Questions tagged [biographical-details]
For questions about the details of a particular scientist's life.
324
questions
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1answer
81 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 ...
8
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1answer
658 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 ...
12
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4answers
737 views
In a popular anecdote, who took 20 minutes to decide that a thing was obvious?
The joke is found on this comment chain on Reddit. One user told the joke:
The version I heard is that Pauli was lecturing, and he said "this is obvious". A student raises his hand and says "sorry ...
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3answers
7k 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
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1answer
320 views
Pauli's first paper about the spin
Wikipedia states, that the spin degree of freedom was first formulated by Pauli in 1924:
In 1924 Wolfgang Pauli introduced what he called a "two-valued quantum degree of freedom" associated with ...
4
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1answer
243 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 ...
4
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3answers
267 views
Did Maxwell discover the distribution of velocities in a gas during an exam set by Stokes?
In some lecture notes I found online it was claimed that Maxwell discovered the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution while in the course of solving a (then unsolved) examination problem given by Stokes. The ...
7
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2answers
372 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. ...
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0answers
94 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 ...
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0answers
184 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
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1answer
120 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
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0answers
92 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
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3answers
432 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
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2answers
88 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
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0answers
66 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'...
3
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2answers
520 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 ...
4
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1answer
124 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
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0answers
69 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
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2answers
1k views
Famous messy scientists
Which scientists were known to be messy?
I know of Albert Einstein:
And of Jean Piaget:
Are there other examples?
3
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0answers
146 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
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0answers
130 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
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2answers
329 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
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1answer
140 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 ...
5
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1answer
97 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 ...
2
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1answer
388 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), ...
3
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2answers
241 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 ...
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3answers
260 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 ...
2
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2answers
127 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 ...
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1answer
139 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 devised is the ...
1
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1answer
106 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 ...
8
votes
2answers
474 views
Did Gauss know Jacobi's four squares theorem?
In pp. 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. ...
3
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1answer
414 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 ...
4
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1answer
118 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 ...
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0answers
81 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 ...
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0answers
134 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
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1answer
220 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’...
5
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3answers
456 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 ...
6
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2answers
934 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
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1answer
157 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 ...
8
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1answer
3k views
Why did Einstein oppose quantum uncertainity?
Einstein always believed that everything is certain, and we can calculate everything. That's why he rejected quantum mechanics, due to its factor of uncertainty. But still quantum physics was right. ...
5
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1answer
236 views
Fraenkel's appointment at Göttingen
Abraham Fraenkel grandpère writes on page 127 of his book recently translated into English:
My professional career began in March 1919 with... an invitation to Göttingen to Privy Counselor Felix ...
6
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1answer
155 views
Did Gauss see the analogy between number-theoretic concepts and knots?
According to the book "Models and Inferences in Science", p.156 - "the idea of a number-theoretic approach to knots goes to Gauss (1798), who used the analogy between primes and knots, and it was put ...
5
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1answer
117 views
who was the first to discover the Hamilton principle of classical physics?
Who, besides Hamilton, was instrumental in discovering at least part of the so-called Hamilton principle?
$$\delta \int_{a}^{b}L(q,\dot q ,t )dt$$
where $ L=T-V$, the Lagrangian.
What exactly, was ...
11
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1answer
363 views
Did Turing invent the imitation game? Did he name it?
In his 1950 paper in Mind titled "Computer Machinery and Intelligence" which introduces the test that now bears his name, Alan Turing starts by describing a game which he calls the "Imitation Game", ...
3
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1answer
93 views
Francis Crick and the usefulness of “genes” as compared to molecular biochemistry
In lecture 12 of Professor John R. Searle's U.C. Berkeley class, "Philosophy of Mind", he remarks [18m22s]:
We no longer talk mysteriously about how heredity works. We can actually identify ...
3
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0answers
106 views
What is the history of why electrical circuit diagrams list positive as the direction of electron flow?
In the study of electrical engineering circuit diagrams it is usually the norm to show the + ( positive ) polarity as the direction of motion. However in reality the electron is the elementary ...
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5answers
576 views
Are there any famous mathematicians who did regular physical workouts?
Because regular physical exercise is in theory linked to better brain function and is also recommended in another question here on stack exchange, I wonder if there are any famous mathematicians who ...
5
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1answer
252 views
What was Liouville's contribution to Liouville's theorem?
Liouville's theorem asserts that the volume of phase space is incompressible. This was first shown by Gibbs 1903 but his name is mostly forgotten. The Wikipedia article says
It is referred to as ...
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20answers
3k views
Literary works authored by mathematicians
At a first glance, Mathematics and Literature look like two completely unrelated subjects.
I wonder whether there are examples of acclaimed mathematicians which wrote novels, poems, or other ...
0
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1answer
93 views
Which event involving Marie Curie is being referenced here?
In the second episode of "Super Science Friends" Tesla is telling of his fight with Edison that, in the comic, leads him to carry all his patents in the interior pockets of his jacket.
Freud then ...
