Questions tagged [biographical-details]
For questions about the details of a particular scientist's life.
332
questions
-6
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65 views
Is there relation between certain astrological aspects and talent for mathematics? [closed]
I did some modest research on relation between talent for mathematics and some astrological aspects, namely: the positive aspect of Mercury and Saturn, the positive aspect of Mercury and Uranus, ...
0
votes
0answers
107 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 ...
0
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0answers
83 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
votes
1answer
118 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 ...
2
votes
0answers
82 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
votes
1answer
98 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 \...
3
votes
1answer
115 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
votes
1answer
88 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. ...
2
votes
0answers
49 views
Kurt Gödel: a biography
I'm looking for a well-written biographical book about Kurt Gödel. Any titles you'd recommend?
10
votes
2answers
266 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
votes
1answer
60 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?
-1
votes
2answers
178 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 ...
0
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0answers
78 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 ...
1
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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 ...
3
votes
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?
4
votes
1answer
121 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. ...
0
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0answers
28 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?
-2
votes
1answer
106 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 ...
0
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0answers
52 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 ...
1
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0answers
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 ...
0
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0answers
56 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 ...
1
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1answer
61 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.
0
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0answers
65 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 ...
0
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0answers
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
69 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 ...
1
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1answer
131 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
votes
1answer
66 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 ...
1
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1answer
49 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
84 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 ...
0
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0answers
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:
...
0
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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?
1
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0answers
82 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 ...
3
votes
3answers
401 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
votes
1answer
264 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
0
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0answers
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.
0
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0answers
33 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 ...
5
votes
1answer
88 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?
15
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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 ...
0
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1answer
94 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}^...
2
votes
1answer
91 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?
7
votes
1answer
276 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 ...
4
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0answers
136 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 ...
2
votes
1answer
177 views
Are there any mathematicians who expressed non-obvious sets of rules on how to do research?
I recently saw a paper where there are presented some rules on how to learn mathematics (and do research) which were firstly articulated by Lagrange.
Are there any similar rules that were expressed ...
1
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0answers
62 views
Was Paul Nemenyi related to John Von Neumann? [closed]
I was looking at an article about the probable father of the former world chess champion Bob Fischer whose family's name was originally Neumann and I was wondering if he had a common ancestor with ...
1
vote
2answers
103 views
Was Giuseppe Peano one of the greatest mathematicians of his era? [closed]
Besides the Peano axioms which perhaps brought him fame but which are considered a refinement of similar previous axioms Peano seems to have done relatively little original work.
Does the rest of his ...
3
votes
1answer
343 views
Why does Riazuddin not have a last name?
Riazuddin was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, his name looks a little bit different to me from others because he doesn't have a last name. There are some others Pakistani theoretical physicists ...
0
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0answers
72 views
Who was the first to state that scientific theories could be used to make predictions?
It seems to me that very few if any scientists/philosophers stated that science could be used for predictions before the early 1900s. In the scientific context I have only encountered the use of the ...
1
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0answers
44 views
It was Edouard Lucas who is the eponym of Lucas Sequence, and not Henry Lucas, yes?
Just making sure of this.
I've just found this statement in the Collins Dictionary of Mathematics (E.J. Borowski and J.M. Borwein, 1989) in the entry for "Lucas Numbers".
"(Named after ...
1
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0answers
44 views
When did Kolmogorov complexity begin being applied to real world objects and ideas?
I was looking at this paper about "Low complexity art" which involves kolmogorov complexity and I was wondering of when did that complexity theory began being applied to other things that ...
0
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1answer
41 views
Who is the “M.J.M. Hill” as mentioned in the historical introduction to Piaggio's “Differential Equations”?
I am reading H.T.H. Piaggio's "An Elementary Treatise on Differential Equations and their Applications", published 1920 originally; I have the 1952 edition.
The first chapter "...
