HP 35 calculator
The task is ... not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.~Erwin Schrödinger
The 4th day of the year; it is the smallest composite number. Every positive integer is the sum of at most 4 squares. There are 44 numbers in a year which can not be expressed with less than four squares. The smallest is 7, the largest is 359
The fourth power of any even number not ending in zero ends in 6, the fourth power of any odd number not ending in five have a last digit of one.
Brocard conjectured that there are at least four primes between the squares of any two consecutive primes, with the exception of 2 and 3.
For any number k, real or complex, 4=k2−(k+1)2−(k+2)2+(k+3)2\\
Fourth dimension has more regular "solids" than other dimensions. Euclid, in the Elements, proves that there are exactly five regular solids in three dimensions. Schläfli proves that there are exactly six regular solids in four dimensions, There are no higher dimensions with more.
The four color theorem for planes says that a map can be colored in no more that four colors with no adjacent regions the same color. On a Mobius strip, the magic number is six, and on a torus, it is seven.
EVENTS
1652-3 Seth Ward writes to Oughtred sending measurements of the “recent comet” (Dec of 1652) “Being last week at London I called on Mr. Gratorex, who shewed me a letter which he had received from you concerning the late comet, wherein you desired that he would communicate your observations to such as he should meet with, and desire them to do the like. I took the boldness, therefore, to transcribe that part of your letter which concerned it, and I have here inclosed sent you such observations as were in my absence (for I was then in a journey) made here by Mr. Rooke, and one who belongs to me. “ *De Morgan, Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century.
In the 1640s, Seth took instruction in mathematics from William Oughtred, and stayed with relations of Samuel Ward.
1754 Kings College, renamed Columbia College in 1784, founded in New York City by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. Now Columbia University, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.*Wik
1803 Gauss writes to H. W. Olbers regarding the offer to move to St Petersburg. "You, my best friend, have so kindly taken an interest in my future.... so I inform you confidentially that there is no chance that I leave Germany now. Our Duke, who has always been so generous to me, is anxious to keep me here, will not agree to my leaving, and will see that I get the advantages offered by St. Petersburg. " On April 4th he would write to Fuss (Nicolas Fuss, assistant to Euler in St Petersburg,... see deaths below) to refuse the offer, and include his observation of Pallas in gratitude. (Olbers was a physician and astronomer in Bremen, and the discoverer of the asteroids Pallas (from whom Gauss got the data he shared) and in 1807 of vesta.)
1845 The Italian geometer Giusto Bellavitis (1803–1880) was appointed, via a competitive examination, full professor of descriptive geometry at the University of Padua. He held no degrees until the university awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy and mathematics the following year. *VFR
His principle achievement, which marks his place, in the future and the present, among the names of geometers that will endure, is the invention of the method of equipollences, a new method of analytic geometry that is both philosophical and fruitful.*Wik
In 1851, The first observation by the Airy transit circle was taken on 4 January 1851, three days later than Airy had intended due to the English weather. Its importance for everyone dates from a conference held in Washington DC in 1884 to create an international time-zone system. It was agreed that the meridian line marked by the cross-hairs in the Airy Transit Circle eyepiece would indicate 0° longitude and the start of the Universal Day.*Royal Observatory Web page
The circle remained in continual use until 1938, and the last ever observation was taken in 1954.the Airy Transit Circle was first used at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The instrument was designed by George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal. It was set up on the Prime Meridian - the north-south line of longitude 0° - which marks the start of the Universal day for the world. The time at which a star passed over the meridian was measured with a regulator (an extremely accurate clock). The transit was used to measure the angle of a star at that instant. From this data, the co-ordinates of that star could be determined and plotted on a star chart. Navigation at sea depended on the accuracy of these charts, and the Airy Transit Circle was a great improvement on the previous technology.*TIS
In 1912, the closest approach to earth by the moon was 221,441 miles apart center to center..(In 2013 the Moon will make its closest approach to the Earth (at perigee) for the year on Sunday, 23 June, at 11:11 (UTC), and at this time the Moon will be 356,989 km from the Earth. )*Bob Mrotek
1952 While still a movie actor and before he entered politics, Ronald Reagan wrote to a high school student who had asked advice on how to become a sports announcer (one of Reagan’s earlier jobs). In the letter Reagan confessed that he had a weakness in mathematics. [Eves, Return to Mathematical Circles, ◦33.] *VFR
1958 The first artificial earth satellite, the Russian Sputnik(companion) I, fell out of orbit and burned up on re-entering earth's atmosphere. Sputnick burned out in the Earth's atmosphere on January 4, 1958, after 92 days in orbit, following its launch on October 4, 1957, decaying due to aerodynamic drag in low Earth orbit, marking the end of its 1,440 orbits and paving the way for the Space Age.*PB
1972 Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP-35, the first scientific handheld calculator and the final step in ending reliance on slide rules among scientists and students alike. The HP-35 was named for its 35 keys, weighed nine ounces, and sold for $395. One of the tests HP co-founder Dave Packard applied to the device was to throw it across his office and see if it still worked. It did. *CHM
1987 The New York Times reported that an Energy Expo in Seattle unveiled “high-tech, energy-efficient buildings. ... Some of the judges’ favorites include ... an office building with ‘parabolic’ lighting fixtures designed to focus light better than flat systems.” Isn’t it amazing how long it takes technology to catch up with theory? *VFR
In 2004, Spirit, a robot rover landed on Mars to analyze the planet's rocks, looking for evidence of water. It has taken the only photo of Earth from another planet. Surviving dust storms, it far outlasted its expected useful life. A twin robot rover, Opportunity, landed three weeks after Spirit on the other side of the planet.*TIS
BIRTHS |
| Rubens illustration of projection |
1567 François d'Aguilon (also d'Aguillon or in Latin Franciscus Aguilonius) (4 January 1567 – 20 March 1617) was a Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist and architect.
