Questions tagged [mathematicians]
For questions about those who do mathematics.
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1answer
73 views
The convention for speakers to refer to themselves at the board with a single initial
I found an interesting question on Math SE asked by @KCd, but it is over four years old without a clear answer. Since it seems to be more on topic here than on Math SE, I thought to post it here in ...
2
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1answer
111 views
How did philosophers and scientists in the 18th century view mathematical explanation?
The 18th century saw a rise in the use of mathematical formalisms to account for natural phenomena. Works of Lagrange, Euler, d'Alembert, etc., were groundbreaking in the history of mechanics and ...
6
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1answer
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The minimax theorem from 1928 to 1956
Minimax theorems are beautiful saddle-point results regarding conditions on a function $f$ under which $\max_x \min_y f(x,y) = \min_y \max_x f(x,y)$. In the common "normal form" game case, $x$ and $y$ ...
6
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1answer
132 views
What's that on Euler's head? Does the head covering shown in Emanuel Handmann 1753 painting signify scholarship?
This may be borderline off-topic but this is the only place that I can think of ask this particular question.
I've always seen images of Leonhard Euler with a "hat" or head covering that is ...
11
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2answers
172 views
History of various definitions of topology
I have been reading Point Set Topology for a while, and turns out that there are various possible ways to define a topology. Most popular one is using open set axioms. Another one is using closure ...
3
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1answer
133 views
How long would it have taken Cole to multiply the factors of $M_{67}$ on a blackboard?
The famous anecdote of the 1903 announcement of the factorization of $2^{67}-1$ by Frank Nelson Cole has recently been discussed, for example in light of the announcement of another "twitter-sized" ...
7
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1answer
178 views
Did Cambridge change their BSc policy for Ramanujan?
I found this quote at Quora:
In March 1916 Ramanujan graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Science by Research (This degree was later renamed as Ph.D. from 1920) for his work on Highly ...
3
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0answers
134 views
Can we fairly assess Ada Lovelace's talent for mathematics?
Dorothy Stein, a biographer of Ada Lovelace, was pretty blunt in her assessment: Lovelace was a mediocre mathematician, for example see here.
I wonder if she's fair to her. The fact that Lovelace ...
0
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1answer
58 views
Was multivariable calculus particularly prominent in Italy?
From my classes I don't hear about a lot of italian mathematicians, but two of them, Fubini and Tonelli, are both related to multivariable calculus. Is there a reason for this? Just a coincidence? Or ...
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0answers
73 views
Is it the 'd' or 'D' operator?
Philip J. Davis' article on the history of the gamma function (PDF) mentions how Leibniz proposed the iterated differential operator (p. 851 in the upper right corner, or p. 3 of the PDF, about half-...
8
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1answer
104 views
Who first proved that only primes of the form $4k+1$ divide odd integers of the form $n^2+1$?
I am writing a paper and I would like to cite the person(s) who proved that only primes of the form $4k+1$ can evenly divide odd integers of the form $n^2+1$?
For example, if $n=8$, $n^2 + 1 = 65$ ...
3
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1answer
196 views
Why didn't John von Neumann win the Turing Award, Fields Medal or Nobel Prize?
From what I've read in Wikipedia, John von Neumann made a stupendous number of contributions to economics, computer science and mathematics. Why, then, didn't he receive a top award in any of these ...
4
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0answers
82 views
Courant (1943) and History of Finite Element Method
I am interested in the history of Finite Element Methods and Methods of Weighted Residuals (MWR), especially reduced quadrature and collocation methods. I have a paper coming out called “Orthogonal ...
7
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1answer
201 views
Did the author of Alice in Wonderland make any substantial original discoveries in mathematics?
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, was a mathematics lecturer at Oxford University and today is primarily famous for his fanciful stories laced with mathematical ...
65
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13answers
23k views
Examples of when the professional scientists or mathematicians were wrong, but the nonprofessionals were right?
