Questions tagged [reference-request]
For questions that are requesting specific literature references
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Whence Whitehead's essence?
In the article Quine’s New Foundations of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Thomas Forster writes:
In [1944] Hailperin gave the first of a number of finite ...
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Was "potency set" used for power set?
Cross posted at Math Overflow
For historical reasons, the English term "power set" in set theory is a translation of the German "Potenzmenge", which is still in use in German ...
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Did Newton say: "If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent"?
I came across the above quote, and found it quite interesting. However, I struggled to find an actual source. Did Newton truly say this?
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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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Reference request: What were the problems of accepting zero, negative numbers, and complex numbers? And how were they solved? [duplicate]
I didn't know that can happen and since I already asked the question here I don't know what to do with this question should I delete it ?
I am currently reading Baby Rudin as my second analysis book (...
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Who evaluated the surface of the Torricelli solid/Gabriel's horn
The Torricelli solid/Gabriel's Horn is defined as the rotation-invariant solid delimited by a hyperbola. It appears in De solido hyperbolico acuto where Torricelli proves that it has a finite volume, ...
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Attributed quote to Nikola Tesla
In many serious engineering and scientific publications including IEEE publications, we see a quote attributed to Nikola Tesla which goes like this
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, ...
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Is there a comprehensive list of Ancient Greek mathematical writings?
Much of the Ancient Greek's mathematical philosophy texts have survived from antiquity and passed to modern times. Also, texts previously thought to be lost are being occasionally rediscovered (...
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Did the Romans really use the binomial formula to calculate products?
I'm not quite sure if this is the right place to ask this question (in fact, I was redirected to this SE from the Math Stackexchange), but it's probably more fitting than the original posting place.
I ...
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History behind Serre's conditions $\mathrm{S}_k$ and $\mathrm{R}_k$ for a commutative Noetherian ring
In 033Q we find defined what some sources call “Serre's conditions $\mathrm{S}_k$ and $\mathrm{R}_k$” (if you don't know what a scheme is, you can read the definition for a commutative Noetherian ring ...
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Early illustrations of topological notions in published work
Since I've not gotten any answers after a bit more than a week, I've now cross-posted to MathOverFlow.
EDIT 2023-08-15: Several commenters here and at MO have asked me to sharpen the original question....
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The Original Title of "Euclid's Elements"
What did Euclid originally call his treatise of thirteen books that we now refer to as "Euclid's Elements" ?
Was it "The Elements" ? Was it something else ? Does anyone know the ...
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Scientific articles discovered false and useless several years after their publication
I am looking for examples of important scientific articles that have been discovered to be false and useless several years after their publication. I mean:
they stated something interesting and ...
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Improvement to the classification and labeling in a list of mathematical references
I'm the maintainer of the Hyper-complex number List,
I am searching for some help in respect of the categorization, clasification regarding the List. I really like references in the line of the List, ...
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Reference explaining the history and motivation behind Heyting algebra?
I'm starting to have an interest in Heyting Algebras and their application in topological spaces. Is there any paper/reference which gives a history based exposition of it's ideas?
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What's the name of P C Gilmore?
I have several times come across the name P C Gilmore, and even made use of a publication by her, or him, viz. "The consistency of partial set theory without extensionality", which was ...
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Provenance of mathematics quote from Robert Musil, 1913
The quote is as follows:
"Nur wenn man nicht auf den Nutzen nach aussen sieht, sondern in der Mathematik selbst auf das Verhältnis der unbenutzten Teile, bemerkt man das andere und eigentliche ...
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Early results on the Fourier transform
Published tables of Fourier transform pairs have been available for many years. One such example is the paper by George Campbell in the Bell Systems Technical Journal in 1928. Most such tables simply ...
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What research articles were inspired by web comics?
Currently, I'm doing a PhD on the applications of algorithms to generate timelines of textual content. Recently, I found an article entitled StoryFlow: Tracking the Evolution of Stories by S. Liu et ...
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History of visualization in science and math - where may I read of it?
I am looking to inquire into the role of visualization in sciences and math and wish to read about the history of visualization in those fields and also wonder where I might read about the ...
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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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Where can I find the early proofs for the simplicity of $\text{PSL}(n,q)$?
I am doing a research project on the history of group theory, and want to know about the early developments on the subject. There are plenty of proofs about why the projective special linear group ...
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History of group actions as their own structures
I'm interested in when (and how) the modern idea of a group action developed and how group actions became their own algebraic structures.
As far as I can tell in the 19th century group actions were ...
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The history and origin of the Argument Principle ( or Cauchy's argument principle)
I am looking for a book that discusses The history and origin of the Argument Principle ( or Cauchy's argument principle) Thanks!
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Finding the Letter from Freeman Dyson to Gerald Gabrielse in 2006
In 2006, the renowned physicist Freeman Dyson wrote a letter to his colleague Gerald Gabrielse regarding an advance in precision about measuring the magnetic moment of an electron. An excerpt of his ...
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Reference Request: History of Chern-Simons Theory
Chern-Simons theory is a topological gauge field theory and play a prominent role in many brnaches of phyiscs and mathematics. On the physical side, it appears for example in three-dimensional ...
