12
votes
Accepted
Who was Paul Gerwien?
I have not been able to find any primary sources that confirm that Gerwien's first name was Paul. Gerwien published three papers in Crelle's "Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik",...
- 7,179
11
votes
Accepted
Source of a Poincaré quote: "Logic sometimes makes monsters..."
McTutor most likely took the passage from Kline's Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times, v.3, p.973, they reproduced his translation verbatim. Kline references Poincare's essay Dans la ...
- 78.4k
11
votes
Accepted
Did Cauchy forget or lose mathematical papers aside from Abel's and Galois's?
Apparently, Cauchy did not even forget or lose at least the papers of Galois. This is yet another example of how E.T. Bell and his Men of Mathematics, for all its literary virtues, are unreliable ...
- 78.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Who was Fleury? And what was his first name?
A Google scan of Fleury's article "Deux problèmes de géométrie de situation" can be found here, and identifies the author as "M. Fleury, chef d'institution", where "M." ...
- 7,179
7
votes
Seeking numbers of German mathematics professors in 1890
A relevant source to find answers to this questions is the book (out of print in Germany):
[Ferber 1956] Christian von Ferber: Die Entwicklung des Lehrkörpers der deutschen Universitäten und ...
- 690
7
votes
Why did pre-17th century mathematics mostly come from Italy but later mathematics came from France, Germany and England?
Analysis got a head start in the work of Italian indivisibilists Cavalieri, Torricelli, degli Angeli, and others. However, the budding analysis was viewed with disfavor by some in the Catholic ...
- 6,528
6
votes
Accepted
Seeking numbers of German mathematics professors in 1890
I recommend the authoritative volume "Das Studium der Mathematik an den deutschen Universitäten seit Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts" by Wilhelm Lorey, published in 1916. This digitalized edition can be ...
- 1,394
6
votes
How did Meyer know atomic volumes to plot them just before Mendeleev's periodic table?
Good question. I had to look up his original paper which is freely available on Google Books and Hathi Trust. The paper is "Die Natur der chemischen Elemente als Function ihrer Atomgewichte; von ...
- 4,229
6
votes
Why was Évariste Galois killed?
My copy of Laura Toti Rigatelli's biography of Galois (Vita Mathematica, Volume 11), gives the following account of Galois's end in Section 4, "To Louis-Philippe!" and Section 5, "A ...
- 226
6
votes
Does anybody know the history of how Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet came up with the “nowhere continuous” Dirichlet function?
Page 169 of his 1829 paper. It arises as the simplest example of a function for which his proof of Fourier’s theorem fails (because it’s not integrable):
It would remain for us to consider the ...
- 7,779
5
votes
What was the first "scientific", non-photographic depiction of Earth as seen from outside of Earth?
I don't know, but Images of earth from outside had been made for more than 500 years.
A globe of the Earth would seem to count as a "depiction of any kind".
The sphericity of the Earth was ...
- 1,363
5
votes
Why did pre-17th century mathematics mostly come from Italy but later mathematics came from France, Germany and England?
This does not apply only to mathematics, but to all ancient culture. It was almost completely forgotten in Europe, and then it was slowly recalled, in the process which is called Renaissance. So, the ...
- 50.3k
5
votes
History of PDE's in the 19th Century
It belonged to both. For example, the most important work on PDE in 19th century
was arguably Fourier's Analytic theory of heat. You don't have to read the book,
to conclude that this was applied ...
- 50.3k
5
votes
Biography of Galois in English
You can see :
Laura Toti Rigatelli, Evariste Galois 1811–1832 (1996).
See also :
Peter M. Neumann (editor), The Mathematical Writings of Évariste Galois (2011); there is a general Introduction as ...
- 15.1k
5
votes
Was Fourier inspired by Ptolemy?
Fourier was not inspired by Ptolemy or by mechanics. His work where he developed Fourier series and invented Fourier transform was about heat. He never mentions Ptolemy (or any astronomer). The ...
