Questions tagged [biographical-details]
For questions about the details of a particular scientist's life.
339
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Where can I find Grothendieck's letter of resignation from Bourbaki?
I encountered Grothendieck's resignation letter from Bourbaki along with its English translation not too long ago on the web, but for now it seems it's nowhere to be found. I've scoured through the ...
10
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1answer
322 views
Does Arnold say that Hardy is responsible for Ramanujan's untimely death?
Mathematician Vladimir Arnold in his book Yesterday and Long Ago, Springer (2007) writes:
When I resided at Cambridge as a senior fellow of Trinity College,
Indian colleagues told me some details ...
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97 views
Where can I read Cauchy's terrible poems?
I hope that the slightly abrasive title is forgivable, as the judgement on this poetry is not mine, but Hans Freudenthal's. Here is the background: in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, there is ...
13
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1answer
2k views
What hair color did Évariste Galois have?
There is one historic black and white portrait of Évariste Galois that is often used [1]. However there are a number of more recent colorful portraits that imagine him to be anything from straw blond[...
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68 views
What was the poetic duel Einstein had with Lilly Rona about?
Felix Ehrenhaft was married to Lilly Rona. Einstein and Ehrenhaft regularly met and discussed about magnetic poles or fractional charges. Einstein didn't agree and used his authority to keep Ehrenhaft ...
4
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1answer
145 views
Why was André Weil in Finland?
E.g. here it says:
During the Second World War André Weil was first imprisoned in Finland, accused of spying, then after being returned to France he was put into Rouen prison convicted of being a ...
3
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0answers
78 views
What is the largest academic genealogy tree that we know of?
Many famous scientists are connected by their doctorate advisor-student relations. I wonder if we know which is the largest continuous chain of famous researchers. I have checked pages like ...
2
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0answers
75 views
Was Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity inspired by his father?
Becquerel was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of radioactivity. He was researching phosphoresence and decided one day to place the stuff he used in a drawer to keep it out of the sun. He put ...
2
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1answer
99 views
When were Hermann Amandus Schwarz and Marie Elizabeth Kummer married?
Wikipedia says that Schwarz (b. 1843) marrid Kummer in 1912 at the age of 69, had six children, then died in 1921 at the age of 78. I'm surprised (not against!).
According to https://sprague.one-name....
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118 views
Is there any relation between strabismus and mathematical or scientific ability?
By looking at the portraits of prominent mathematicians and scientists of the previous centuries it seems like they have a higher incidence of strabismus than the general population of today.
Are ...
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94 views
How is it possible that Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter Ève was so healthy?
I know that problems caused by radiation are pretty much random and unexpected at low levels of exposition but this randomness begins to be more probable when the exposition grows and this makes me ...
3
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1answer
126 views
What was the influence of Gauss on the understanding of the importance of non-Euclidean geometry?
As is known, Gauss came to similar conclusions as Lobachevskii in the problem of fifth postulate, but I don't know whether Gauss had any impact to the contemporaries in that story. Can anybody ...
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115 views
Was Landau interested in the interpretations of quantum mechanics?
I am interested in Lev Landau. I was trying to find what was his approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, I am unable to find any particular source were this is discussed.
Was he an ...
3
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1answer
105 views
Who was E. Busche?
Donald E. Knuth reports in his: TAOCP: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd ed.) in $\S1.2.4$: Integer Functions and Elementary Number Theory: Exercise 38 that this result:
$$\sum_{0 \mathop \le k \...
4
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1answer
187 views
Who was Paul Gerwien?
The famed Wallace–Bolyai–Gerwien theorem has got its name from three mathematicians who proved it independently. More precisely speaking
Farkas Bolyai first formulated the question. Gerwien proved ...
4
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1answer
99 views
Did Einstein know about Laplace's query into whether gravity is instantaneous?
Here it states,
In 1776, Laplace published a memoir in which he first explored the possible influences of a purported luminiferous ether or of a law of gravitation that did not act instantaneously. ...
