History of Science and Mathematics

Enlightened

 Enlightened
First to answer and accepted with score of 10 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
Awarded 308 times.
When was the term "field" first used in maths?
Awarded Jul 7, 2016 at 16:22
History of $0 \in \mathbb N$.
Awarded Jul 7, 2016 at 16:22
What is Ptolemy holding in this picture?
Awarded Jun 23, 2016 at 19:56
Did Turing know of Babbage's work?
Awarded Jun 19, 2016 at 9:19
Who invented the exponential ansatz for linear differential equations with constant coefficients?
Awarded May 18, 2016 at 19:13
What were the early empirical tests of Einstein's mass-energy equivalence $E=mc^2$?
Awarded May 3, 2016 at 19:36
What kind of mathematical education did Leibniz have?
Awarded Apr 19, 2016 at 7:15
Hilbert's reaction to Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Awarded Apr 15, 2016 at 8:41
How did scientists plot complicated graphs in the 19th century?
Awarded Apr 13, 2016 at 20:56
How were derivatives of trigonometric functions first discovered?
Awarded Feb 25, 2016 at 22:42
How was the resemblance between apes and humans explained in pre-Darwinian biology?
Awarded Feb 14, 2016 at 17:57
Why is there no named unit for momentum but there is one for energy?
Awarded Jan 31, 2016 at 11:28
Is the Scientific Method uniquely Western?
Awarded Jan 13, 2016 at 13:01
Why did mathematicians not see that $f_n(x)=x^n$ is a counterexample to Cauchy's "theorem" about limits of continuous functions?
Awarded Dec 28, 2015 at 18:34
When and on what basis was it decided that an hour have 60 minutes and a minute have 60 seconds?
Awarded Dec 14, 2015 at 22:39
What is the shortest paper in the history of mathematics?
Awarded Nov 26, 2015 at 21:20
What specific problems motivated Poincaré's work on topology?
Awarded Nov 23, 2015 at 19:16
Examples of good research mathematicians that did poorly in exams
Awarded Nov 2, 2015 at 19:04
Pythagoras vs. the idea of Pythagoras
Awarded Oct 31, 2015 at 21:59
What famous theorems or results were proven by female mathematicians?
Awarded Oct 19, 2015 at 4:49
How much of mathematics did Russell's paradox really break?
Awarded Oct 10, 2015 at 12:28
Is there a 'lost calculus'?
Awarded Oct 6, 2015 at 17:56
Why is American and French notation different for open intervals (x, y) vs. ]x, y[?
Awarded Oct 6, 2015 at 16:42
Have the results from Computational Physics disprove any physics theory?
Awarded Sep 29, 2015 at 22:57
When did it become understood that irrational numbers have non-repeating decimal representations?
Awarded Sep 15, 2015 at 17:26
Why were 20th Century German scientists so impressive?
Awarded Aug 19, 2015 at 11:02
Historically, how did people define multiplication for negative numbers?
Awarded Aug 15, 2015 at 14:48
How did mathematicians notate the empty set before $\varnothing$?
Awarded Aug 11, 2015 at 15:36
Did the Digges Telescope actually exist?
Awarded Jul 8, 2015 at 21:13
What language was spoken at the International Mathematical Congress?
Awarded Jun 29, 2015 at 14:22
History of a result from Bézout
Awarded Jun 21, 2015 at 11:38
Cauchy's undead theory
Awarded Jun 8, 2015 at 8:59
Why was the continental drift theory of Alfred Wegener so controversial in the first part of the 20th century?
Awarded Jun 6, 2015 at 12:20
When did the names of scientists first become the names of scientific units?
Awarded May 20, 2015 at 21:06
Why did the ancient Greeks originally become interested in conic sections?
Awarded May 15, 2015 at 12:45
Why is the radical symbol $\sqrt{}$ called "radical"?
Awarded May 10, 2015 at 7:50
Why did algebraic geometry need Alexander Grothendieck?
Awarded May 8, 2015 at 1:23
Writing Mathematical Symbols in 20th century
Awarded May 7, 2015 at 17:50
When did we first begin to suspect that the Earth had an Iron Catastrophe?
Awarded May 7, 2015 at 7:21
What's the famous story about a mathematician who gave a talk without saying a word?
Awarded Apr 1, 2015 at 4:47
When did humans realize that sex leads to pregnancy?
Awarded Mar 3, 2015 at 1:31
Was Pólya’s “How To Solve It” originally written in German or English (or some other language)?
Awarded Feb 25, 2015 at 12:28
When did the people start using the portraits of the two Euclids interchangeably?
Awarded Feb 25, 2015 at 11:22
How did Babylonians figure out that the evening star is the morning star?
Awarded Feb 22, 2015 at 12:09
Why did angular momentum get the letter L
Awarded Jan 22, 2015 at 22:57
Who first measured the distance to the Moon? How was it done?
Awarded Jan 11, 2015 at 12:55
Are there any theorems that become "lost" and discarded over time?
Awarded Jan 1, 2015 at 5:00
Did the pioneers of nuclear physics and radioactivity eventually get sick from their experiments?
Awarded Jan 1, 2015 at 1:42
Who discovered smooth non-analytic functions of a real variable?
Awarded Dec 26, 2014 at 5:45
Why is the Pythagorean Theorem so ubiquitous?
Awarded Dec 24, 2014 at 20:19
What theories preceded the wave, particles and duality models of light?
Awarded Dec 3, 2014 at 2:45
What was Euler's motivation for introducing $i$ for $\sqrt{-1}$?
Awarded Nov 26, 2014 at 13:23
Discovery of Earth's magnetic field
Awarded Nov 23, 2014 at 16:00
What mathematical developments/discoveries caused imaginary numbers to gain acceptance at the time (18th century) they did?
Awarded Nov 22, 2014 at 0:34
When was zero actually introduced in mathematics?
Awarded Nov 19, 2014 at 15:13
What sorts of calculations called for the invention of logarithm tables?
Awarded Nov 18, 2014 at 1:56
How did group theory enter quantum mechanics?
Awarded Nov 17, 2014 at 22:36
What motivated Cantor to invent set theory?
Awarded Nov 14, 2014 at 2:34
Did Alfred Nobel collect his wealth by selling dynamite?
Awarded Nov 13, 2014 at 17:30
Why were so many pre-18th century Mathematicians polymaths?
Awarded Nov 12, 2014 at 20:32
1 2 3 4
5
6

Your privacy

By clicking “Accept all cookies”, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy.