For questions about the details of a particular scientist's life.
3
votes
1answer
135 views
What are the modern connections of the Pentagramma Mirificum studied by Gauss?
In the last years, i read a lot about a mathematical object that was discovered by John Napier in 1620 and explored much more deeply by Gauss, who called this "Pentagramma Mirificum" (latin for "the ...
-4
votes
0answers
71 views
How do you rate Stephen Wolfram's physics papers?
Stephen Wolfram was a child prodigy of sorts who published his first physics papers in peer reviewed journals at 17 at around 1975.
His academic work seems very impressive before he apparently quits ...
3
votes
0answers
101 views
Gauss's anticipation of quaternions and their relation to congruences
Recently i read the article "Hamilton, Rodrigues, Gauss, Quaternions and Rotations: A Historical Reassessment", which can be found freely on the internet. This article is by far the most comprehensive ...
3
votes
0answers
56 views
Question about Gauss's contributions to the theory of electric circuits
This question is a continuation of my previously-posted question: Several questions about Gauss's contributions to electromagnetism. I wrote it after user vonbrand asked me to split my original ...
1
vote
0answers
62 views
Query 31 in Newton's opticks and the second law of thermodynamics
Query 31 in Newton's opticks contains the following words: "But by reason of the Tenacity of Fluids, and Attrition of their Parts, and the Weakness of Elasticity in Solids, Motion is much more apt to ...
3
votes
1answer
148 views
Do these trigonometric identities belong to Antonio Cagnoli?
I'm new to this stack community, please bear with me as I try to explain my question properly. Recently I came across with these trigonometric identities (where $ \omega + \phi + \psi = 180^\circ $):
...
4
votes
0answers
95 views
Several questions about Gauss's contributions to electromagnetism
First of all, i appologize if i'm asking too many questions about Gauss (and some will also say "not very interesting questions"); i know i might appear ridiculus - but i really think it's an ...
1
vote
0answers
117 views
How did Gauss's electrodynamics law preempt the later developement of retarded potentials theory in physics?
My question refers to a fragment on electrodynamics written by Gauss at around 1835. In this short note (see Gauss's werke, volume V, p. 616-617) Gauss wrote down a fundamental equation which ...
4
votes
0answers
92 views
What was Gauss's theoretical work related to his invention of the “Double-Gauss lens”?
Gauss's contributions (Dioptriche Untersuchungen, 1840) to the "classical" optical theory (Gaussian optics, i.e calculations made under the paraxial approximation) are well known, but long before he ...
8
votes
1answer
169 views
What were 12 year old Pitts' objections to Principia Mathematica?
In Wikipedia on the page dedicated to Walter Pitts (accesses today), it is written that,
He is widely remembered to have spent three days in a library, at the age of 12, reading Principia ...
5
votes
1answer
98 views
Was Paul Cohen a student or assistant of Gödel?
In The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography about Paul Erdős, by Paul Hoffman, the author claims that Paul Cohen was "Gödel's former assistant" (p 225). However, I can't find any other sources ...
0
votes
0answers
40 views
What were Gauss's results on the attraction of homogenous ellipsoids in his paper from 1813?
I'm very curius to learn of the solution to the problem of the gravitational attraction of triaxial ellipsoid, both in his internal and external parts. From what i read, i understood that the solution ...
1
vote
1answer
51 views
Summary of Gauss's work on geodesic lines on ellipsoid
The solution to the problem of geodesic lines on a biaxial ellipsoid (when two of the axes are equal) is not very hard and can be solved by mathematical tools that existed prior to Gauss - i.e via ...
6
votes
1answer
280 views
How did Wittgenstein fulfill eligibility requirements for a PhD in philosophy without having a Bachelor's degree in philosophy?
The Wikipedia article about Wittgenstein says:
In Norway it was clear that Moore was expected to act as Wittgenstein's secretary, taking down his notes, with Wittgenstein falling into a rage when ...
6
votes
2answers
203 views
Who took 20 minutes to decide that a thing was obvious?
The joke is found on this comment chain on Reddit. In all versions, it's about a professor who was explaining a proof and said, "It's obvious that....." and then looked quizzical and walked out of the ...
15
votes
3answers
3k views
Is this Einstein rejection letter fake?
So I found this on the internet the other day-
Is this fake?
Are there any ways to prove that it's fake?
Does there, if any, exist any real copy of such a rejection letter?(Was Einstein ever ...
4
votes
1answer
144 views
Who influenced Gauss in his abstract approach to mathematics?
