Questions tagged [reference-request]
For questions that are requesting specific literature references
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How did Young perform his double slit experiment?
Thomas Young is famous for his double slit experiment, but I can't seem to find his experimental setup (such as how is prepared the light before it went through the apparatus. Does anyone know his ...
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What resources are available for lives of recent mathematicians besides E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics?
I am about halfway through reading E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, and I absolutely love it. I'm a mathematician, and I enjoy learning about the lives behind the names that I know and use so often. (I ...
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How was curvature originally defined and calculated?
I am interested in the early history of curvature. Who defined it first and when, who came up with the name, how was it calculated before mathematicians used calculus to define $k=|α''(s)|$? Are there ...
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Where did Rayleigh derive the ultraviolet catastrophe?
Where can I find this paper:
J.W. Strutt, Verh. d. deutsch. phys. Ges. 2, 65 (1900).
It is presumably where Rayleigh derived the black-body radiation formula (the incorrect one that has ultraviolet ...
user2831
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Why does the "Principle Of Permanence" have two different definitions?
This question is a sub-question of previous question on MSE. I feel that on this website I have better chances of knowing more things.
For quite some time now, I have been searching about the "...
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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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Did Kronecker say that set theory is not mathematics?
I have frequently come across Kronecker's statement about set theory:
I don't know what predominates in Cantor's theory - philosophy or theology, but I am sure that there is no mathematics there.
It ...
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Source for Hilbert's famous quote "Mathematics in Göttingen? There really is none anymore"
Reportedly this was uttered at a banquet in which Hilbert was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, in response to Rust inquiring as to the state of mathematics in Göttingen now ...
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Are Leibnizian infinitesimals thought to be logical fictions by Leibniz scholars?
Japanese scholar Hide Ishiguro published a book in 1990 entitled "Leibniz's philosophy of logic and language" (second edition). Of particular interest, as far as the history of mathematics ...
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Does anyone know about Ramanujan's method of solving the quartic?
I have read (probably) in Kanigel's book The Man Who Knew Infinity that S. Ramanujan devised his own method of solving the Quartic Equation after he learnt to solve the Cubic Equation. Does anyone ...
user459
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What theorem of Sophus Lie on the number of geometries is H. Poincaré referring to?
In this quotation from Henri Poincaré's essay "Non-Euclidean Geometry" published in Nature in 1892 (No. 1165, Vol 45, p. 406), he refers to a theorem of Sophus Lie. Does anyone know a source for this ...
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Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
The best thing I could find on the internet was this apparently forgotten article from 12 years ago.
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What was Kolmogorov’s point of view in the philosophy of mathematics?
Today the standard interpretation of intuitionistic logic is the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation which was presented independently by Arend Heyting and Andrei Nikolajewitsch Kolmogorow. ...
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Are there any canonical books on history of science?
I was looking for some fundamental books on history of science. I picked Thomas Kuhn book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" but it's not exactly about history of science - it's more on ...
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Why do we call a linear mapping "linear mapping"?
According to P. M. Cohn's Classic Algebra, for historical reasons we call a linear mapping "linear mapping". What are the historical reasons that led to the adoption of the term "linear ...
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Books on elliptic functions
In the end of his address to Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association in 1933 titled "The marquis and the land agent: a tale of the 18th century", the Association president G. N. ...
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What are some of the most complete genealogies of scientific and mathematical subject areas?
I am interested in the way scientific and mathematical subject areas developed (and are still developing). One of the great visual tools that can help us gain insight in how these areas developed is ...
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What paragraph was written by Emanouil Atanassov to solve problem 6 on the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1988?
From the Wikipedia page about Vieta jumping:
Emanouil Atanassov, Bulgaria, solved the problem [assumed to be the most difficult one on the 1988 International Mathematics Olympiad] in a paragraph and ...
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Where can I find the translated manuscript of Abel?
I am looking for the translated manuscript of Abel where he proved the unsolvability of the quintic. Can anyone give me a pointer? I tried Google, but nothing came up.
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What are some good references elucidating the discovery/creation of Fourier Series?
I've always grappled with anything related to Fourier since my undergrad days. Recently, when revisiting why I learned what I did, I discovered how Fourier's desire to understand the flow of heat ...
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A book on Emmy Noether's life
I am looking for a good book on Noether's life. Not only a biography, but a book that also explains her life's work to a general, somewhat mathematically mature audience. If such a book is not ...
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How was the focus/directrix property of conic sections discovered?
I've always thought that defining conic sections by a locus of points w.r.t the ratio of the distance to the focus and directrix was always "too artificial" - how does one actually discover this ...
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Is there a translation of Gauss' work on Gaussian integers?
Gauss introduced the Gaussian integers in an 1832 Latin work named Theoria residuorum biquadraticorum. I believe there is a German translation available. Is there an English, or possibly French ...
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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 $):
...
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Lost memoir of Évariste Galois
According to the Wikipedia article on Évariste Galois
He submitted his memoir on equation theory several times, but it was
never published in his lifetime due to various events. Though his
first ...
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How did Saint Vincent prove the logarithmic property of areas under hyperbolas?
How did Saint Vincent prove that if $\frac{a}{b} = \frac{c}{d}$, then the area of a hyperbola $y = \frac{1}{x}$ from $a$ to $b$ equals the area from $c$ to $d$? What references (pdfs, links, books) ...
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Reference request: What were the problems of accepting zero, negative numbers, and complex numbers? And how were they solved?
I asked this question on MSE and comments suggested I should ask it here
I am currently reading Baby Rudin as my second analysis book (after Introduction to Real Analysis by Robert G. Bartle and ...
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Looking for a Book Which Discusses the Rigor in Newton's Principia Mathematica
About an year ago, I had seen an article somewhere on the internet which discussed Newton's Principia Mathematica and the rigor (or lack thereof) of the arguments presented.
I have forgotten who the ...
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An English copy of One Hundred Authors Against Einstein?
I've been trying to find the famous article, "One hundred authors against Einstein" (100 Autoren gegen Einstein), of various objections to special relativity, which is quite often referenced, but ...
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What was the main language in science/mathematics before 1850
I know that English is the most popular language to write scientific/mathematical papers after World War 2. I also know that in the second half of 19th century and first half of 20th century, German ...
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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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History of PDE's in the 19th Century
I've been asked to write an essay on whether the work on PDE's in the 19th century belonged to applied or pure mathematics. Does anyone know of any useful sources I could use?
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History of Foundation of Mathematics
I know that studying the evolution and history of a certain subject is a way of resolving the complexity of that subject. So I want to ask about references that describe the history and evolution of ...
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References on the role of diagrams in scientific advancement
A number of diagrammatic formulations have played an important role in the advancement of science. Some embody representations of physical phenomena, while others model mathematical or logical ideas ...
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Who extended the Banach fixed point theorem from the context of normed spaces to the context of metric spaces?
It is well known that Banach's fixed-point theorem was initially conceived as a fixed-point theorem
for applications defined in normed spaces (see [1]).
This theorem was conceived in 1922 by Stefan ...
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