41
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Timeline of measurements of the electron's charge
If anyone's still reading this thread, here's a few more data points that appear to back Feynmann's interpretation.
Erik Bäcklin, Nature vol 123, no. 3098, p. 409 (1929): $1.59875 \cdot 10^{-19} \pm ...
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40
votes
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How did Eratosthenes know the Sun was very far away?
We do not know for sure what Eratosthenes read, but at his time this was a common knowledge. This can be inferred from the book of Archimedes, The sand reckoner (Archimedes was Eratosthenes' ...
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24
votes
I want to know the tricks to search for and find old academic journals for free
For Google Books you will often want to use date-restricted searches (for some reason these don't work so well after the early 1900s, at least for me), but don't restrict to a single publication year ...
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20
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Why was the development of mathematics very slow between Ancient Greece and Descartes?
Making my comment into an answer:
Was there a gap of knowledge or slow-down of progress in math as a whole between Ancient Greeks and the 17th century?
The answer is probably no.
Islamic Medieval ...
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19
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What did Fermat do as a lawyer?
Fermat wasn't so much a "lawyer" as a magistrat which means that he sat on successively higher levels of the Parlement of Toulouse, France. This period (17th century) was before the emergence of the ...
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19
votes
Who are the youngest mathematicians that published an original research article in a peer-reviewed journal?
George Bergman, "A number system with an irrational base," Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 2, Nov.-Dec. 1957, pp. 98-110.
George Mark Bergman is an American mathematician who was born on ...
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18
votes
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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"?
So far I have been unable to find substantially identical words in Newton's writings, and as usual, authors that use this quotation do not cite a source. The origin may be a remark of Newton's in ...
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18
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I want to know the tricks to search for and find old academic journals for free
A famous pirate site with a long legal history is Library Genesis (on Wikipedia you can read about its ups and downs). A trick that someone (not me, of course) might have used is to retrieve the ...
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17
votes
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What major areas of mathematics have been abandoned?
I would say that no area of mathematics has ever been completely abandoned. The areas go in and out of fashion, but nothing seems to be completely abandoned.
For example, approximately in 1940's most ...
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17
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Who was Nicolò Paganini that discovered the amicable pair 1184, 1210?
The original report appears in Atti della R. Accademia delle scienze di Torino, v. 2 (1866-1867) p. 362, and is signed by the Academy's secretary A. Sobrero. It is accessible through Hathi Trust and ...
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16
votes
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What was Kolmogorov’s point of view in the philosophy of mathematics?
Kolmogorov was not exactly free to express his views considering the situation in the Soviet Union. Philosophical issues, even concerning mathematics, were ideologically sensitive, and everyone had to ...
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16
votes
How did Eratosthenes know the Sun was very far away?
This is a long answer, explaining more or less step to step why the data available to Eratosthenes indicted that the Sun should be a vast distance from the Earth, thus makings its diverging rays ...
- 1,363
15
votes
Who was L. Aubry?
I am Camille Aubry, granddaughter of Léon Aubry (1882-1947), and I thank you for your interest in my great-grandfather.
He was a wine grower, farmer, beekeeper, in Jouy-lès-Reims (51).
He was also a ...
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14
votes
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DeMorgan's commentary on Euclid's Elements
De Morgan's "Short Supplementary Remarks on the first Six Books of Euclid's Elements" is contained in the Companion to the (British) Almanac for the year 1849, pp.5–20, published by the ...
14
votes
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What do the H and the E stand for in John Cohn's name?
John Hans Edmund Cohn was a Fulbright Scholar and is listed on page 35 of the Directory of Visiting Scholars in the United States Awarded U. S. Government Grants under the Fulbright-Hays Act 1966-1967....
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13
votes
Is Spivak right in what he says about Galileo?
Yes, indeed when trying to obtain the law of falling bodies, Galileo's first conjecture was that the speed is proportional to the distance traveled. After some contemplation, Galileo understood that ...
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13
votes
Did Einstein say "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them"?
I am afraid there is no original source. Wikipedia has talk pages where sourcing is discussed, and its editors did extensive searches on this one and its variants. It is listed under the heading ...
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13
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Some references for Vladimir Arnold's thesis "Mathematics is a part of physics"?
First, on the question in the narrow sense the answer is in the negative, I am afraid, although there are some other places where Arnold expresses his views on mathematics: An apologia for Applied ...
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13
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Who are the youngest mathematicians that published an original research article in a peer-reviewed journal?
Arthur Leonard Rubin submitted the following paper at age 12.5 -- he was born in Feb 1956 and the paper was submitted in Nov 1968:
Arthur L. Rubin and Jean E. Rubin, Extended operations and relations ...
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12
votes
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Where did Rayleigh derive the ultraviolet catastrophe?
The short answer is that you can not find it because it does not exist, Rayleigh never derived the "ultraviolet catastrophe". Chapter VI of Kuhn's book on the history of quantum mechanics reads:
"...
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12
votes
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Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
As noted, Mermin was probably the first to utter the exact words “Shut up and calculate”. However, the equivalent rallying cry of “Get the numbers out” has its origins some decades earlier.
According ...
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12
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What was the main language in science/mathematics before 1850
For what it’s worth, here are the languages of the 1645 math/phys paper and book titles from the years 1690–1919 in a bibtex file I have. Of course unscientific with all kinds of biases, but I imagine ...
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12
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What theorem of Sophus Lie on the number of geometries is H. Poincaré referring to?
Poincare refers to the Lie's solution of the so-called problem of space, a.k.a. the Helmholtz , or Riemann-Helmholtz, or Helmholtz-Lie problem of space, which amounts to characterizing all manifolds (...
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11
votes
Source for Hilbert's famous quote "Mathematics in Göttingen? There really is none anymore"
In my grandfather's book, lately translated from German:
Recollections of a Jewish Mathematician in Germany, by Abraham A. Fraenkel, edited by Jiska Cohen-Mansfield, translated by Allison Brown.
...
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11
votes
Did Srinivasa Ramanujan have a surviving sibling?
There were actually two surviving brothers:
source
See also page 12 of Robert Kanigel's biography of Ramanujan.
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11
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Origin of identity: $\int\limits_{-\infty}^{\infty} \exp\{ - \pi x^2 - 2 \pi^{1/2} a x\} \,da = \exp\left\{a^2\right\}$
This is a variation on the Gaussian integral $\int\limits_{-\infty}^{\infty} \exp\left\{-x^2\right\} \,dx=\sqrt{\pi}$, a.k.a. Poisson or Euler-Poisson integral, to which it reduces by completing the ...
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11
votes
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History of irreducible polynomials and motivation for them
I will skip the pre-history of solving polynomial equations and factoring polynomials. Let me mention that the analogy between long division of numbers and polynomials goes back to medieval Islamic ...
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11
votes
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What is the mysterious expression mentioned by Hadamard that Riemann derived properties of zeta function from?
The mysterious expression, that Riemann did not "simplify enough to publish", is mentioned in his letter to Weierstrass published by Weber in 1876. It is reminiscent of Fermat's "...
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