age of eleven, she became the youngest teaching assistant in Puerto Rico. In 1866, at age thirteen, she founded a school in her home. She also wrote a student text on geography , which was later adopted by the Puerto Rico Department of Education. She applied for her teaching license and passed the exams.
In 1884, she was offered a position as a teacher in Arecibo which she accepted. Additionally, she enrolled in the Provincial Institute where she studied philosophy and science , and she obtained her bachelor's degree . In 1894 she founded the magazine La Mujer , which became the first publication to have a Puerto Rican woman as editor.
She was also the founder of La Evolución (1902), La Mujer del Siglo XX (1907), Album Puertorriqueño (1918) and Heraldo de la Mujer (1920). In 1899, she was appointed director of the San Juan Normal School.
She was passionate about astronomy ; she would be named an honorary member of the Society of Astronomers of France.
Roqué was, along with Isabel Andreu de Aguilar (1887-1948) and Mercedes Sola (1879-1923), a renowned feminist activist. In 1917, she founded the Liga Femínea de Puerto Rico, the first organization of its kind in that country that was dedicated to issues related to women's rights ; Some of their assemblies were held in San Juan , Ponce , and Arecibo , and one of their first actions was to send a request for women's suffrage to the legislature. In 1924, she founded the Puerto Rican Association of Women Suffragettes, which became one of the most powerful organizations in her fight to establish women's right to vote, a task that became a reality in 1932 and entered into force for all women in 1935.
1881, The Natural History Museum in London @NHM_London was opened for the public. It is one of the largest natural history museum‘s of the world.* @SCIHIBLOG
1905 The first mention of the word genetics seems to occur in a letter from William Bateson to Adam Sedgwick.
First page of a 1905 letter written by William Bateson, first Director of the John Innes Institute, to Adam Sedgewick, Cambridge professor. The transcription of the letter is the following: 'Dear Sedgewick, if the Quick fund were used for the foundation of a Professorship relating to Heredity and Variation the best title would I think, be 'The quick professorship of the study of heredity.' No single word in common use quite gives this meaning. Such a word is badly wanted, and if it were desirable to coin one, 'Genetics' might do. Either expression clearly …' Published with permission from the Bateson estate. Courtesy of the Cambridge University Library.
1942 GE builds first US Jet Aircraft Engine: In1941, the U.S. Army Air Corps picked GE's Lynn, Massachusetts, plant to build a jet engine based on the design of Britain's Sir Frank Whittle. Six months later, on April 18, 1942, GE engineers successfully ran the I-A engine.
In October 1942, at Muroc Dry Lake, California, (today, Edwards Air Force Base) two I-A engines powered the historic first flight of a Bell XP-59A Airacomet aircraft, launching the United States into the Jet Age. *About GE website
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| Bell P-59B Airacomet |
1958 On his 100th birthday India issued a stamp commemorating the centenary of the birth of Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve (1858–1922), pioneer of women’s education. [Scott #299]*VFR
Popularly known as Maharshi Karve, he was a social reformer in India in the field of women's welfare. He advocated widow remarriage and he himself married a widow. Karve was a pioneer in promoting widows' education. He founded the first women's university in India - SNDT Women's University .The Government of India awarded him with the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in 1958, the year of his 100th birthday.He organized a conference against the practice of devdasi. He started 'Anath balikashram' an orphanage for girls. His intention was to give education to all women and make them stand on their own feet. Through his efforts, the first women university was set up in 20th century.
The appellation Maharshi, which the Indian public often assigned to Karve, means "a great sage".
1986 IBM First to Use Megabit Chip:
Newspapers report that IBM had become the first computer manufacturer to use a megabit chip -- a memory chip capable of storing 1 million bits of information -- in a commercial product, its Model 3090. The announcement is heralded as a notable triumph for American computer makers, whose work had been perceived as having fallen behind that of the Japanese electronics industry.*CHM
'This is a signal of our semiconductor technology leadership,'' said Jack D. Kuehler, the I.B.M. senior vice president who heads all of the company's manufacturing operations. And the chip itself, he quickly added, comes not from a fabrication laboratory in a Tokyo suburb, but from I.B.M.'s own semiconductor operations in Essex Junction, Vt.
But industry analysts say the victory may be more symbolic than substantive. Dozens of American manufacturers have fled the commodity memory chip business, unable to match Japan's remarkable manufacturing efficiencies or constant price cutting. Japan Has 85% of the Market
IBM 3090
2011 Scientists demonstrate mathematically that asymmetrical materials should be possible; such material would allow most light or sound waves through in one direction, while preventing them from doing so in the opposite direction; such materials would allow the construction of true one-way mirrors, soundproof rooms, or even quantum computers that use light to perform calculations. *Wik
BIRTHS
1772 David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was an English political economist, often credited with systematizing economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator, who amassed a considerable personal fortune. Perhaps his most important contribution was the law of comparative advantage, a fundamental argument in favor of free trade among countries and of specialization among individuals. Ricardo argued that there is mutual benefit from trade (or exchange) even if one party (e.g. resource-rich country, highly skilled artisan) is more productive in every possible area than its trading counterpart (e.g. resource-poor country, unskilled laborer), as long as each concentrates on the activities where it has a relative productivity advantage. *Wik
1838 Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (18 April 1838 – 28 May 1912) French chemist who developed improved spectroscopic methods which had recently been developed by Kirchhoff. In 1859, he set out to scan minerals for unknown spectral lines. Fifteen years of persistence paid off when he discovered the elements gallium (1875), samarium (1880), and dysprosium (1886). He ranks with Robert Bunsen, Gustav Kirchhoff and William Crookes as one of the founders of the science of spectroscopy. Guided by the general arrangement of spectral lines for elements in the same family, he believed the element he called gallium (in honour of France) was the eka-aluminium predicted by Mendeleev between aluminium and indium. Since it is liquid between about 30 - 1700 deg C, a gallium in quartz thermometer can measure high temperatures. *TIS
1863 H(ugh) L(ongbourne) Callendar (18 Apr 1863, 21 Jan 1930) was an English physicist famous for work in calorimetry, thermometry and especially, the thermodynamic properties of steam. He published the first steam tables (1915). In 1886, he invented the platinum resistance thermometer using the electrical resistivity of platinum, enabling the precise measurement of temperatures. He also invented the electrical continuous-flow calorimeter, the compensated air thermometer (1891), a radio balance (1910) and a rolling-chart thermometer (1897) that enabled long-duration collection of climatic temperature data. His son, Guy S. Callendar linked climatic change with increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from mankind's burning of carbon fuels (1938), known as the Callendar effect, part of the greenhouse effect.*TIS
Callendar received awards such as the James Watt Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1898) and the Rumford Medal (1906).[3] He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and later a member of the Physical Society of London. Callendar was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics three times. *Wik
llustration of calorimeter by H.L. Callendar:
1892 Dmitrii Evgenevich Menshov (18 April 1892 in Moscow, Russia - 25 Nov 1988)
For his work on the representation of functions by trigonometric series, Menshov was awarded a State Prize in 1951. He was then elected a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1953. In 1958 Menshov attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh and he was invited to address the Congress with his paper On the convergence of trigonometric series. *SAU
1907 Lars Valerian Ahlfors (18 Apr 1907; 11 Oct 1996 at age 89) Finnish mathematician who was awarded one of the first two Fields Medals in 1936 for his work with Riemann surfaces. He also won the Wolf Prize in 1981.*TIS
He is remembered for his work in the field of Riemann surfaces and his textbook on complex analysis. His book Complex Analysis (1953) is the classic text on the subject and is almost certainly referenced in any more recent text which makes heavy use of complex analysis. Ahlfors wrote several other significant books, including Riemann surfaces (1960)[5] and Conformal invariants (1973).
