# All Questions

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### Theorem or equation self-named after the same person that published it?

In the history of science, has there ever been a theorem/equation/law that is named after a person and has been coined that name by the same person? Example: let's say somebody named Trevor discovers ...
5answers
2k views

### Has there ever been a case where someone wished a theorem or important result wasn't named after them? Has it happened more than once?

The current answers to the Academia HNQ Should I ask for permission to name a mathematical theorem? include the following (small excerpts): There is no need to ask permission, and mostly likely they ...
1answer
63 views

### Ancient Egyptian Mathematicians

Greek and Muslim Egyptian mathematicians are well known throughout the world. But the only Ancient Egyptian mathematician I know of is Ahmes, who said he's just a scribe. Who were the greatest ...
0answers
62 views

### When did Zermelo and Fraenkel publish their axioms?

I have googled the heck out of this but cannot find a reference to the year Z&F published their axioms. I'd expected to see an article reference but none that I could find.
0answers
25 views

### How old is the idea of an Oscullating Circle? [duplicate]

In the second volume of Spivak's Comprehensive introduction to differential geometry, he begins the discussion of curvature by discussing the oscullating circle of a curve in the plane. This leads me ...
1answer
72 views

### Did Hertz discover the concept of frequency and if so, how did Doppler think of frequency?

I may not be understanding what a "Hertz" is but it seems to simply be one cycle per second. But would not Doppler have understood what frequency was decades before Hertz? Or was Hertz just ...
0answers
34 views

### Is there a derivation (in English) of the Wien radiation law not based on statistics, other than that found in "Atomic Physics" by Max Born?

The textbook, "Atomic Physics", by Max Born contains a derivation in its appendix of the Wien radiation law that is based only on thermodynamics and Maxwell's laws of E&M. The ...
0answers
36 views

### How did the concept of displacement emerge?

I think this question is very silly. This is what I thought of velocity. In the attempt to define force and measure, it was observed that force can change the speed of the object and direction. It was ...
1answer
82 views

### Looking for reference for quote

In graduate school, I remember hearing or seeing the rough quote: Good mathematicians know one branch of math. Great mathematicians know two branches. I'm sure I am somewhat misquoting it, but does ...
1answer
4k views

### Did president Garfield make any contributions to Mathematics?

All I know about Garfield and math was that he made an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Did he make any other mathematical advancement (big or small)?
1answer
119 views

### Had Albert Einstein tried to use the Galilean transformation on Maxwell's equations before AE's Special Theory?

I am looking for what motivated Albert Einstein in the direction of his Special Theory. I have read that it is unclear if he was set on that path by the Michelson-Morley experiments. Was AE aware ...
1answer
164 views

### Did Feynman win the Putnam by a "large margin"

I was reading Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and came across this section: Image transcribed: "One of Feynman’s fraternity brothers was surprised to see him return home while ...
1answer
3k views

### When was it realized that the giant planets do not have solid surfaces?

When was it realized that the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, and the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune, do not have solid surfaces? When was that idea first proposed and when was it accepted ...
1answer
358 views

### Did the medieval Islamic scholar al-Tusi state the principle of conservation of mass?

This article: Farid Alakbarli, A 13th-Century Darwin? Tusi's Views on Evolution, Azerbaijan International (2001) claims that Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (13th century) stated an early version of the law of ...
1answer
75 views

### Whatever happened to parageometrical optics of diffraction?

In 1950, Giuliano Toraldo di Francia published a paper [1] with the title "Parageometrical Optics" followed by several other papers on the subject, I dare say culminating in a beautiful ...
0answers
69 views

### Why did Poincaré call point-set topology a disease? [duplicate]

When looking for Poincaré’s (apocryphal) quote about set theory being a disease, I found this website, which lists a bunch of quotes from Poincaré. I couldn’t help but notice the quote directly above ...
1answer
136 views

### Math-education comparsion between Japan and United States from perspectives of engineering contributions

I may think that this post is unsuitable in HSM. NASA launches rockets far more than JAXA(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). BostonDynamics-robots are way general-purpose than Japan's FANUC-robots. ...
1answer
104 views

