Questions tagged [mathematicians]
For questions about those who did mathematics
466
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Some references for Vladimir Arnold's thesis "Mathematics is a part of physics"?
The mathematician Vladimir Arnold claimed that mathematics is a part of physics.
I am aware of Arnold's On Teaching Mathematics where he stated this view, but is there any piece of writing where ...
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Who is the second person Kolmogorov supposedly thought possessed some kind of "higher intelligence"?
Vladimir Arnold wrote that Andrei Kolmogorov told him the names of the two mathematicians in conversation with whom he "feels the presence of higher intelligence". One of them is Israel Gelfand.
Who ...
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Who were some mathematicians who have had a musical background?
I know about Manjul Bhargava, a mathematician and a Fields Medal winner who is a tabla player.
Are there any other mathematicians who have had such a musical background?
By "musical background&...
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Are there any famous female mathematicians who have written in Latin?
I am writing a book on modern mathematics and the Latin language. My main examples are Newton, Euler, Gauss, etc. and some others, but all men.
Is there a woman who has written important mathematics ...
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Source of L’Hôpital’s 1696 Calculus textbook
A calculus textbook I’m using references a calculus book of L’Hôpital in which he illustrates his rule, which is taught in many calculus classes.
Does anyone have a source as a scanned PDF? I’d love ...
CommunityBot
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What contributions to mathematics did Napoleon make?
I have watched a video about Napoleon's theorem — maybe it was contributed by Napoleon, maybe not. I also know that Laplace himself said Napoleon was good at mathematics. However, did Napoleon make ...
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Poincaré's quote: "I thought a lot about them"
I have a vague memory of reading once that somebody (maybe a journalist) asked Poincaré how had he been capable of solving all those fantastically difficult problems that he had solved. The answer was ...
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Who came up with the theory of Krylov Subspaces?
The well celebrated field of numerical linear algebra is heavily based on Krylov subspace methods. A quick google search on Krylov himself returned the following results:
Nikolay Krylov (1941-) [...
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What are Philolaos' “even-odd” numbers?
Number, indeed, has two proper kinds (ιδια ειδη), odd and even, and a
third mixed together from both, the even-odd(αρτιοπέριττον). Of each
of the two kinds there are many shapes, of which each ...
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How many languages does Paul Erdős have publications in?
I was flicking through these slides by Prof. Richard Brent, wherein we have:
Erdős (1955, in Hebrew) gave an upper bound M(n) = o(n2) as n → ∞. After some encouragement by Linnik and Vinogradov, he ...
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What was Richard Courant's saying about mathematical research apart from applications?
I remember reading somewhere (perhaps in The Mathematical Experience) that Richard Courant wrote something to the effect that, without applications to guide the river of mathematical discovery, ...
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Reference for "A manifold is a topological space which satisfies a long series of axioms."
In On teaching mathematics, Vladimir Igorevich Arnold states
"What is a smooth manifold? In a recent American book I read that Poincaré was not acquainted with this (introduced by himself) notion ...
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Who introduced the Principle of Mathematical Induction for the first time?
Can you tell me the name of the mathematician, who introduced the Principle of Mathematical Induction for the first time? (with reliable source).
Please don't say De Morgan because I have read the ...
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Kronecker vs Cantor — who won?
Now set theory is taught even to kids and it is the foundation of mathematics. Can we say that Cantor won?
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Did Kronecker attribute immutable origin to the integers?
The familiar quote is often incorrectly attributed to Kronecker directly. Actually a colleague of his named Weber claimed after Kronecker's death that Kronecker said this. I have doubts about this ...
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Why was Kronecker dissatisfied with Cantor's submitted paper?
It is said here that
In 1874 Cantor published an article in Crelle's Journal which marks the birth of set theory. A follow-up paper was submitted by Cantor to Crelle's Journal in 1878 but already set ...
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Cantor's later life
I saw this on Wikipedia:
In June 1917, he entered a sanatorium for the last time and continually wrote to his wife asking to be allowed to go home. Georg Cantor had a fatal heart attack on January 6, ...
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How many mathematical publications containing non-reprinted, original mathematics did John Nash publish?
American Mathematical Society lists 25 according to one of the comments in the thread below:
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/207477/john-nashs-mathematical-legacy.
However, as indicated in the ...
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About the LOR of John Nash, was there any relationship between Richard Duffin and Solomon Lefschetz?
In Academia SE, there is a question about the credibility of Prof. Richard Duffin, who wrote the notorious letter of recommendation for John Nash, who later received the Nobel Memorial Prize in ...
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How much did John Nash contribute to proving the Riemann hypothesis?
At quite the end of the movie A Beautiful Mind, John Nash tells a student "I am making progress" (towards proving the Riemann hypothesis (RH)). Actually, how much did Nash contribute to the ...
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Why is Sophie-Germain's Identity popular?
Sophie Germain's identity is only about factorising $a^4+4b^4$ as product of two squares.It's not quite difficult. So,why is it so popular?
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Are there any anonymous contributions to mathematics that had a great impact?
Are there any examples of mathematical ideas being communicated in an anonymous manner that had a substantial impact on mathematics at the time. It seems to me that it is very rare for an author to ...
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First example of regularization
Background:
I like to think of L'Hospital as one of the earliest authors of least-squares regression.
L'Hospital, G. (1696). L'analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes
courbes.
I'm ...
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Where did we find Ramanujan's series for the exponential integral?