1904 Stefan E Warschawski (18 April 1904 in Lida, Russia (now Belarus)- 5 May 1989 in San Diego, California, USA) With careful scholarship, he made lasting contributions to the theory of complex analysis, particularly to the theory of conformal mappings. With keen judgment, he guided two mathematics departments to eminence. With modest gratitude, he cemented many friendships along the way.*SAU
He wasa professor and department chair at the University of Minnesota and the founder of the mathematics department at the University of California, San Diego.
After receiving his Ph.D., Warschawski took a position at Göttingen in 1930 but, due to the rise of Hitler and his own Jewish ancestry, he soon moved to Utrecht University in Utrecht, Netherlands and then Columbia University in New York City.[1]
After a sequence of temporary positions, he found a permanent faculty position at Washington University in St. Louis in 1939. During World War II he moved to Brown University and then the University of Minnesota, where he remained until his 1963 move to San Diego, where he was the founding chair of the mathematics department. Warschawski stepped down as chair in 1967, and retired in 1971, but remained active in research: approximately one third of his research publications were written after his retirement. Over the course of his career, he advised 19 Ph.D. students, all but one at either Minnesota or San Diego. Vernor Vinge is among Warschawski's doctoral students.
1911 Maurice Goldhaber (18 Apr 1911; 11 May 2011 at age 100) Austrian-American physicist who devised an experiment to show that neutrinos always rotate in one direction (only counterclockwise). His method was simple, elegant, and used an apparatus small enough to fit on a benchtop, rather than employing a huge accelerator. He also discovered that the nucleus of the deuterium atom consists of a proton and a neutron. In the decade (1961-73) that he headed the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, he oversaw the experiments there which led to three Nobel Prizes. He died at age 100.*TIS
In 1934, working at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England he and James Chadwick, through what they called the nuclear photo-electric effect, established that the neutron has a great enough mass over the proton to decay.
He moved to the University of Illinois in 1938. In the 1940s with his wife Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber he established that beta particles are identical to electrons.
1916 Ellis Robert Kolchin (April 18, 1916 – October 30, 1991) was an American mathematician at Columbia University. Kolchin earned a doctorate in mathematics from Columbia University in 1941 under supervision of Joseph Ritt. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954 and 1961.
Kolchin worked on differential algebra and its relation to differential equations, and founded the modern theory of linear algebraic groups.*Wik
1918 Hsien Chung Wang (18 April 1918 in Peking (now Beijing), China - 25 June 1978 in New York, USA)worked on algebraic topology and discovered the 'Wang sequence', an exact sequence involving homology groups associated with fibre bundles over spheres. These discoveries were made while he worked with Newman in Manchester. Wang also solved, at that time, an important open problem in determining the closed subgroups of maximal rank in a compact Lie group. *SAU
1928 Mikio Sato (April 18, 1928 - ) is a Japanese mathematician, who started the field of algebraic analysis. He studied at the University of Tokyo, and then did graduate study in physics as a student of Shin'ichiro Tomonaga. From 1970 Sato has been professor at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, of Kyoto University.
He is known for his innovative work in a number of fields, such as prehomogeneous vector spaces and Bernstein–Sato polynomials; and particularly for his hyperfunction theory. This initially appeared as an extension of the ideas of distribution theory; it was soon connected to the local cohomology theory of Grothendieck, for which it was an independent origin, and to expression in terms of sheaf theory. It led further to the theory of microfunctions, interest in microlocal aspects of linear partial differential equations and Fourier theory such as wave fronts, and ultimately to the current developments in D-module theory. Part of that is the modern theory of holonomic systems: PDEs over-determined to the point of having finite-dimensional spaces of solutions.
He also contributed basic work to non-linear soliton theory, with the use of Grassmannians of infinite dimension. In number theory he is known for the Sato–Tate conjecture on L-functions.*Wik
1945 Joseph Bernstein (April 18, 1945, ) is an Israeli mathematician working at Tel Aviv University. He works in algebraic geometry, representation theory, and number theory.
Bernstein received his Ph.D. in 1972 under Israel Gelfand at Moscow State University. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1985-86 and again in 1997-98.