I have studied that Gauss was one of the firsts mathematicians to defend this idea, about the Abstract Math and the conception of number, claiming that "What is calculated (in the sense of things ...
6
votes
2answers
162 views
What did Fermat do as a lawyer?
Fermat is easily one of the best known mathematicians of all time. We all know about Fermat's Last Theorem, Fermat's Little Theorem, his quadrature rule, his invention of probability theory, etc. ...
1
vote
0answers
72 views
Laplace's characterization of Gauss as “a super-terrestrial spirit in a human body”
The following words concerning Carl Friedrich Gauss are attributed to Laplace in an article from the Mathematics magazine by Teets and Whitehead (The discovery of Ceres: how Gauss became famous, first ...
0
votes
0answers
96 views
Did Gauss anticipate Kirchhoff's diffraction formulation in 1836?
Clemens Schaefer says, in his treatise "Über Gauss' physikalische Arbeiten", that for a very short time in the years 1835/1836 Gauss showed interest in the new diffraction experiments of Fresnel and ...
1
vote
1answer
87 views
Why is there some doubt whether or not Gauss saw the pseudosphere as the embodiment of hyperbolic geometry?
I read a lot of historical articles that doubt the possibility that Gauss saw in the pseudosphere the realization of hyperbolic geometry; that geodetic triangles on the pseudosphere obey the same ...
5
votes
0answers
87 views
Nature of Fermat's friend Lalouvère's activities as censor?
Fermat had a friend at Toulouse named Lalouvère. Lalouvère was censor, jesuit, and mathematician (in alphabetical order).
Antonella Romano writes on page 512 of her book La Contre-Réforme ...
3
votes
3answers
367 views
How did Gauss overcome the problem of curvature of sunlight rays when he developed his heliotrope?
My question refers to Gauss's heliotrope - an optical device for projecting sunlight to a distance by a reflecting mirror, that was used in geodetic surveys in order to mark reference points. The ...
1
vote
2answers
64 views
Biographies comparing the personal and professional lives of various influential scientists/mathematicians?
There are many biographies that go into detail into the lives of a single, or maybe a couple of scientists.
I am wondering, is there a good book that does not focus on an individual, but explicitly ...
0
votes
0answers
38 views
How to derive from Gauss's result on the volume of orthoscheme tetrahedron the formulas of Lobachevsky and Bolay?
My question is a direct continuation of my already posted question Did Gauss's expression for the differential of the hyperbolic volume of the tetrahedron agree with later results?.
I simply didn'...
2
votes
2answers
207 views
Did Gauss's expression for the differential of the hyperbolic volume of the tetrahedron agree with later results?
My question is mainly about getting explanation to Gauss's third note (note III) in his writing "Zur Astralgeometrie", (see Cubierung der Tetraeder, pages 228-229), and about placing it in the right ...
3
votes
1answer
117 views
Who knows Frank Irvin?
In a German book by Helmut Kracke I found Frank Irvin mentioned. Irvin proved in 1916 the convergence of the harmonic series when all terms containing a 9 were omitted. I would like to include Irvin ...
2
votes
0answers
57 views
Why was F. W. Lanchester's first aeronautical paper rejected by the Physical Society?
Lanchester was arguably the first to somewhat accurately describe the physical mechanism for the generation of lift. In 1894, the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society read his paper, ...
2
votes
2answers
217 views
Famous messy scientists
Which scientists were known to be messy?
I know of Albert Einstein:
And of Jean Piaget:
Are there other examples?
2
votes
0answers
104 views
When did William (Bill) Burke, who discovered the first actual bug, live and die?
Grace Hopper is frequently credited with finding the first actual bug. In fact, she just popularized the story of how William (Bill) Burke found the bug in the Mark II computer and documented it.
I'...
6
votes
0answers
86 views
F. Schoblik's announced ''ausführliche Darstellung": a lost wrong proof of the Four Color Theorem?
In (the AMS Chelsea Publishing version of) what is perhaps the first genuine textbook on graph theory ever, Dénes Kőnig on p. 28 gives the illustration
and the footnote
which when translated says
...
4
votes
2answers
216 views
What topological ideas did Gauss introduce to his student Möbius?
Recently I found a website with good historical information about the contributions of Gauss to Analysis situs (the old term for topology). The site is in German so I made a Google translate to ...
2
votes
1answer
120 views
Did Kepler influence Fermat?
On page 347 in his "Mathematical Thought, volume 1", Morris Kline writes:
"The work on the third class of problems, finding the maxima and minima of functions, may be said to begin with an ...