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Biographical details on Otto Zoll
Zoll's surfaces are a special kind of surfaces generalizing the spheres, in that all of their geodesics are closed and of the same length.
I've tried to gather some biographical details on Otto Zoll ...
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Zermelo's or Fraenkel's early consideration of something equivalent to countable Replacement
I have now claimed a few times on the internet, based on something (sensible!) I read, that at some point in the 1920s, that Zermelo at one point considered as a set theoretic axiom (schema) something ...
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Who came up with the proof of "Bézout's identity" that uses the well-ordering principle?
Let $a$ and $b$ be two integers not both of which are equal to zero. It is an important and well-known fact that $\text{gcd}(a,b)=ax_{0}+by_{0}$ for some integers $x_{0}$ and $y_{0}$. Even though this ...
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Fibonacci and straightedge and compass constructions
In "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times" Morris Kline claims (on page 209) that Leonardo da Pisa (Fibonacci) "showed that the roots of $x^3+2x^2+10x=20$ are not ...
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Searching for book about non-Euclidean geometry that recapitulates the First Book of the Elements
I am looking for a specific book on non-Euclidean geometry that I read in my undergraduate years.
The unique characteristic of this book is that the first part of the book started by re-proving in ...
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Does "Metatron's cube" have a history and a serious name in geometry?
This is a figure that I saw while going down the rabbit hole of "Sacred Geometry" back when conspiracy theories and related nonsense were relatively harmless and fun to laugh at. A book ...
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First use of corner quotes for Gödel numbers
Who first used the corner quotes, ⌜ and ⌝, or $\texttt{\Godelnum}$ with Sam Buss's macro, for the notion of Gödel number?
Quine introduced corner quotes, but did not use them for the notion of Gödel ...
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How did Eratosthenes know the Sun was very far away?
Eratosthenes calculated the radius of the Earth from the difference of the lengths of shadows between Aswan and Alexandria were different (see also here). But this could also happen if the Earth were ...
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Exact source that Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs
In recent literature, I have read that René Descartes had observed that $V-E+F=2$ for planar graphs. Is there any image of that page of book or article of Descartes?
Seeing real page that contains the ...
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Capital letters for classes and small letters for sets
Who first chose to denote classes with capital letters and sets with small letters in set theory?
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Reference request: modern assesement of J.H. Lambert's work on the "fluidity of sand"
While reading about different aspects of Johann Heinrich Lambert's life and work, I found many interesting side remarks about Lambert's work by different authors, though it is very hard to find modern ...
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History of determining the specific charge of the electron by balacing electric and magnetic forces
Nowadays is a well known high school or undergrad lab experiment to determine the specific electron charge by using a Wien-filter setup as described for example here.
Up to now I thought that this ...
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Number theory: a quote
I remember reading a remark on number theory that went something like this: "there is plenty of material in this topic for an $n$ semester course without having to repeat oneself".
Have you ...
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Who proclaimed separation of science from philosophy?
Historically (since 2500 years ago), philosophy - "love of wisdom" in Greek - encompassed all intellectual endeavors, and natural philosophy was seen as its part. However, these days the ...
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In which work was Boltzmann's entropy originally introduced?
I get an impression from this enyclopedia entry
that the primary source of the Boltzmann entropy equation $S = k \log W$ might be
1866, Über die Mechanische Bedeutung des Zweiten Hauptsatzes der ...
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What is the earliest use of the $\perp\!\!\!\!\perp$ symbol in statistics to denote statistical independence?
The symbol $\perp\!\!\!\!\perp$ in statistics is a way to denote statistical independence of a collection of random variables. I have seen two forms of it. The first is highly suitable in writing ...
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Source of a Quote by M. Stone on Poincaré and Bourbaki
The quote in question is the following:
For Bourbaki, Poincaré was the devil incarnate. For students of chaos and fractals, Poincaré is of course God on Earth.
The common reference for this quote ...
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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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Fermat et l'équation de Pell
Does any of you happen to own and electronic copy of the paper "Fermat et l'équation de Pell" by A. Weil?
If I understand correctly, this paper can be found on pages 413-419 of the third ...
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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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Research on Pre-Columbian Polynesian geometry?
Has there been any historical/cultural anthropological research into how Polynesian cultures understood geometry before contact with Europeans? In part what I am interested in is how did the dealing ...
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Can not find reference for "uniform convexity implies existence of unique conjugate" mentioned by Pettis
In A proof that every uniformly convex space is reflexive in footnote 3 (available at that link without a paywall), author Billy Pettis mentions that the first half of Lemma 1 in that paper "was ...
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Reference database for recreational math problems and math puzzles?
Recreational math books contain duplicates for problems.
I think, classical examples are SEND + MORE = MONEY and Zebra puzzles. (Though I can't point exact books ...
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Looking for math history but keep finding the same old stuff
I've browsed many math history books, but I've never read too deep into any single one. I always find myself reading the about the same facts and same people over and over -- the set of topics doesn't ...
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