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50 views
Kurt Gödel: a biography
I'm looking for a well-written biographical book about Kurt Gödel. Any titles you'd recommend?
10
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2answers
275 views
Who predicted the existence of the muon neutrino?
The Wikipedia article on the muon neutrino says:
The muon neutrino is a lepton, an elementary subatomic particle which has the symbol $\nu_\mu$ and no net electric charge. Together with the muon it ...
2
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1answer
61 views
Heyting and Lugano
I read in Wikipedia that Arend Heyting, logician, died in Lugano while all the biographies focus on his career in Amsterdam and nearby.
Do we know if he lived in Lugano or not, and why died there?
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193 views
Who were the mathematicians who hated teaching in class or disliked teaching?
Who were the mathematicians who hated teaching in class or disliked teaching?
From this Article:
Gauss hated teaching, and believed some students robbed him of his time.
From this Article:
Perelman ...
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81 views
How well did Cardano understand elementary probabilities, as shown from his writings?
I was recently reading a paper on the historical development of probability theory where Cardano is presented as having discovered some elementary laws of probability in the 1550s. But he is described ...
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0answers
64 views
What were the likely lives of the highly creative or intellectually gifted people in declining or primitive civilizations?
People living in certain regions throughout history produced little to none recorded intellectual achievements.
Assuming that highly creative individuals existed in these regions, are there any ...
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0answers
62 views
Did Ibn al-Haytham write anything about his experiments that is general enough to be seen as prefiguring the scientific method?
Ibn al-Haytham is considered one of the first experimenters. Since he was also a kind of philosopher did he write anything close in meaning and generality to the scientific method?
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1answer
160 views
Who was Fleury? And what was his first name?
One of the algorithms for finding Eulerian paths and circuits in graphs that have them is due to Fleury. Lucas mentioned this in his 1892 recreational mathematics collection, referring to "M. ...
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29 views
What were C.S Peirce's contributions to theory of relations?
In my study of Peirce I came across a number statements that he extended De Morgan's relation algebra.
What exactly are his contributions to relation algebra?
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1answer
112 views
Why theology plays a great role in becoming great mathematicians? [closed]
Why theology play a great role in becoming great mathematicians?
I have some confusion about theology with mathematics.
I read the biography of Euler and Bernhard Riemann.
Both were studying ...
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54 views
Did Leibniz ever express any opinion about Aristotle, Plato or Archimedes?
Since Leibniz is known to have expressed opinions about Descartes' and Newton's abilities maybe he did the same for the prominent thinkers of antiquity.
Did Leibniz ever express any opinion about ...
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45 views
What was the first randomized experiment that was ever conducted?
C.S Peirce is credited by wikipedia with the invention of randomized experiments.
What was C.S Peirce's contribution to randomized experiments exactly if there were such experiments before Peirce?
How ...
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62 views
What was the reason for Grothendiecks 'fast every Monday' in Vietnam?
According to MacTutor article on mathematics in Vietnam
... He visited in November 1967. The first few days we organised his lectures in Hanoi. But one day a missile exploded 100-200m from the ...
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1answer
86 views
Is there any book or site where John von Neumann's collected philosophical writings are presented?
I was wondering if von Neuman has any philosophical writings beside his writings on the relation of computers to the human mind and vice versa.
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66 views
Do we know how Feynmans religious views changed throughout his life?
According to Feynman, there was a quota for Jews at American Universities and when he was accepted on a graduate programme - I think at Princeton - they were told "he's Jewish but he doesn't act ...
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49 views
Did the brain anatomists and psychophysicists of the early to mid 1800s make any philosophical speculations on the nature of emotions and cognition?
I was wondering if the psychophysicists and brain anatomists from 1800 up until 1860s made any novel, noteworthy philosophical speculations about the emotions and cognition.If they did is there any ...
2
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1answer
70 views
Is there any book or site where Gauss' collected philosophical writings are presented?
From the questions on some of Gauss' philosophical ideas here at HSM stackexchange it's clear that Gauss had some major philosophical ideas that despite their profundity don't seem to have had much ...