Bernstein was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2002 and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2004. In 2004, Bernstein was awarded the Israel Prize for mathematics. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. *Wik
1949 Charles Louis Fefferman ( April 18, 1949, )born in Washington, D.C. In 1978 he received a Fields Medal for his work on complex analysis.*VFR As a child prodigy, his accelerated schooling resulted a B.S. degrees in physics and mathematics by age 17 and a Ph.D. in mathematics at age 20 from Princeton University (1969). When in he became a professor (1971) at the University of Chicago at the age of 22, he was the youngest full professor ever in the U.S. Two years later, he returned to Princeton as a professor (1973). His Ph.D. dissertation was on "Inequalities for Strongly Regular Convolution Operators." His field of study includes his interest in physics - applied mathematics in vibrations, heat, turbulence, though he is best known for his theoretical work. *TIS
He was a child prodigy entered the University of Maryland at age 14,[3][4][7] and had written his first scientific paper by the age of 15. He graduated with degrees in math and physics at 17, and earned his PhD in mathematics three years later from Princeton University, under Elias Stein. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Inequalities for strongly singular convolution operators". *WIK
DEATHS
1756 Jacques Cassini (18 Feb 1677; 18 Apr, (or Sometimes given 16 Apr) 1756 at age 79) French astronomer whose direct measurement of the proper motions of the stars (1738) disproved the ancient belief in the unchanging sphere of the stars. He also studied the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and the structure of Saturn's rings. His two major treatises on these subject appeared in 1740: Elements of Astronomy and Astronomical Tables of the Sun, Moon, Planets, Fixed Stars, and Satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. He also wrote about electricity, barometers, the recoil of firearms, and mirrors. He was the son of astronomer, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712) with whom he made numerous geodesic observations. Eventually, he took over his father's duties as head of the Paris Observatory.*TIS Cassini was born at the Paris Observatory and died at Thury, near Clermont. Admitted at the age of seventeen to membership of the French Academy of Sciences, he was elected in 1696 a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and became maître des comptes in 1706. *Wik
1674 John Graunt- (24 Apr 1620, 18 Apr 1674 at age 54) English statistician, generally considered to be the founder of the science of demography, the statistical study of human populations. His analysis of the vital statistics of the London populace influenced the pioneer demographic work of his friend Sir William Petty and, even more importantly, that of Edmond Halley, the astronomer royal. *TIS
John Graunt was the first person to compile data that showed an excess of male births over female births. He also noticed spatial and temporal variation in the sex ratio, but the variation in his data is not significant. John Arbuthnott was the first person to demonstrate that the excess of male births is statistically significant. He erroneously concluded that there is less variation in the sex ratio than would occur by chance, and asserted without a basis that the sex ratio would be uniform over all time and space. (pb)
1802 Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) Prominent English physician, poet , philosopher, botanist, naturalist and the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin and the biologist Francis Galton. Erasmus Darwin was one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England. As a naturalist, he formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796). Although he did not come up with natural selection, he did discuss ideas that his grandson elaborated on sixty years later, such as how life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament". Although some of his ideas on how evolution might occur are quite close to those of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin also talked about how competition and sexual selection could cause changes in species.. *TIS
Among many other inventions, all of which he chose not to patent, were a horizontal windmill, which he designed for Josiah Wedgwood (who would be Charles Darwin's other grandfather), a carriage that would not tip over (1766), a steering mechanism for his carriage, known today as the Ackermann linkage, that would be adopted by cars 130 years later (1759), and a method for lifting and lowering barges on canals.
The last he propose two water-filled boxes that would work as counterweights for each other as barges were lifted up or down between levels.
The Lunar Men is a wonderful book about Erasmus, hs period and his wide range of friends and contacts.
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1803 Louis François Antoine Arbogast (October 4, 1759 – April 8, or April 18, 1803) His contributions to mathematics show him as a philosophical thinker somewhat ahead of his time. As well as introducing discontinuous functions, he conceived the calculus as operational symbols. The formal algebraic manipulation of series investigated by Lagrange and Laplace in the 1770s was put in the form of operator equalities by Arbogast in 1800 in Calcul des dérivations.*SAU
1883 Édouard Albert Roche (17 Oct 1820, 18 Apr 1883 at age 62) was a French mathematical astronomer who studied the internal structure of celestial bodies and was the first to propose a model of the Earth with a solid core. He determined (1850) the Roche Limit for a satellite to have a stable orbit around a planet of equal density. The smaller body could not lie within 2.44 radii of the larger body without breaking apart from effect of the gravitational force between them. He later made a rigorous mathematical analysis of Pierre Laplace's nebular hypothesis and showed (1873) the instability of a rapidly rotating lens-shaped body.*TIS
1913 Mary Cannell (19 July 1913 in Liverpool, England - 18 April 2000) It was the work which she undertook after she retired which earns her a place as a highly respected historian of mathematics. Her work stemmed from the fact that George Green had worked as a miller near Nottingham. Green was a mathematician who was well known to almost all students of mathematics around the world, yet little was known of his life. Flauvel writes:- ... widespread knowledge of Green himself dates only from the 1970s when Cannell and other Nottingham colleagues worked to restore his windmill and his memory...When I first visited Green's windmill in Nottingham the booklet which I purchased was George Green Miller and Mathematician written in 1988 by Mary Cannell. She produced a major biography of Green, George Green : Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841 : The Background to His Life and Work in 1993. In addition she wrote research articles on Green's life and work bringing to the world of mathematics an understanding of Green's remarkable life.