### Are there any direct comments by Isaac Newton on Leibniz's living force / vis-viva?

The living force or the vis-viva is a quantity usually attributed to Leibniz (although there were a few other people who identified it as a conserved quantity in certain collisions earlier). Many ...
1answer
92 views

### Did Cantor know about Boole's work in logic, and did it influence his work on sets?

We commonly say that sets obey a Boolean algebra. I think that's correct as a stand-alone statement. If true, did Cantor come up with a Boolean algebra on his own, or did he use the work of Boole?
7answers
2k views

### Articles published without their authors being aware

In 1962, a paper called “Multiplication of Many-Digital Numbers by Automatic Computers”, by Anatoly Karatsuba and Yuri Ofman, was published at the Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was ...
0answers
60 views

### Diphtherite: What is it and what is the difference with Diphtheria?

My brother and I are researching our family tree, and in our extended ancestry, there is a person who is registered on their death certificate to have died June 1858, of diphtherite. I wondered if it ...
0answers
79 views

### Which library in London has the best mathematics and history sections? [closed]

Which library in the greater London area has the largest combination of mathematics and history sections (i.e., the optimal pair)? Otherwise, which has the largest mathematics section?
1answer
71 views

### Did the ancients have the concept of dimension?

Plainly, they knew what a circle and sphere were and also a square and cube; but did they discuss the idea that a sphere was analogous to a circle but in 3 dimensions or similarly the analogy between ...
1answer
134 views

### Have there been instances in physics where different scientists have interpreted the same data differently? [closed]

Have there been instances in physics where different scientists have interpreted the same data differently? If yes, can you please give me specific examples and explain why one interpretation was ...
2answers
237 views

### Why did Columbus think the Earth was much smaller than it is?

Columbus set off on his westward journey to Asia, believing the Earth was much smaller than it is. There was some apparent disagreement about the size, and Columbus was staking his life on it. Why ...
0answers
55 views

### Who first measured the increase of mass with speed?

Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_mass) says that: Thomson (1893) noticed that electromagnetic momentum and energy of charged bodies, and therefore their masses, depend on the speed ...
1answer
221 views

### Why was Hausdorff not able to move to United States from Nazi Germany?

Felix Hausdorff, who was so well known to American mathematicians through his topology book of 1914, Grundzüge der Mengenlehre, committed suicide together with his wife when facing the threat of ...
0answers
26 views

### What is Aristotle's view on Plant generation?

I am new to Aristotle study, In Book 1 of Generation of Aristotle give his view on plant generation, In Book 1.1 Aristotle writes " But all those creatures which do not move, as the Testacea and ...
0answers
113 views

### Is the height of Great Pyramid based on the Golden ratio or on Pi? [closed]

The ratio of four over the square root of the Golden Mean is very close to $\pi$. Therefore, if the height of a pyramid of square basis of size 2L is L times the square root of the Golden Mean, the ...
1answer
85 views

### Einstein's Objection to Drude Model

In Walter Isaacson's Biography of Einstein, it is stated that the young Einstein was developing his own ideas in Statistical Physics and Thermodynamics and he had found some error in Drude's model for ...
1answer
223 views

### Whose 1930 number theory result is used in characterizing perfect 2-error correcting linear codes?

In Error-Correcting Codes: A Mathematical Introduction (Chapman & Hall, 1998), John Baylis wrote (p.109) Moving on to 2-error correcting linear codes, the condition for perfection of linear codes ...
0answers
20 views

### Franklin's Bell vs Faraday Motor -- could not something similar to Franklin's Bell be considered a motor?

I am guessing that Franklin having employed the machine to detect lightning maybe missed the idea of a motor or few people thought of powering a machine with electricity since wind or steam or muscle ...
1answer
133 views

### Mathematics involved in "Jabberwocky"

The famous poem, "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll contains a plethora of weird words. However, Carroll is known as a celebrated mathematician and logician. Does "Jabberwocky" have ...
0answers
70 views