What are the most glaring examples -- if any -- of when the professional scientists or mathematicians were wrong, but the nonprofessionals were right?
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0answers
78 views
Who came up with a formula expressing the sign function in terms of the absolute value?
I read here and here that Karl Weierstrass used "| |" to indicate absolute value in 1841. The same sources indicate that Leopold Kronecker wrote of the sign function in 1878. Here it is indicated that ...
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1answer
75 views
Who was the first person who emphasis the importance of proof?
I think it should be an ancient Greek mathematician who was interested in proving all triangle has inner angles summing to 180 degree? Was it Thales?
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2answers
137 views
Why do mathematicians call ~ 'twiddle'?
Every one of my lecturers have always called it this, as do I, despite the fact that I know its properly called 'tilde'. Does anyone have any clue where this convention comes from and why it might ...
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38 views
Modern Views on Pythagoras [duplicate]
I've done a lot of research on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans and am currently in a state of uncertainty. I do believe Pythagoras existed, but I am unsure if he can be given credit to hardly anything ...
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0answers
47 views
Irrational numbers math in old Roman age [duplicate]
I know that Hippasus proved that $√2$ is irrational number.
My question is how were they doing the mathmatical operations like multiplication for rational numbers like 1.41421356237
I can do ...
5
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2answers
85 views
Does anybody know the history of how Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet came up with the “nowhere continuous” Dirichlet function?
So I am writing a research paper on the properties of the Dirichlet function (the function with 1 if x is rational and 0 if x is irrational), and I wanted to include some historical background on how ...
0
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1answer
99 views
Cantor's fortune
Wiki says that his transfinite numbers met opposition:
Henri Poincaré referred to his ideas as a "grave disease" infecting
the discipline of mathematics,[8] and Leopold Kronecker's public
...
3
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0answers
63 views
A portrait of Bombelli
Is there any known portrait of Rafael Bombelli? I don't think so, but if you visit his MacTutor biography, you will see there this picture:
It is clear to me that this cannot possibly be a picture of ...
3
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1answer
72 views
Gregory's integration of $\sec\theta$
The integral of the secant function was first correctly conjectured by Henry Bond in the 1640s, and Isaac Newton was aware of his conjecture in 1665, although no proof was published until 1668. Of ...
5
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1answer
88 views
Did Nikolai Luzin plagiarize?
Luzin was accused of plagiarism and other misconduct by Kolmogorov and other students during the Luzin Affair of 1936. Were these allegations actually true?
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2answers
153 views
How did the integer degrees angles counting being first adopted in geometry and mathematics? [duplicate]
The purpose of this question is trying to know originally how did counting in integer degrees angles from (one degree to $360$ degrees) being adopted basically in geometry, despite the impossibility ...
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0answers
64 views
Example of: Two researchers working on the same question but get opposite conclusions [closed]
I wish to know about whether such example exists, could someone please help and tell me some stories about this?
p.s: Also I wonder why such thing can happen. I wish the two main characters in the ...
3
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0answers
112 views
How many active mathematicians were there in Euler's time?
It seems that when you play around with the Math Genealogy Project, starting at some contemporary mathematician and going backwards through their advisor, advisor's advisor, etc., you tend to arrive ...
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0answers
39 views
Kronecker's aphorism [duplicate]
The common translation of Kronecker's "Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk" is something like "God made the integers, all else is man's handiwork." But I have ...
0
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1answer
67 views
Existence of Pythagoras Resources
I am aware that approximately two years ago a question was posted on the existence of Pythagoras. After two years, I want to gain more incite on the thought of those on this site.
I was drawn to the ...
4
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0answers
149 views
How old might Emmy Noether be in this picture?
I have not found bibliographic data to show what age Noether was in this picture:
And I cannot estimate well either by her clothes or her face.
Can anyone here help me?
In the past I have known ...