Flauvel writes:- She charmed audiences on several continents, promoting interest in Green and early 19th-century mathematical physics, in the clear tones and pure vowels of pre-war English, somewhere between Miss Marple and Dame Peggy Ashcroft. ... Mary Cannell was working on projects of one sort or another - the Green website, the revised edition of the biography, research papers, the catalogue in the university of Nottingham library - right to the end, in days filled with her characteristic energy and enthusiasm. *SAU
1923 Pieter Hendrik Schoute (January 21, 1846, Wormerveer–April 18, 1923, Groningen) was a Dutch mathematician known for his work on regular polytopes and Euclidean geometry. *Wik Schoute was a typical geometer. In his early work he investigated quadrics, algebraic curves, complexes, and congruences in the spirit of nineteenth-century projective, metrical, and enumerative geometry. Schläfli's work of the 1850's was brought to the Netherlands by Schoute who, in three papers beginning in 1893 and in his elegant two-volume textbook on many-dimensional geometry 'Mehrdimensionale Geometrie' (2 volumes 1902, 1905), studied the sections and projections of regular polytopes and compound polyhedra. ... Alicia Boole Stott (1870-1940), George Boole's third daughter (of five), ... studied sections of four- and higher-dimensional polytopes after her husband showed her Schoute's 1893 paper, and Schoute later (in his last papers) gave an analytic treatment of her constructions. *SAU
1945 Sir John Ambrose Fleming (29 Nov 1849, 18 Apr 1945 at age 95)English engineer who made numerous contributions to electronics, photometry, electric measurements, and wireless telegraphy. In 1904, he discovered the one directional current effect between a positively biassed electrode, which he called the anode, and the heated filament in an evacuated glass tube; the electrons flowed from filament to anode only. Fleming called the device a diode because it contained two electrodes, the anode and the heated filament. He noted that when an alternating current was applied, only the positive halves of the waves were passed - that is, the wave was rectified (from a.c. to d.c.). It would also take a radio frequency wave and produce d.c.corresponding to the on and off of the Morse code transmitted signals. *TIS Fleming called his invention a “thermionic valve.”
1955 Albert Einstein (14 Mar 1879; 18 Apr 1955 at age 76) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Recognized in his own time as one of the most creative intellects in human history, in the first 15 years of the 20th century Einstein advanced a series of theories that proposed entirely new ways of thinking about space, time, and gravitation. His theories of relativity and gravitation were a profound advance over the old Newtonian physics and revolutionized scientific and philosophic inquiry.*TIS
An NBC News broadcast of his death is here.
1991 Sir Austin Bradford Hill CBE (8 July 1897 – 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Hill is widely known for pioneering the "Bradford Hill" criteria for determining a causal association.
In 1922, Hill went to work for the Industry Fatigue Research Board. He was associated with the medical statistician Major Greenwood and, to improve his statistical knowledge, Hill attended lectures by Karl Pearson. When Greenwood accepted a chair at the newly formed London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Hill moved with him, becoming Reader in Epidemiology and Vital Statistics in 1933 and Professor of Medical Statistics in 1947.
Hill had a distinguished career in research and teaching and as author of a very successful textbook, Principles of Medical Statistics, but he is famous for two landmark studies. He was the statistician on the Medical Research Council Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee and their study evaluating the use of streptomycin in treating tuberculosis,[6] is generally accepted as the first modern randomised clinical trial. The use of randomisation in agricultural experiments had been pioneered by Ronald Aylmer Fisher. The second study was rather a series of studies with Richard Doll on smoking and lung cancer. The first paper, published in 1950, was a case-control study comparing lung cancer patients with matched controls. Doll and Hill also started a long-term prospective study of smoking and health. This was an investigation of the smoking habits and health of 40,701 British doctors for several years (British doctors study).
On Hill's death in 1991, Peter Armitage wrote, "to anyone involved in medical statistics, epidemiology or public health, Bradford Hill was quite simply the world's leading medical statistician."
1999 Gian-Carlo Rota Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) worked on functional analysis for his doctorate and, up to about 1960, he wrote a series of papers on operator theory. Two papers in 1959-60, although still in the area of operator theory, looked at ergodic theory which is an area which requires considerable combinatorial skills. These papers seem to have led Rota away from operator theory and into the area of combinatorics. His first major work on combinatorics, which was to change the direction of the whole subject, was On the Foundations of Combinatorial Theory which Rota published in 1964.
Rota received the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 1988. The Prize citation singles out the 1964 paper On the Foundations of Combinatorial Theory as:-... the single paper most responsible for the revolution that incorporated combinatorics into the mainstream of modern mathematics. *SAU
2003 Edgar Frank Codd (19 August 1923 – 18 April 2003) -American computer scientist and mathematician who laid the theoretical foundation for relational databases, for storing and retrieving information in computer records. He also contributed knowledge in the area of cellular automata. *TIS
Edgar Frank Codd studied mathematics and chemistry at Exeter College, Oxford, before serving as a pilot in the RAF Coastal Command during the Second World War, flying Sunderlands. In 1948, he moved to New York to work for IBM as a mathematical programmer.[9] Codd first worked for the company's Selective Sequence Electronic (SSEC) project and was later involved in the development of IBM 701 and 702.
In 1953, dismayed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Codd moved to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In 1957, he returned to the US working for IBM and from 1961 to 1965 pursuing his doctorate in computer science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Two years later, he moved to San Jose, California, to work at IBM's San Jose Research Laboratory, where he continued to work until the 1980s. He was appointed IBM Fellow in 1976. During the 1990s, his health deteriorated and he ceased work.
Codd received the Turing Award in 1981, and in 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. *Wik
Credits :
*CHM=Computer History Museum
*FFF=Kane, Famous First Facts
*NSEC= NASA Solar Eclipse Calendar
*RMAT= The Renaissance Mathematicus, Thony Christie
*SAU=St Andrews Univ. Math History
*TIA = Today in Astronomy
*TIS= Today in Science History
*VFR = V Frederick Rickey, USMA
*Wik = Wikipedia
*WM = Women of Mathematics, Grinstein & Campbell
Wednesday 17 April 2024
On This Day in Math - April 17
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| Origami Soma Cube *Tektonten Papercraft (See Deaths:1996 Piet Hein) |
A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds
If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.
~Benjamin Franklin
The 107th day of the year; There is no integer N such that N! has exactly 107 zeros in it. The same is true if we replace 107 by the primes 3, 31, or 43.*Prime Curios (This seems a most remarkable set of facts to me.)
Interestingly, the sum of the first 107 digits of pi is prime, and the sum of the first 107 digits of e is prime. This is trivially true for the first digit of each, but can you find the one (I believe) other number between 1 and 107 for which the sum of the digits of e and pi are both prime?
2107 - 1 is the largest known Mersenne prime not containing all the individual digits.
If you add 107 and the next consecutive prime (109) you get 216 = 6^3. There are only six year day pairs for which the sum of consecutive primes is a perfect power.