According to Wikipedia, the following series for the exponential integral
$$\operatorname{Ei}(x) = \gamma \ln x + \exp{\frac{x}{2}} \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{(-1)^{n-1}x^n}{n! 2^{n-1}} \sum_{k=0}^{\...
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Who, between Cayley and Hamilton, first worked on the theorem that bears their name?
I know that Frobenius is the one who proved the Cayley-Hamilton theorem in all its generality. However, between Cayley and Hamilton, who did first work on the subject?
In English: Cayley–Hamilton ...
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Presocratics from the view of mathematicians and physicists
I am interested in a book that has all the fragments of pre-socratics but the notes etc. in the translation are from a mathematician or physicist relating with how each point affected the evolution of ...
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When did linear algebra become the study of vector spaces?
All of the concepts and terminology central to linear algebra were established in the late 19th century.
Following recent comments by user KCd, that in the early 20th century determinants were the “...
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Doubt on women behind the development of wormhole physics
Ludwig Flamm $[1]$, Albert Einstein-Natan Rosen $[2]$, Hermann Weyl $[3]$, John Wheeler-Fuller $[4,5]$, Homer G. Ellis $[6]$, K. Bronnikov $[7]$, Michael Morris-Kip Thorne$[8]$, M. Visser $[9]$, ...
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Who was E. Midy, the eponym of Midy's Theorem?
I have just become aware of the 19th century French mathematician E. Midy, who apparently was the first to prove what is now known as Midy's theorem.
I can find out nothing about this mathematician ...
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Grothendieck and Fields medal 1962
We can read as a mathunion excerpt that Grothendieck won the Fields medal in 1966
Built on work of Weil and Zariski and effected fundamental advances in algebraic geometry. He introduced the idea of ...
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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 ...
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What was the connection between David Hilbert and Stefan Banach?
The so-called "Hilbert space" is named after mathematician David Hilbert. Later, this was generalized into "Banach spaces" by Stefan Banach.
My understanding is that Hilbert was ...
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Biographical details for Paul Wernicke
Paul Wernicke, the eponym of Wernicke's Theorem , discovered during his investigations into the Four Color Theorem.
I understand he was born somewhere in the German sphere of influence (i.e. could ...
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What paradoxes did David Hilbert propose?
Google just won't tell me about any other than "the grand hotel". I know of the Turing paradox but did he propose any other? If yes, which?
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Who said that theory of probability was not mathematics?
I seem to remember that as late as in the XIX century there was a prominent mathematician who denied that the theory of probability was part of mathematics, since it does not deal with certainty.
Do ...
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Cantor's Art of proposing a question
There is a rather famous quotation of Cantor:
In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.
It was in a thesis he defended for his doctoral examination ...
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Did Berkeley's criticism of infinitesimals hobble calculus pedagogy?
I recently read an article that discussed--rather briefly--the issues of infinitesimals and the criticism of them by Berkeley. The author of the article (which, of course, I cannot find, as I read it ...
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Did Egon Pearson have a PhD?
Did the statistician Egon Pearson have a PhD? If not, to what extent did he write a dissertation?
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Source of a Poincaré quote from a Busemann paper
In his paper "The geometry of Finsler spaces" (available at https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-mathematical-society-new-series/volume-56/issue-1.P1/The-geometry-of-...
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"Political Events" in the Preface to the Second Edition of Spivak's Comprehensive Introduction Volume 2
In the Preface to the second edition to Spivak's A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Vol. 2, on p.vii says:
The material in this Volume covers about what I would have completed in ...
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Ancient Egyptian Mathematicians
Greek and Muslim Egyptian mathematicians are well known throughout the world. But the only Ancient Egyptian mathematician I know of is Ahmes, who said he's just a scribe. Who were the greatest ...
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Why was Hausdorff not able to move to United States from Nazi Germany?
Felix Hausdorff, who was so well known to American mathematicians through his topology book of 1914, Grundzüge der Mengenlehre, committed suicide together with his wife when facing the threat of ...
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Did president Garfield make any contributions to Mathematics?
All I know about Garfield and math was that he made an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Did he make any other mathematical advancement (big or small)?
CommunityBot
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Origins of proof in Mathematics
Why was the idea of writing, formalising and creating new proofs brought about? For example, why even though we have found hundreds of proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem are we still trying to find ...
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Are there any portraits of Joseph Fourier other than this one?
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist who initiated the investigation of Fourier series. The following is the only portrait of Fourier that I know of. Are there any ...
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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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Is the response of Sir Oswald Mosley to the letter of Bertrand Russell's 1962 letter recorded?
In 1962, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists which he founded in 1932 (disbanded in 1940) made overtures towards Bertrand Russell on engaging in a public debate - according to ...
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Why are there relatively many Eastern European (specifically Hungarian) graph theorists?
I noticed that a large number of theories within graph theory are from Eastern European graph theorists, specifically Hungarian graph theorists. What is the relation between Eastern Europe (...
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How did Alfréd Rényi die?
Alfréd Rényi was a Hungarian mathematician who survived a lot, including a forced labor camp, and was very active in the fields of probability theory, number theory, graph theory, etc.
Various ...
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How did Newton & Raphson's versions of the N-R method differ?
To quote Wikipedia,
Raphson's most notable work... contains a method, now known as the Newton–Raphson method... Newton had developed a very similar formula in his Method of Fluxions, written in ...
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