Questions tagged [terminology]
For questions about terms, definitions and related concepts used in science and mathematics.
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Why is one of Maxwell's equations named after Ampère? Who first named it after Ampère?
Ampère never wrote down what is confusingly called "Ampère's circuital law," not even the form without the displacement current term, as Ampère never dealt with the field concept.* Maxwell derived
$$\...
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Who first considered the $f$ in $f(x)$ as an object in itself, and who decided to call it a function?
The question is in the title, but allow me to provide some background.
I’m aware that Leibniz introduced the word “function” into mathematics (around 1673) and that Johann Bernoulli or Euler ...
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Introduction of $\imath$ and $\jmath$ notations for the imaginary unit
The imaginary unit is generally denoted $i$ or $\imath$. I have learned that the term imaginary ("imaginaires") was coined by R. Descartes in 1637, and the "i" notation was introduced by L. Euler (cf. ...
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What is the etymology behind sine, cosine, tangent, etc.?
I heard somewhere that it was actually a mistake in translation. What's the correct story?
user4795
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When and why did people stopped using "natural philosophy" term and started using "science"?
Previously what is called now "natural sciences" was called "natural philosophy". I'm interested in details, what was so wrong with the name "philosophy" so the name "science" became preferred?
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Historical roots of the justification for the rule for multiplication of negative numbers
As a follow up question with respect to : Who wrote down minus times minus is equal to plus? and to : Historically, how did people define multiplication for negative numbers?, it can be interesting to ...
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Why is one meter as long as it is?
The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in
a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second
Why is this so? Who decided that 1/299,792,458 of a ...
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Why did angular momentum get the letter L
Note - this question was inspired by this questions on physics.SE.
Many (most) physical quantities are denoted with a single letter - latin or greek. For many, the letter chosen makes sense: $t$ for ...
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Etymology of "power" (math.)
Having done some searches on the internet, seems like the term "power" is a mistranslation. The Wikipedia article links to an article in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive where it is written
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Is it true that Leibniz introduced "constant," "variable," and "function"?
I read in a not always reliable source (David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, p.104), that Leibniz introduced the terms constant, variable, and function, the latter as an alternative to Newton's ...
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What was the definition of a scientist and how did it evolve? When was science categorized?
I'm asking this question as I've noticed that scientists like Gauss, Newton, Euler, Lagrange etc developed theories in many scientific fields(these ones that I know of were mostly interested in math ...
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Who are "analysts" and "synthesists" in mathematics?
What is the difference between the terms "analysis" and "synthesis" used in a mathematical context?
For example, Hawkins's Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups p. 3 says that Klein and Lie
were ...
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Why do we call it a "positive definite matrix" rather than a "positively definite matrix"?
The term positive definite matrix is a standard one used in mathematics, especially in linear algebra.
Are there grammatical, linguistic, or historical reasons why it was not called a positively ...
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What was the evolution of "basis" and "generating set" in algebra?
Today, I've heard someone speak of a basis (of an ideal), meaning a generating set. All the time, I was fine with the term Gröbner-basis, but when it comes without the prefix, it's a bit funny, since ...
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Origin and use of the adjective "improper" in mathematics
Anybody with elementary mathematical education will have seen improper fractions to refer to fractions where the numerator is greater than or equal to the denominator.
At a certain point in calculus ...
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Who wrote down minus times minus is equal to plus? [duplicate]
I am not here to ask why "minus times minus is plus", this is a basic arithmetic fact. The related question most people ask is: why does $-\times-=+$. Of, course there may be several explanations for ...
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When did the term 'scientist, physicist, science, physicist' come in use?
Down to the eighteenth century physics was called philosophia naturalis.
When were the terms Physics, Science and Scientist, introduced? By whom? When did they supplant the old ones?
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When did the names of scientists first become the names of scientific units?
Many scientific units are named after scientists, for example,
Tesla for magnetic flux
Farad for capacitance
Newton for force.
When did the tradition of naming scientific units begin?
user22
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Did ancient/medieval non-European cultures have a concept of energy? If so, what are the similarities and differences to the modern concept?
For example, do we find something related to the modern energy concept in Ancient China, Ancient India, or the Islamic Golden Age?
Among "similarities and differences", conservation is obviously ...
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Why is there no named unit for momentum but there is one for energy?
Momentum and energy play very similar roles in mechanics, each being changed by the application of force over a interval. For energy the interval is in space and for momentum it is in time. Both have ...
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Why is differentiation under the integral sign named the Leibniz rule?
The question here asked why differentiation under the integral sign is named "Feynman's trick". That is a comparatively recent name for the method. Aside from the name "differentiation under the ...
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Indiana Pi Bill: Other attempts to establish mathematical truth by legislative fiat?
Wiki:
The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most notorious attempts to establish mathematical truth by legislative ...
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What caused the name change from "analysis situs" to "topology"?
J. Alexander's 1926 paper, Combinatorial Analysis Situs, doesn't refer to the field as combinatorial topology.
He mentions that combinatorial analysis situs is concerned with topological invariants ...
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Why is the Sophie Germain Identity called thus?
Several authors (z.B.: Arthur Engel in his Problem-Solving Strategies, Alexander Bogomolny in this entry of the Cut the Knot website) refer to the following (straightforward) consequence of the ...
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When and by whom was the term 'momentum' introduced?