- 50.3k
4
votes
Is it true that Empress Elisabeth of Austria did math?
She didn't do any math. From my research about her, it seems that the user you are referring to is teasing the fact that her nickname was "Sisi" which looks similar to the integrand. I also ...
- 141
4
votes
Accepted
How accurate was the measurement of the period of Earth's orbit in the 19th Century?
Astronomer Norman Lockyer published The Meteoritic Hypothesis in 1890. By then the age of the Earth was known to be at least several hundred million years from geological evidence, and Darwin’s theory ...
- 436
4
votes
Accepted
When was "Faraday's Law of Induction" first expressed in a quantified form?
Faraday stated the law more quantitatively in the report titled On Lines of Magnetic Force read to the Royal Society in 1851. He does not specify the direction of the force (and he originally got it ...
- 78.4k
3
votes
Biography of Galois in English
The classical source is Leopold Infeld, Whom the gods love,
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Gods-Love-mathematics-education/dp/0873531256
- 50.3k
3
votes
($\varepsilon$, $\delta$)-definition of limit by Weierstrass
The issue is that most of W's foundational works was unpublished or scattered into his lectures.
See Pierre Dugac, Eléments d'analyse de Karl Weierstrass (AHES, 1973), Appendice II, page 119, with ...
- 15.1k
3
votes
Source of a Poincaré quote: "Logic sometimes makes monsters..."
This text appears in Poincaré's 1909 Science et méthode, starting on p.132. I do not know if he published this passage earlier.
- 2,707
3
votes
Accepted
Origin of the term "affixe"/"affix" in the geometric treatment of complex numbers
According to Eduard Study and Élie Cartan [1], it was Cauchy who introduced the term affixe in Sur la quantité géométrique $\mathrm{i} = 1_{\frac{\pi}{2}}$, et sur la réduction d'une quantité ...
- 261
2
votes
How accurate was the measurement of the period of Earth's orbit in the 19th Century?
Yes, 2 seconds per year decrease of the Earth's revolution period would be easily detected in the 19th century. This is based on the general principle of astronomy, which was used since time ...
- 50.3k
2
votes
Does anybody know the history of how Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet came up with the “nowhere continuous” Dirichlet function?
History of the modern definition of function is long and very complicated. It begins
with a discussion between Euler, Bernoulli and d'Alembert related to what was later called Fourier series. The ...
- 50.3k
2
votes
Data that motivated early discussions about the mean and about error distributions
As described in this paper, Gauss became famous with his prediction of the orbit of Ceres based on observations by the astronomer Piazzi. Piazzi's astronomical data (from January and February 1801) ...
- 489
1
vote
How did Meyer know atomic volumes to plot them just before Mendeleev's periodic table?
Following M. Farooq recommendation, I had a look at the original paper and the extreme left of the table was indeed unknown in the solid state. They apparently got some densities by "...
1
vote
What was considered Evolutionary Science or Biology proper in 1880-1890 in the US?
I encountered an insightful article that may address the origins of Veblen's work. Here is an excerpt:
A number of economists and other social scientists have addressed evolutionary explanations. ...
1
vote
Where in Gauss's nachlass did he pose the problem of connectedness of a surface?
P.199-206 of Schlesinger's treatise about Gauss's analytic work give the answer. This section, entitled "Anniversary letter Plan of a treatise on convergence of series", deals with mathematical themes ...
- 4,639
1
vote
Did Gauss reply to Galois?
Galois wrote his famous testamentary letter on 29 May 1832, one day before the duel, to his friend Auguste Chevalier. At the end of the letter he wrote:
You will publicly ask Jacobi or Gauss to give ...
- 31
1
vote
History of PDE's in the 19th Century
I suggest to start with Morris Kline's "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times".
A valuable source is also Felix Klein's "Development of Mathematics in the 19th Century".
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