### How did the US get enough U235 for "Little Boy"

The answer to a different question (Where did Fermi get the U235 for the first nuclear pile) about U235, was that Fermi used natural uranium for his reactor. This explains, in particular, the origin ...
1answer
81 views

### Is there a source for a footnote in *A Canticle for Leibowitz* about the definition of the electron, "Negative Twist of Nothingness"

In a French edition of Fiat Homo (first part of A Canticle for Leibowitz) I found the following footnote about the definition of the electron given by Brother Francis to another monk, namely “Torsion ...
0answers
57 views

### Who was the first scientist to give a formula for the probability density function of the position of a photon in the double slit experiment?

The double-slit experiment shows the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena. On Wikipedia one can read: This type of experiment was first performed, using light, by Thomas ...
0answers
44 views

### What date is assigned to Hippocratic treatises "On Generation" and "On the Nature of the Child"?

On the nature of the Child is quoted by Galen in his Book "On Semen". I want to know what date is given to these two books, especially "On Generation"?
1answer
61 views

### "Dragon Dice", a historical gambling game involved in the development of probability

"Dragon Dice" was a simple gambling game which rolled a few dice, and 1s were special in some way. A European noble played this game with his friends, who would lose a lot of money to him ...
4answers
318 views

### What contributions to mathematics did Napoleon make?

I have watched a video about Napoleon's theorem — maybe it was contributed by Napoleon, maybe not. I also know that Laplace himself said Napoleon was good at mathematics. However, did Napoleon make ...
0answers
26 views

### Why is the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire sometimes called the Laplace force?

Living in the UK, I've been used to calling the force on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field 'the motor effect force'. But I'm increasingly aware of another (less clumsy?) name for it: 'the ...
0answers
132 views

### Why did the mathematical community settle on these properties to define a topology?

The following post is long, but I decided to write more rather than less in case it's helpful. I tried to make it clear, quick, and easy to skip to the short version of my question, so the reader can ...
1answer
78 views

### Who introduced the stream function?

I have found many different claimed answers to this question: Wikipedia article on the stream function claims that Lagrange introduced it in 1781. Darrigol's The Worlds of Flow says that D'Alambert ...
0answers
66 views

### How did Mathew Bevan acquire hacking skill without belonging to military or national agencies?

This my post may be inappropriate since math may be irrelevant in this topic. I've read this article of wikipedia of the hacker called Mathew Bevan. Seemingly the ariticle has not specified how Bevan ...
0answers
73 views

### Complex potential in E227?

I have a reason to believe that Euler introduced the complex potential in his Continuation des recherches sur la theorie du mouvement does fluides, published in 1757. However, I am having hard time ...
1answer
78 views

### (Where) does Plato define perfect number?

I've read several texts suggesting that Plato defines "perfect number" in his Republic, book VIII 546 b. However, there's no definition as we can see from - for example - this translation: &...
1answer
107 views

### Are there any portraits of Joseph Fourier other than this one?

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist who initiated the investigation of Fourier series. The following is the only portrait of Fourier that I know of. Are there any ...
1answer
295 views

### Why do South Asians often use "lakhs" and "crores" instead of "millions"? What is the historical origin of this system?

I noticed that South Asians often write 10,00,000 instead of 1,000,000. My questions are: What is the origin of this special numbering system? Was there a more practical reason for having a special ...
1answer
92 views

### Why was the term random "variable" applied to a mapping?

I think I'm correct in saying a random variable is a mapping from the sample space to the real line (or more generally to $\mathbb{R}^n$. If I'm right then random variable seems a very odd way for a ...
1answer
86 views

### Who introduced velocity potential?

Wikipedia cites John Anderson’s A History of Aerodynamics and says that velocity potential was introduced by Lagrange in 1788. However, I could trace it at least to Euler 1752, where he published his ...
0answers
67 views

### The Picard Group: Origin and History

I've come to the notion of the Picard Group. I was recently linked to this paper paper, which contains the line: The problem of computing the Picard groups of surfaces \$S \subset \mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{...

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