We know that up to 1726, when the third edition of the Principia was published, the name for $m\vec v$ was: quantitas motus.
Do you know who substituted that with another Latin word: 'momentum'?
user646
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Who was first to differentiate between prime and irreducible elements?
I recently learned about irreducible and prime elements in a commutative ring. However, my professor was not quite sure who was the first to make this distinction, or give an example of an irreducible ...
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Why is the Heaviside step function named after Heaviside?
The Heaviside step function is usually defined as
$$
\theta(x)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll}0&\text{if }x<0\\\tfrac12&\text{if }x=0\\1&\text{if }x>0.\\\end{array}\right.
$$
It is ...
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History of the definition of Injective & Surjective Function
I'm a college student, just beginning to study Elementary Set Theory. In studying about the definition of injective and surjective function, out of curiosity, it came to my mind a question about the ...
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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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What is the status of the three crises in the history of mathematics?
I have seen a claim in some literature that there are three crises in the history of mathematics. The first is the discovery of $\sqrt2$ being irrational in Greek time which shook the belief that ...
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Why is magnetic flux density named after Nikola Tesla?
I have my respect for Mr Tesla, but it seems weird that "he" was chosen to be the units of magnetic flux density. I mean, he didn't contribute much to magnetic fields theory, nor did he work ...
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How did the term "Michel electron" come about?
The Michel electron is what we call the electron produced from muon decay, and it's named after Louis Michel. I mention this in a paper I'm writing, and I was told that I need to cite it. I can't find ...
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Why are canonical coordinates canonical?
Canonical coordinates are
coordinates $q_i$ and $p_i$ in phase space that are used in the Hamiltonian formalism. The canonical coordinates satisfy the fundamental Poisson bracket relations:
\...
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What is the origin of "normal" in normal coordinates and normal modes?
I am trying to understand why vibrational modes of polyatomic molecules are called "normal" mode of vibrations and with corresponding normal coordinates. What is the origin of the term normal here? I ...
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Who came up with the link between the spectrum of an operator and the poles of a meromorphic function?
From Dieudonné's "History of Functional Analysis" I learned that Picard in 1893 gave a characterization of an eigenvalue of the Laplacian as the simple pole of a meromorphic function.
Is there an ...
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Who first called $\mathrm e$ "Euler's number"?
Euler is usually credited with denoting this number with the letter $\mathrm e$. But
It seems unlikely that Euler chose the letter because it is the initial of his own name, as occasionally been ...
user18522
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Was the word 'gravity' an invention of Newton?
Before Newton many phycisists try to understand nature and the rotations of planets. But Newton founded his laws of gravity. But was he the first who used the word gravity or when was it first used? ...
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Where does "the grating equation" come from? Does it have a another name?
What we often refer to as Snell's law:
$$n_1 \sin(\theta_1) - n_2 \sin(\theta_2) = 0$$
has quite a bit of history behind it. It can be demonstrated in several ways, one of which is by asserting that ...
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What changes in mathematics resulted in the change of the definition of primes and exclusion of 1?
Why 1 is not prime? I read in this article that G.H Hardy explicitly included 1 as a prime in the first 6 editions of "A Course in Pure Mathematics", published between 1908-1933. He updated ...
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Who assigned the name "work" to the quantity $\int F\,{\rm d}r$?
I am looking into the historical perspective of how the concept of work and energy came about: who coined the terms "mechanical work" and "energy", and how the concept evolved over time.
I know that ...
Rajneesh Singh
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How did the early chemists make a connection between gram formula weight with 1 mole and Avogadro's number?
According to one historian Mustafa Sarikaya's article in Foundations of Chemistry DOI 10.1007/s10698-011-9128-7, the mole concept was introduced to chemistry earlier than Avogadro’s number. The mole ...
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Degenerate States in Quantum Mechanics
In his book on quantum mechanics in the chapter on perturbation theory Dirac says in a footnote:
A system with only one stationary state belonging to each energy-level is often called non-...
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First mention of Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic
Without a Disquisitiones Arithmeticae at hand, I may ask... When the unique factorization theorem was first called the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic?
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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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Jordan called isomorphisms (iso.) and homomorphisms "iso. holoedriques" and "iso. meriedriques" respectively; translation of holoe/meried-driques?
Stillwell mentions in his Elements of Algebra:
The first to use the term "isomorphism" was Jordan, in his Traite des Substitutions [1870], the first textbook on group theory...Jordan used the word "...
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References about the the development of the concept of mechanical work
I'm looking for references about how the concept of mechanical work ("$\boldsymbol{F}\cdot\mathrm{d}\boldsymbol{r}$") or the concept of mechanical power ("$\boldsymbol{F}\cdot\boldsymbol{v}$") came ...
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First time the unique factorization theorem was called FTA
First of all, a comment, before this gets marked as a duplicate:
I have searched this website for the question I’m asking and I’m aware that this exact question has been asked before. However, Eric ...
user10440
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Dimension of the candela unit: What does J stand for?
The J symbol can represent the unit of energy but it's also the symbol for the dimension of the candela (or luminous intensity).
For the energy unit, it clearly comes from the family name of the ...
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History: Direct Product became Tensor Product?
I'm reading a 1939 paper by the great and famous J. von Neumann, "On infinite direct products" (of vector spaces), available here http://www.numdam.org/item/?id=CM_1939__6__1_0, legally I ...
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