Allan Brady proved in 1983 that the maximal number of steps that a four-state Turing machine can make on an initially blank tape before eventually halting is 107.
Another significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain. *Wik
Allan Brady proved in 1983 that the maximal number of steps that a four-state Turing machine can make on an initially blank tape before eventually halting is 107.
EVENTS
1397 Geoffrey Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II, *The British Library @britishlibraryAnother significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain. *Wik
Chaucer was a philomath and his work on astronomy and the astrolabe wee equally well known as his poetry. He is seen as crucial in legitimizing the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey.
Tomb of Chaucer in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, London and a So-called Chaucer Astrolabe dated 1326, similar to the one Chaucer describes, from British Museum
1694, l'Hôpital sent a letter to Bernoulli with a remarkable proposition :-
"I will be happy to give you a retainer of 300 pounds, beginning with the first of January of this year. ... I promise shortly to increase this retainer, which I know is very modest, as soon as my affairs are somewhat straightened out. ... I am not so unreasonable as to demand in return all of your time, but I will ask you to give me at intervals some hours of your time to work on what I request and also to communicate to me your discoveries, at the same time asking you not to disclose any of them to others. I ask you even not to send here to Mr Varignon or to others any copies of the writings you have left with me; if they are published, I will not be at all pleased. Answer me regarding all this ..."
In 1696 L'Hôpital's famous book Analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes courbes was published; it was the first text-book to be written on the differential calculus. In the introduction l'Hôpital acknowledges his indebtedness to Leibniz, Jacob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli but l'Hôpital regarded the foundations provided by him as his own ideas.
This book was an extremely important contribution. It was used for a long time, with new editions produced until 1781, and it was also a model for the next generation of calculus books. *MacTutor
The book is credited with introducing many French mathematicians and others to the differential calculus of Leibniz. In the preface, l'Hôpital mentions that he focuses on just differential calculus since Leibniz was writing a book (which was never finished) on integral calculus. L'Hôpital also credits Johann Bernoulli, whom he had hired to teach him the calculus of Leibniz. In fact, there is some question as to how much of the material in the Analyse is due to l'Hôpital and how much to Johann Bernoulli.*MAA
1707 On the Sunday before Easter, two day old Leonhard Euler was baptized in Saint Martin's Church in Basil. His three Godfathers were city officials, including city privy counselor Leonhard Respinger, a friend of the family for whom Euler was named. *Ronald S. Calinger; Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment
1732 Laura Maria Caterina Bassi defends forty-nine academic theses in public display:
The University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe and at the beginning of the eighteenth century students were still examined by public disputation, i.e. the candidate was expected to orally defend a series of academic theses. At the beginning of 1732 Bassi took part in a private disputation in her home with members of the university faculty in the presence of many leading members of Bolognese intellectual society. As a result of her performance during this disputation she was elected a member of the prestigious Bologna Academy of Science on 20th March. Rumours of this extraordinary young lady quickly spread and on 17th April she defended forty-nine theses in a highly spectacular public disputation. On 12th May following a public outcry she was awarded a doctorate from the university in a grand ceremony in the city hall of Bologna. Following a further public disputation the City Senate appointed her professor of philosophy at the university, making her the first ever female professor at a European university.
See more at *Thony Christie, The Renaissance Mathematicus
1799 Humphry Davy announced in Nicholson's Journal that N2O can be inhaled by humans *A.J. Wright @AJWrightMLS
1912 Two days after the sinking of the Titanic a solar eclipse occurred in England and Europe. It was a hybrid event, starting and ending as an annular eclipse, with only a small portion of totality. Totality was visible over the sea between Spain and France, with annularity continued northeast across Europe and Asia.
This eclipse occurred two days after the RMS Titanic sank in the northwestern Atlantic ocean under the darkness of new moon. *Wik
Eclipse poster from the London Underground for the 1912 Eclipse.
1935 Turkey issued a series of semi-postal stamps commemorating the 12th congress of the Women’s International Alliance. One pictured a school teacher. Another was the first stamp honoring Marie Sklodowska Curie. [Scott #B55, B67]*VFR
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| *Louis Paul Hennefeld, Out of the Closet |
1944 Harvard Mark I Operating:
Harvard University President James Conant writes to IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. to let him know that the Harvard Mark I, developed in cooperation between the two, was operating smoothly. The project was one of the many examples of wartime collaboration among the federal government, universities, and private corporations. In his letter, Conant noted that the Mark I already was "being used for special problems in connection with the war effort." *CHM
In 1964, Geraldine (“Jerrie”) Mock landed in Columbus, Ohio, becoming the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world. She was a Columbus housewife with less than 800 hours logged in 7-1/2 years of flying experience, and had received her instrument rating less than a month before taking off from Columbus, on 19 Mar 1964, in a single-engine Cessna Model 180 aircraft on her 23,206-mile solo air voyage. The trip lasted 29-1/2 days with 21 stopovers. The insignia on the aircraft was “Spirit of Columbus,” but it was nick-named “Three-Eight Charlie.” She was born in Newark, Ohio, and had studied Aeronautical Engineering at Ohio State University. Though not without some problems, the ultimate success of her solo flight also reflects the reliability of small aircraft of the era.