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1answer
137 views
How did Charles Sanders Peirce react to his stigmatization?
Do we have any evidence on how Charles Sanders Peirce reacted to his stigmatization by various academics? By stigmatization, I mean denying him tenure at Johns Hopkins, leaving the house when they ...
3
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1answer
70 views
Was there a continuation to the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem between Euler and Hamilton?
Since Euler's result on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem appears to be the first known graph theoretical result I was wondering if any mathematicians after Euler and before Hamilton commented ...
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1answer
52 views
Was C.S Peirce the first philosopher to posit that value belief serves as some sort of guide for scientific belief?
I remember reading something to the effect that the moral and aesthetic preferences influence scientific belief in his collected works.
Was C.S Peirce the first philosopher to posit that value belief ...
2
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1answer
89 views
Was C.S Peirce in his abductive reasoning influenced by the generalization from special cases that is used by mathematicians?
I am reading some random bits from Peirce's collected works and they give me the impression that Peirce tried to integrate every(or nearly every) major scientific and mathematical concept which he was ...
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48 views
Were these ideas well known during the 1850s in the US?
I was looking at a biography of C.S Peirce where it is shown the following parts of one of his essays which he wrote when he was 15 years old and are presented as evidence of his youthful genius:
...
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1answer
41 views
What are some facts about Peirce's early precocity?
In some of his online biographies Peirce is described as having showed early signs of precocity.
Can someone describe some of these signs of precocity?
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88 views
Is there any indication of what mathematics Trotsky studied?
In Isaac Deutscher's, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, he writes of the youthful Trotsky:
His stay in Odessa ended in 1896. A realschule normally had seven forms but St. Paul's had only six so ...
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3answers
410 views
Did C.S Peirce make any noteworthy contributions to physics or chemistry?
According to this article
Peirce was the first to experimentally tie a unit, the meter, to an
absolute standard, the wavelength of a spectral line
Did C.S Peirce make any other noteworthy ...
6
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1answer
284 views
Who is the Göbel who is the eponym of Göbel's Sequence?
Richard K. Guy refers to him as "F. Göbel" in his Unsolved Problems of Number Theory but that's as close as I can get.
For reference:
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoebelsSequence.html
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69 views
Are there any accounts of Charles Peirce's character,cognition and physical appearance?
I am interested in any historical account of the following attributes of Peirce:character,cognition and appearance.
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34 views
What's the history of the heuristics on doing science efficiently and effectively?
I recently read a paper by Taleb about doing science efficiently and effectively and I was wondering if there other predecessors to his work which more or less express the same things(since Taleb ...
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1answer
104 views
Was Charles Sanders Peirce aware of Charles Babbage's difference engine?
Is there any indication that Charles Peirce was aware of Babbage and his work on mechanical computing?
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1answer
3k views
Which mathematician traveled to and moved in with each collaborator?
I remember a video, perhaps a Numberphile episode where a mathematician was described who would simply move in to the home of a collaborator with which they were engaged to so that they could work ...
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1answer
105 views
Who was the 17th century mathematician "André Jumeau, Prior of Sainte-Croix"?
I'm reading Dickson's History on the Theory of Numbers, and find this on page 34:
"The third $P_3$ [that is, triperfect number], discovered by André Jumeau, Prior of Sainte-Croix", is ${P_3}^...
3
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1answer
102 views
Complete list of publications of Rebecca Barlow
Rebecca Barlow is the discoverer of an interesting surface in algebraic geometry. Is anybody aware of a full list of her contributions? Has she continued working in mathematics in the 21st century?
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1answer
297 views
Does Blum's speedup theorem have any conceptual predecessors?
Blum's speedup theorem seems to me that bears at least some superficial resemblance to Godels research on the length of proofs under certain axiomatic systems.
Does Blum's speedup theorem has any ...
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139 views
How did Peano come up with his space filling curve?
Wikipedia cites an earlier result of Cantor as an inspiration but I wonder if there are any previous results of some kind of recursive curve constructions that may have also "inspired" him ...