3
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4answers
392 views
Failures in math
I would like to have help in producing examples of mathematicians that, in some sense I'll explain below,turned their career into failure. I am mainly interested in examples from XIX and XXth century.
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83 views
English translation of Lagrange's Théorie des fonctions analytiques?
I've done some looking around and came up with nothing. There apparently was a German translation done by August Leopold Crelle, but I couldn't find anything else.
If anyone else knows of an English ...
4
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1answer
189 views
Can we identify Paul Benacerraf in these photos
This question is about Paul Benacerraf, who worked on the philosophy of mathematics, and wrote the 1965 essay What numbers could not be (see: Benacerraf's identification problem). He was at Princeton ...
4
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1answer
194 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 $):
...
2
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1answer
168 views
On the birthdate of Gotthold Eisenstein
The birthdate of Gotthold Eisenstein is Apr. 16, 1823 as is stated in the Wikipedia. But a letter(whose recipient is Gauss) of Encke on Oct. 11, 1852 clearly states that the birthdate of Eisenstein is ...
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4answers
621 views
Help translate from German a quote by Hermann Weyl in Space Time Matter
I would like to find an accurate translation to the following quote from Space Time Matter:
Man muß gegen diese Orgien des Formalismus, mit dem man heute sogar die Techniker zu belästigen beginnt, ...
2
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1answer
151 views
Translation of Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
Out of curiosity I was searching for an English translation of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, and I found out that there is indeed one. It was translated in English in 1965 by a certain Arthur A. ...
3
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0answers
100 views
Priority on lemniscate of Gerono?
The Lemniscate of Gerono is a special case of the Lissajous curves. The dates for the two mathematicians are fairly close: Gerono (1799-1891) and Lissajous (1822-1880). Historically who has priority ...
5
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1answer
145 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 ...
5
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1answer
247 views
Poincaré and the baker: was the anecdote true?
There is a story featuring Henri Poincaré and an unscrupuolous baker. Every day Poincaré bought a piece of bread which should have weighted 1 kg. After an year, the mathematician brought the baker to ...
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4answers
256 views
Mathematics PhD dissertations that opened a new field of research
I propose this as a companion wiki page to the one about PhD dissertations which contain a solution to an open problem in the style of big-list questions, thinking ...
8
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2answers
556 views
How was the sum of squares formula discovered by Archimedes?
AFAIK, Archimedes is credited with discovering the following formula for computing the sum of squares:
$1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2+...+n^2 = \frac{n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}$
This seems to have come up in his quest for ...
8
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1answer
480 views
What was Euler's first language?
Mathematicians of the 18th century and the Swiss people are known to speak and write every language.
Leonhard Euler belongs to both of these categories and wrote articles in any language, I am not ...
4
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1answer
169 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 ...
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1answer
155 views
Does an English translation of Bombelli's L'Algebra exist?
I'm looking for an English translation of Rafael Bombelli's L'Algebra. From what I can tell searching the usual corners of the web, it doesn't exist, but I'm asking here just in case.
I'm ...
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1answer
590 views
Who Invented The Number Line?
Recently, I came across this article and wondered if there really is a definitive answer to the question of who invented the number line?
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1answer
106 views
What is the work of al-Khwārizmī for algorithms?
The word algorithm comes from al-Khwārizmī. From Wikipedia, I can read that he did a great work on algebra, but I could not find any algorithm attributed to him. Has he actually made any algorithm?
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2answers
256 views
What is the international standing of Italian mathematics?
Being Italian, I have a biased view on my homeland's mathematical impact in the world, so I would like to get some impartial opinion on the topic.
I would measure the mathematical relevance in terms, ...
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2answers
96 views
What was the significance of Eisenstein's discovery of invariants?
I am trying to decipher a portion of James Joseph Sylvester's 1869 address entitled "The Study That Knows Nothing of Observation", which, among other things, surveys the landscape of 19th century ...