4
votes
1answer
89 views
Name of a XIXth-century German scientist from the University of Berlin
In December 1892, the french mathematician Charles Hermite had a jubilee celebration.
He received a number of letters and telegrams. One of them is from the members of the University of Berlin, see ...
1
vote
1answer
99 views
When did Grace Murray Hopper say “The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from?”
When did Grace Murray Hopper say "The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from?" This quote is attributed to her in many places (including in one of my books), ...
2
votes
1answer
117 views
Was Gauss aware of the non-euclidean implications of his work on moduler forms?
Until recently, i thought that the first to observe the connection between modular forms and the hyperbolic plane (a model of non-euclidean geometry) was Felix Klein. But in the last week i read the ...
6
votes
3answers
220 views
Great physicists with no mentors
I often check biographies of physicists and at one point or another in the beginning of their careers they have the opportunity to be mentored by other and often also great scientists. But, I know for ...
1
vote
2answers
124 views
Citation of Brouwer needed
In a letter to Zeilberger the late Alexander Zenkin states that Brouwer called set theory "a pathological incident in history of mathematics from which future generations will be horrified". (See ...
1
vote
1answer
75 views
What was the mechanical principle of Leibniz's “integraph”?
For a very long time i've searched in the internet what was the actual integrating device which Leibniz designed in 1693. Yesterday i found the answer - the instrument which Leibniz deviced is the ...
1
vote
1answer
69 views
Did Leibniz also design analog computers?
My question is based on the information that appears in several websites, according to which i found three examples of a kind of instrument that was probably an analog computer. The first one ...
4
votes
0answers
148 views
Did Gauss know Jacobi's four squares theorem?
In p. 283-285 of volume 2 of Dickson's “history of the theory of numbers” appear several formulas of striking similarity: some of them are stated by Gauss (p.283) and some are stated by Jacobi (p.285);...
2
votes
1answer
109 views
History of the origins and development of problems of finding maximum and minimum values of quantities
I am aware that perhaps the earliest source concerning problems of maximum and minimum values occurs in Euclid's Elements. After Euclid, Archimedes of Syracuse and Apollonius of Perga seem to consider ...
3
votes
1answer
92 views
Summary of Gauss's contributions to differential geometry, conformal mappings, and geodesy
G. Waldo Dunnington in his biography of Gauss states (on p. 165):"only a portion of his results in the field of curved surfaces was presented in the Disquisitiones generalis, and a second memoir on ...
1
vote
0answers
68 views
What was C.F Gauss's work on the problem of the volume of tetrahedron in hyperbolic geometry?
My question is a continuation of this posted question: Why did Gauss recommend Janos Bolyai to find the volume of a tetrahedron in hyperbolic geometry?. The issue is that since i asked the previous ...
2
votes
1answer
178 views
Did Gauss know the residues theorem in complex analysis in 1811?
My question refers to Gauss's 1811 letter to Friedrich Bessel, which contains a statement of Cauchy integral theorem. I have access to the letter, but I'm unable to read it. I know that Gauss gives ...
1
vote
0answers
87 views
Was Newton aware of a nascent inverse function theorem?
More specifically, was Newton aware that given an inverse pair of functions $f$ and $h$ such that
$$f(h(x)) = x = h(f(x))$$ about the origin that, for
$$(x,y)=(h(y),f(x)),$$
the derivatives satisfy
...
5
votes
1answer
179 views
What results did C. F. Gauss add to Euler’s dioptrics?
I’m a fan of C. F. Gauss but I have to be objective — I don’t understand why the classical theory of lenses is called “Gaussian optics”. I think so since it seems that almost all the results of Gauss’...
4
votes
3answers
222 views
Best books/papers on Newton and his mathematical physics
In your opinion, what are some of the best books/papers on Newton and his work that accurately cover the connections between his geometric proofs in the Principia and his development of the calculus ...
5
votes
2answers
376 views
Did Poincaré say that set theory is a disease?
This question has been discussed on several sites including MathOverflow but with not definite result. Presumely HSE is best suited.
Jeremy Gray denies that Poincare said, "Later generations will ...
2
votes
1answer
119 views
Why did Gauss recommend Janos Bolyai to find the volume of a tetrahedron in hyperbolic geometry?
My question is based on Dunnington's biography of Gauss: Gauss: titan of science. In it Dunnington mentions that Gauss, in his response to Janos Bolyai's paper, sent him a synthetic proof of the ...
