History of Science and Mathematics

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Awarded 70 times.
Why were geometers dissatisfied with the parallel postulate?
Awarded Oct 23 at 8:55
What are examples of serendipity in the history of the sciences and math?
Awarded Apr 21 at 21:56
How did Isaac Newton write the integral symbol?
Awarded Mar 31 at 19:06
When and why did the concept of relativistic mass become outdated?
Awarded Mar 30 at 0:17
How did Eratosthenes know the Sun was very far away?
Awarded Aug 23, 2022 at 22:58
Who invented the integers?
Awarded Jul 20, 2022 at 22:26
In a popular anecdote, who took 20 minutes to decide that a thing was obvious?
Awarded Jul 13, 2022 at 4:45
When did physics texts start to teach Kepler's $3/2$'s power law as a result of Newton's $1/r^2$ law of gravitation, rather than the other way around?
Awarded Jul 8, 2022 at 19:08
Why did I learn to write the base of the logarithm differently from the rest of the world?
Awarded Jun 24, 2022 at 2:47
Story of Grothendieck's Prime Number
Awarded May 17, 2022 at 8:12
Is there an astronomical reason behind the order for the names of days of the week?
Awarded Jan 19, 2022 at 19:03
Is the Scientific Method uniquely Western?
Awarded Nov 24, 2021 at 10:32
How did scientists plot complicated graphs in the 19th century?
Awarded Nov 5, 2021 at 13:36
Who first defined the "equal-delta" or "delta over equal" ($\triangleq$) symbol?
Awarded Oct 16, 2021 at 3:10
Is there any example of a long-standing mathematical conjecture whose resolution did not require advanced knowledge?
Awarded Jul 14, 2021 at 21:40
Discovery of zero
Awarded Jun 19, 2021 at 2:36
Has physics ever given a physical significance to a mathematically abstract idea?
Awarded Jun 11, 2021 at 0:57
Irrationality of the square root of 2
Awarded Mar 2, 2021 at 13:49
What are some scientific breakthroughs that have been done during jail time?
Awarded Jan 25, 2021 at 8:02
How did people make things perfectly straight?
Awarded Jan 21, 2021 at 9:27
Why did no one else, except Einstein, work on developing General Relativity between 1905-1915?
Awarded Dec 15, 2020 at 0:04
What attracted Einstein to the anomalous precession of Mercury?
Awarded Jul 19, 2020 at 7:34
(post deleted or otherwise unavailable)
Awarded May 22, 2020 at 9:17
How was Lagrange appointed professor of mathematics so early?
Awarded May 13, 2020 at 6:55
Did Galileo's writings on infinity influence Cantor?
Awarded Feb 9, 2020 at 0:15
Who introduced random variables into probability?
Awarded Feb 7, 2020 at 9:20
Why do we call Tycho Brahe by his first name?
Awarded Jan 4, 2020 at 15:25
Why volt instead of volta?
Awarded Jan 2, 2020 at 12:10
Who discovered the covering homomorphism between SU(2) and SO(3)?
Awarded Dec 28, 2019 at 20:45
How did Napier come to invent logarithms?
Awarded Oct 3, 2019 at 2:10
Which mathematicians died very young or in a tragic way?
Awarded Jun 21, 2019 at 21:15
Was object oriented programming influenced by the mathematical category theory?
Awarded Jun 3, 2019 at 2:20
Why did the ancient Greeks originally become interested in conic sections?
Awarded May 14, 2019 at 5:15
What were the dominant non-atomic theories of matter in the 19th century?
Awarded Mar 28, 2019 at 2:55
Was fake/rigged data common prior to the 20th century?
Awarded Jan 21, 2019 at 20:35
Examples of when the professional scientists or mathematicians were wrong, but the nonprofessionals were right
Awarded Jan 20, 2019 at 17:40
Why are $X$ and $Y$ commonly used as mathematical placeholders?
Awarded Dec 29, 2018 at 15:05
What is so mysterious about Archimedes' approximation of $\sqrt 3$?
Awarded Sep 21, 2018 at 11:20
Did physicists around 1900 really believe they were close to "figuring it all out"?
Awarded Jul 1, 2018 at 1:03
Roman engineers
Awarded Jun 11, 2018 at 6:25
Why is American and French notation different for open intervals (x, y) vs. ]x, y[?
Awarded Jun 1, 2018 at 8:07
Who introduced the Principle of Mathematical Induction for the first time?
Awarded May 3, 2018 at 22:53
Who attached Buniakovsky's name to the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality?
Awarded Apr 28, 2018 at 9:07
When and how was the geometric understanding of gauge theories developed?
Awarded Mar 18, 2018 at 3:15
What did the Soviets do with German scientists after WWII?
Awarded Mar 17, 2018 at 16:58
Writing Mathematical Symbols in 20th century
Awarded Mar 5, 2018 at 15:15
Why did algebraic geometry need Alexander Grothendieck?
Awarded Feb 2, 2018 at 1:26
The history of different constructions of tangent spaces
Awarded Nov 18, 2017 at 4:50
Timeline of measurements of the electron's charge
Awarded Nov 3, 2016 at 13:42
Did Gauss find the formula for $1+2+3+\ldots+(n-2)+(n-1)+n$ in elementary school?
Awarded Aug 5, 2016 at 13:14
What led to the fall of Göttingen?
Awarded Jul 29, 2016 at 3:49
What is Ptolemy holding in this picture?
Awarded Jun 23, 2016 at 18:39
What's the famous story about a mathematician who gave a talk without saying a word?
Awarded Jun 19, 2016 at 1:22
Current ways of thinking in the History of Mathematics
Awarded Jun 12, 2016 at 19:14
What was Euler's motivation for introducing $i$ for $\sqrt{-1}$?
Awarded May 18, 2016 at 3:52
When did Mathematics stop being one of "the Sciences"?
Awarded May 17, 2016 at 5:58
What new mathematics was inspired by biology and chemistry?
Awarded May 4, 2016 at 5:02
What is the difference between Calculus of Newton and that of Leibniz?
Awarded Apr 9, 2016 at 10:25
Are there written (19th century) sources expressing the belief that the intermediate value property is equivalent to continuity?
Awarded Apr 7, 2016 at 19:40
Contributions to chemistry from medieval Arabia
Awarded Jan 9, 2016 at 11:39
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