2013 Yitang Zhang announced a proof that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers which differ by 70 million or less. This proof is the first to establish the existence of a finite bound for prime gaps, resolving a weak form of the twin prime conjecture. *Wik Barry Goldman added that "and an online team assembled by Terry Tao chopped 70 milliion down to 246!" (announced on April 14, 2014)
BIRTHS
1598 Giovanni Battista Riccioli (17 April 1598 – 25 June 1671) Italian astronomer who was the first to observe (1650) a double star (two stars so close together that they appear to be one) - Mizar in Ursa Major, the middle star in the handle of the Big Dipper. He also discovered satellite shadows on Jupiter. In 1651, he assigned the majority of the lunar feature names in current use. He named the more prominent features after famous astronomers, scientists and philosophers, while the large dark and smooth areas he called "seas" or "maria". The lunar seas were named after moods (Seas of Tranquillity, Serenity) or terrestrial phenomena (Sea of Rains, Ocean or Storms) His map was published in Almagestum Novum in1651.*TISRiccioli studied seventy-seven objections to the Copernican thesis and after studying them Riccioli said that the weight of argument favored a “geo-heliocentric” hypothesis such as that advocated by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Riccioli's preference for Tycho's model illustrates something important about how science is done. While today anti-Copernicans are often portrayed as Einstein characterized them (opposed to rational thinking, opposed to science), Riccioli, perhaps the most prominent of the anti-Copernicans, examined the available evidence diligently and rationally. The conclusion he reached was indeed wrong, but wrong because at that time neither the diffraction of light and the Airy disk, nor the details of the Coriolis effect, were understood. Riccioli's anti-Copernican arguments were so solid that they would become subjects of further investigation in physics, long after the Copernican theory had triumphed over the Tychonic theory.*Christopher M. Graney, Teaching Galileo, Physics Teacher V50,1
An interesting blog about Riccioli is at the Renaissance Mathematicus
The crescent phases of Venus and detailed representations of its appearance as seen through a telescope, from Riccioli's 1651 New Almagest. Representations from Riccioli's 1665 Reformed Astronomy of Saturn's changing appearance.
1656 William Molyneux (17 April 1656 in Dublin, Ireland - 11 Oct 1698 in Dublin, Ireland) was an Irish scientist and philosopher who worked on optics.After leaving Bologna, Angeli continued his contacts with Cavalieri(who had been his teacher in Bologna) by correspondence, and was entrusted to publish Cavalieri's final work, Exercitationes geometricae sex, since by 1647 Cavalieri's health had deteriorated to such an extent that he was unable to carry out the work himself. Angeli also corresponded with a number of other mathematicians including Torricelli and Viviani. After Cavalieri's death, later in 1647, Angeli was offered his chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna but he was still too modest about his own mathematical achievements to accept the position. He moved to Rome where he devoted himself to both mathematics and religious studies.
He was perhaps the single most important figure in the history of Irish science, and one of great political significance. The Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, together with numerous other Irish professional societies such as those in mathematics, statistics, political economy, geology, botany, chemistry, physics, and other disciplines trace their origins directly to the Dublin Philosophical Society, and have at various times acknowledged the Society or Molyneux as their inspiration.
*SAU
He followed the goings-on of the Royal Society of London (and would become a Fellow of that Society). Deciding that Ireland deserved a similar institution, he founded the Dublin Philosophical Society in 1683. The group had an up-and-down life in the 17th century, depending mostly on whether Molyneux was around; they never launched their own journal, as the Royal Society of London did, but many of its members, such as William Petty, and Molyneux, published papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The group became inactive after Molyneux died, but was revived several times, and eventually morphed into the Royal Irish Academy. *LH
Sciothericum telescopicum, or A new contrivance of adapting a telescope to a horizontal dial for observing the moment of time by day or night, 1686
1748 Sir Charles Brian Blagden FRS (17 April 1748 – 26 March 1820) was a British physician and scientist. He served as a medical officer in the Army (1776–1780) during the Revolutionary War, and later held the position of Secretary of the Royal Society (1784–1797).
Blagden experimented on himself to study human ability to withstand high temperatures. In his report to the Royal Society in 1775, he was first to recognize the role of perspiration in thermoregulation.
Blagden's experiments on how dissolved substances like salt affected the freezing point of water led to the discovery that the freezing point of a solution decreases in direct proportion to the concentration of the solution, now called Blagden's Law Blagden won the Copley Medal in 1788 and was knighted in 1792. In 1783, Blagden, then assistant to Henry Cavendish, visited Antoine Lavoisier in Paris and described how Cavendish had created water by burning "inflammable air". Lavoisier's dissatisfaction with the Cavendish's "dephlogistinization" theory led him to the concept of a chemical reaction, which he reported to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 24 June 1783, effectively founding modern chemistry. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1789.
He died in Arcueil, France in 1820, and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. *Wik
1766 John Leslie (17 April 1766 in Largo, Fife, Scotland - 3 Nov 1832 in Coates (near Largo), Fife, Scotland) Leslie was a successful professor of mathematics, attracting large classes of students and publishing his lectures in popular textbooks such as the three part work Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis, and Plane Trigonometry (1809). He mixed classical mathematical teaching with some new continental approaches to analysis and algebra particularly in his advanced classes. Leslie became professor in Natural Philosophy in 1819 after the chair fell vacant on Playfair's death. This was not without a battle, for again the Church put up a candidate but, having won a victory in the earlier encounter, this time proved much more straightforward. He gave courses which were filled with experiments on specially made apparatus, for which Leslie himself had paid over half the cost from his own pocket. He soon discovered that one of the main problems of teaching university level physics was the lack of mathematical background of most of his students. He wanted to rectify this by teaching mathematics courses specially tailored for his physics students, but the University of Edinburgh senate prevented him from giving such courses since these topics were deemed the responsibility of the professor of mathematics. *SAU
1798 Étienne Bobillier (April 17, 1798 – March 22, 1840) was a French mathematician. At the age of 19 he was accepted into the École Polytechnique and studied there for a year. However, due to a shortage of money, in 1818 he became an instructor in mathematics at the École des Arts et Métiers in Châlons-sur-Marne. In 1829, he was sent to Angers to be director of studies. The following year he served in the national guard during the 1830 revolution. In 1832 he returned to Châlons after his post was abolished, and was promoted to professor.
In 1836 he began suffering from health problems, but continued teaching; declining to take a leave to recuperate. As a result he died in Châlons at the relatively early age of 41.
He is noted for his work on geometry, particularly the algebraic treatment of geometric surfaces and the polars of curves. He also worked on statics and the catenary. The crater Bobillier on the Moon is named after him.*Wik
1853 Arthur Moritz Schönflies (17 April 1853 in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany (now Gorzów-Wielkopolski, Poland) - 27 May 1928 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) worked first on geometry and kinematics but became best known for his work on set theory and crystallography. He classified the 230 space groups in 1891 He studied under Kummer and Weierstrass, and was influenced by Felix Klein.
The Schoenflies problem is to prove that an (n − 1)-sphere in Euclidean n-space bounds a topological ball, however embedded. This question is much more subtle than initially appears. *Wik *SAU
1863 Augustus Edward Hough Love (17 Apr 1863; 5 Jun 1940 at age 77) British geophysicist and mathematician who discovered a major type of earthquake wave that was subsequently named for him. Love assumed that the Earth consists of concentric layers that differ in density and postulated the occurrence of a seismic wave confined to the surface layer (crust) of the Earth which propagated between the crust and underlying mantle. His prediction was confirmed by recordings of the behaviour of waves in the surface layer of the Earth. He proposed a method, based on measurements of Love waves, to measure the thickness of the Earth's crust. In addition to his work on geophysical theory, Love studied elasticity and wrote A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity, 2 vol. (1892-93). *TIS (Hard to imagine the newsperson announcing that "Love waves caused the collapse of multiple buildings in San Francisco on this day in 1906.")
He authored the two volume classic, A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity.
1918 Matteo Bottasso (17 April 1878 in Chiusa di Pesio (Cuneo), Italy - 4 Oct 1918 in Messina, ItalyMessina, Italy)was an Italian mathematician who used the vector calculus in studying problems in geometry, mechanics and physics. *SAU
DEATHS
485 Proclus Diadochus (8 Feb 411 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Byzantium (now Turkey) - 17 April 485 in Athens, Greece) was a Greek philosopher who became head of Plato's Academy and is important mathematically for his commentaries on the work of other mathematicians. *SAU1761 Thomas Bayes (1702, 17 Apr 1761) English theologian and mathematician who was the first to use probability inductively and who established a mathematical basis for probability inference (a means of calculating, from the frequency with which an event has occurred in prior trials, the probability that it will occur in future trials). This became the basis of a statistical technique, now called Bayesian estimation, for calculating the probability of the validity of a proposition on the basis of a prior estimate of its probability and new relevant evidence. Later statisticians cite disadvantages of the method that include the different ways of assigning prior distributions of parameters and the possible sensitivity of conclusions to the choice of distributions. *TIS British mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a special case of Bayes' theorem, which was published posthumously. Bayes died in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He is interred in Bunhill Fields Cemetery in London where many Nonconformists are buried. Bayesian probability is the name given to several related interpretations of probability, which have in common the application of probability to any kind of statement, not just those involving random variables. "Bayesian" has been used in this sense since about 1950.
Only known Portrait that is possibly of Bayes from a 1936 book,[1] but it is doubtful whether the portrait is actually of him.
1787 Wenceslaus Johann Gustav Karsten (15 Dec 1732 in Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany - 17 April 1787 in Halle, Germany) He wrote an important article in 1768 Von den Logarithmen vermeinter Grössen in which he discussed logarithms of negative and imaginary numbers, giving a geometric interpretation of logarithms of complex numbers as hyperbolic sectors, based on the similarity of the equations of the circle and of the equilateral hyperbola. *SAU This book influenced Euler's Theoria motus corporum rigidorum
1790 Benjamin Franklin, (17 Jan 1706; 17 Apr 1790) American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. He become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented a type of stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces and the lightning rod, bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get for themselves, he helped establish institutions people now take for granted: a fire company (1736), a library (1731), an insurance company (1752), an academy (1751), and a hospital (1751). In some cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North America. *TIS When he observed a balloon launch by the Montgolfier brothers he was asked of what use it was. He replied: Of what use is a new born baby? *VFR
While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects at Clapham common on a large pond there. "I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water...though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square." He later used the trick to "calm the waters" by carrying "a little oil in the hollow joint of my cane." *W. Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, pgs 80,81
1847 Francois-Joseph Servois (19 July 1768 in Mont-de-Laval (N of Morteau), Doubs, France - 17 April 1847 in Mont-de-Laval, Doubs, France) He worked in projective geometry, functional equations and complex numbers. He introduced the word pole in projective geometry. He also came close to discovering the quaternions before Hamilton.
Servois introduced the terms "commutative" and "distributive" in a paper describing properties of operators, and he also gave some examples of noncommutativity. Although he does not use the concept of a ring explicitly, he does verify that linear commutative operators satisfy the ring axioms. In doing so he showed why operators could be manipulated like algebraic magnitudes. This work initiates the algebraic theory of operators.
Servois was critical of Argand's geometric interpretation of the complex numbers. He wrote to Gergonne telling him so in November 1813 and Gergonne published the letter in the Annales de mathématiques in January 1814. Servois wrote:- I confess that I do not yet see in this notation anything but a geometric mask applied to analytic forms the direct use of which seems to me simple and more expeditious.
Considered as a leading expert by many mathematicians of his day, he was consulted on many occasions by Poncelet while he was writing his book on projective geometry Traité des propriétés projective. *SAU
1942 Jean-Baptiste Perrin (30 Sep 1870, 17 Apr 1942 at age 71) was a French physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids, verified Albert Einstein's explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter. Using a gamboge emulsion, Perrin was able to determine by a new method, one of the most important physical constants, Avogadro's number (the number of molecules of a substance in so many grams as indicated by the molecular weight, for example, the number of molecules in two grams of hydrogen). The value obtained corresponded, within the limits of error, to that given by the kinetic theory of gases. For this achievement he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. *TIS
1977 Richard Dagobert Brauer (10 Feb 1901; 17 Apr 1977 at age 76) German-American mathematician and educator, a pioneer in the development of algebra theory. He worked with Weyl on several projects including a famous joint paper on spinors (published in 1935 in the American Journal of Mathematics). This work provided a background for Paul Dirac's theory of the spinning electron within the framework of quantum mechanics. With Nesbitt, Brauer introduced the theory of blocks (1937). Brauer used this to obtain results on finite groups, particularly finite simple groups, and the theory of blocks would play a big part in much of Brauer's later work. Starting with his group-theoretical characterisation of the simple groups (1951), he spent the rest of his life formulating a method to classify all finite simple groups. *TIS
1996 Piet Hein (December 16, 1905 – April 17, 1996) was a Danish scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, author, and poet, often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym "Kumbel" meaning "tombstone". His short poems, known as gruks or grooks (Danish: Gruk), first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi occupation in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell"
The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes. Piet Hein created the superellipse which became the hallmark of modern Scandinavian architecture.
In addition to the thousands of grooks he wrote, Piet Hein devised the games of Hex, Tangloids, Morra, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the Soma cube. He advocated the use of the superellipse curve in city planning, furniture making and other realms. He also invented a perpetual calendar called the Astro Calendar and marketed housewares based on the superellipse and Superegg. *Wik My Favorite of his grooks is this one:
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.
A superellipse, also known as a Lamé curve after Gabriel Lamé, is a closed curve resembling the ellipse, retaining the geometric features of semi-major axis and semi-minor axis, and symmetry about them, but a different overall shape. |x/a| ^n+ |x/b|^n = 1, also called Lame curves after Gabriel Lame
1876 Harriet Brooks, born July 2, 1876 in Exeter, Ontario, enjoyed the distinction of being the first graduate student to work with Ernest Rutherford, a giant (both physically and intellectually) of early atomic physics. They enjoyed a happy, productive period of collaboration until their lives diverged in dramatically different directions.
Harriet Brooks was the third of nine children born to Elizabeth Worden and George Brooks, a commercial traveler for a flour company. The family’s move to Montreal in 1894 proved fortunate for Harriet, who attended McGill University on scholarships and graduated with honors in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1898. That same summer, Rutherford arrived at McGill as a 28-year-old physics professor fired up about radioactivity.
Together, Brooks and Rutherford studied what he called “radium emanation.” Their joint paper, published in 1901 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, identified this mysterious substance as a heavier-than-air gas.
The new gas appeared to be another new radioactive element, though they dared not label it as such. At the time, no respectable scientist would boast of turning one element into another – a claim that smacked of alchemy. As the pace of discovery and understanding accelerated, however, “emanation” indeed proved to be a new addition to the periodic table: the element radon.
In pursuit of a doctoral degree (not then offered by McGill), Harriet Brooks continued her research as a Fellow in Physics at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Again she distinguished herself, winning the Bryn Mawr President’s Fellowship for graduate study in Europe. Rutherford intervened to place her with his own mentor, J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish, where she spent the 1902-1903 academic year. Then, instead of returning to Bryn Mawr to complete her studies, she returned to McGill, to Rutherford. Here she made a startling discovery that she reported in a letter to Nature in 1904: In addition to releasing a gas, radium also ejected radioactive atoms that could accumulate on a non-radioactive surface.
This phenomenon, now known as radioactive recoil, was reported with excitement four years later by Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn. Rutherford told them right away that Harriet Brooks had seen the same thing well beforehand, and Hahn eventually credited her as the first observer when he wrote his autobiography.
Most likely following her heart, Harriet Brooks left McGill in 1905 to teach physics at Barnard College, the women’s part of Columbia University, where she was reunited with Bergen Davis, a fellow physicist she’d met at the Cavendish. In the summer of 1906, when she informed officials at the college of her engagement to Davis, they requested her resignation.
She stood up to the dean, claiming “a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries.” That said, she broke up with Davis and spent the following year as an independent researcher at the Curie lab in Paris.
Marie Curie had assumed directorship of the lab at the Sorbonne following her husband’s death in April 1906. She was pleased with Brooks, her first hire, and invited the talented young scientist to stay on for at least another year. Brooks chose instead to rejoin Rutherford, who had moved to the University of Manchester. Eager to welcome her again, Rutherford supported Brooks’s fellowship application with a sterling letter of recommendation, in which he insisted that “next to Mme. Curie she is the most prominent woman physicist in the department of radioactivity.”
Midway through these arrangements, marriage to an old flame from McGill took Harriet Brooks back to Montreal. As wife of physics instructor Frank Pitcher and mother of three children, she pursued no further study of radioactivity, though she helped other female researchers win scholarships through her involvement with the Canadian Federation of University Women. The Pitchers lost their son Charles to meningitis at age fourteen. They were stricken again when their eighteen-year-old daughter, Barbara, went missing between classes at McGill in March 1929 and was found weeks later, drowned.
Harriet Brooks died on April 17, 1933, after a lingering but undisclosed illness. She was 56 years old. Rutherford submitted a formal obituary notice to Nature describing her important contributions. He expressed his personal loss in a letter to a colleague:
“She was a woman of great personal charm as well as of marked intellectual interests. I am afraid her domestic life was not without serious trials which she bore with astonishing fortitude. My wife and I held her in great affection and her premature death is a grievous blow to us.”
*Linda Hall Library Org
Ernest Rutherford’s research group in Montreal, 1899. Harriet Brooks is at center rear; Rutherford is at far right (aip.org)
2006 Gloria Olive (8 June 1923 in New York City, USA - 17 April 2006 in Dunedin, New Zealand) Much of Olive's research was on applications of generalised powers. She published papers such as Binomial functions and combinatorial mathematics (1979), A combinatorial approach to generalized powers (1980), Binomial functions with the Stirling property (1981), Some functions that count (1983), Taylor series revisited (1984), Catalan numbers revisited (1985), A special class of infinite matrices (1987), and The ballot problem revisited (1988). Some of her work on binomial functions overlaps that of Gian-Carlo Rota's "polynomials of binomial type". She has had a special interest in the polynomials which are generated by her generalised powers, and hopes that someone will prove or disprove her conjecture, now about 30 years old, that all their zeros lie on the unit circle. This conjecture has now been verified for infinitely many special cases. *SAU
Olive was one of a small group of approximately seven women who established the precursor group to the Association for Women in Mathematics
She is the author of the book Mathematics for Liberal Arts Students (Macmillan).Wik
Credits :
*CHM=Computer History Museum
*FFF=Kane, Famous First Facts
*NSEC= NASA Solar Eclipse Calendar
*RMAT= The Renaissance Mathematicus, Thony Christie
*SAU=St Andrews Univ. Math History
*TIA = Today in Astronomy
*TIS= Today in Science History
*VFR = V Frederick Rickey, USMA
*Wik = Wikipedia
*WM = Women of Mathematics, Grinstein & Campbell
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