D'Aguilon was born in Brussels. He became a Jesuit in 1586. In 1611, he started a special school of mathematics, in Antwerp, which was intended to perpetuate mathematical research and study in among the Jesuits. This school produced geometers like André Tacquet and Jean Charles della Faille.
His book, Opticorum Libri Sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles (Six Books of Optics, useful for philosophers and mathematicians alike), published in Antwerp in 1613, was illustrated by famous painter Peter Paul Rubens. It was notable for containing the principles of the stereographic and the orthographic projections, and it inspired the works of Desargues and Christiaan Huygens. *Wik
1643 Sir Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 which is the "corrected" Gregorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) *SAU
1797 Wilhelm Beer (4 Jan 1797, 27 Mar 1850 at age 53) German banker and amateur astronomer who owned a fine Fraunhofer refractor which he used in his own a private observatory. He worked jointly with Johann Heinrich von Mädler, to produce the first large-scale moon map to be based on precise micrometric measurements. Their four-year effort was published as Mappa Selenographica (1836). This fine lithographed map provided the most complete details of the Moon's surface in the first half of the 19th century. It was the first lunar map divided in quadrants, and recorded the Moon's face in great detail detail. It was drawn to a scale of scale of just over 38 inches to the moon's diameter. Mädler originated a convention for naming minor craters with Roman letters appended to the name of the nearest large crater (ex. Egede A,B, and C).
Complete lunar map, assembled from four quadrants, Mappa selenographia, by Wilhelm Beer and Johann Mädler, lithograph, 1834 (Linda Hall Library)
1809 Louis Braille (4 Jan 1809; 6 Jan 1852) French educator who developed a tactile form of printing and writing, known as braille, since widely adopted by the blind. He himself knew blindness from the age four, following an accident while playing with an awl. In 1821, while Braille was at a school for the blind, a soldier named Charles Barbier visited and showed a code system he had invented. The system, called "night writing" had been designed for soldiers in war trenches to silently pass instructions using combinations of twelve raised dots. Young Braille realized how useful this system of raised dots could be. He developed a simpler scheme using six dots. In 1827 the first book in braille was published. Now the blind could also write it for themselves using a simple stylus to make the dots.*TISThe first version of braille, composed for the French alphabet *Wik
1846 Edward Hibberd Johnson (4 Jan 1846; 9 Sep 1917) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He spent many years in various business projects with Thomas Edison, including being the vice-president of the Edison Electric Light Company. Johnson created the first electric lights on a Christmas tree on 22 Dec 1882.*TISWhile he was Vice-President of the Edison Electric Light Company, he had Christmas tree bulbs especially made for him. He displayed his Christmas tree—hand-wired with 80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs the size of walnuts—on December 22, 1882, at his home in New York City,
The story was reported in the Detroit Post and Tribune by a reporter named William Augustus Croffut.Johnson became known as the Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights.
1848 Heinrich Suter (4 January 1848, Hedingen near Zurich, Switzerland – 17 March 1922) was a historian of science specializing in Islamic mathematics and astronomy.Suter in his early forties learned Arabic and acquired some knowledge of Syriac, Persian and Turkish. He studied the history of mathematics and astronomy in the Islamic societies. In Moritz Cantor 's "Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematics" were published in 1892 Suter's translation of the mathematically related entries in the Kitāb al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim and in 1893 Suter's translation of the mathematical parts of the catalog of the Khedivial Library in Cairo . One of his most important works is his work, commissioned by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, on the astronomical tables of Al-Khwarizmi .*Wik
1890 Raymond Woodard Brink (4 Jan 1890 in Newark, New Jersey, USA - 27 Dec 1973 in La Jolla, California, USA) mathematician who studied at Kansas State University, Harvard and Paris. He taught at the University of Minnesota though he spent a year in Edinburgh in 1919. He worked on the convergence of series. He was a President of the Mathematical Association of America.*SAU
1913 Sixto Ríos García (January 4, 1913; Pelahustán, Toledo - July 8, 2008; Madrid,) was a Spanish mathematician, known as the father of Spanish statistics.
He has held the positions of Director of the School of Statistics at the University of Madrid, Director of the Institute for Operations Research and Statistics CSIC, Director, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences at the Complutense University and President of the Spanish Society Operational Research, Statistics and Information. It was academic correspondent of the National Academy of Sciences of Buenos Aires, and organizer and founder, commissioned by Unesco, School of Statistics, University of Caracas. He was a member of the drafting committee of Statistical Abstracts and fellow of the International Statistical Institute and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Wik-ES
1940 Brian D. Josephson (4 Jan 1940, ) British physicist who discovered the Josephson effect (1962) - a flow of electric current as electron pairs, called Cooper Pairs, between two superconducting materials that are separated by an extremely thin insulator. This arrangement is called a Josephson Junction. He was a graduate student, 22 years old, at the time. Subsequently, he was awarded a share of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever).*TISJosephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.
In the early 1970s, Josephson took up transcendental meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the boundaries of mainstream science. He set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at the Cavendish to explore the idea of intelligence in nature, the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism, broadly known as quantum mysticism.[6] He has expressed support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, which has made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists.
In the early 1970s, Josephson took up transcendental meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the boundaries of mainstream science. He set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at the Cavendish to explore the idea of intelligence in nature, the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism, broadly known as quantum mysticism.[6] He has expressed support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, which has made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists. *Wik
DEATHS
1752 Gabriel Cramer . He is best known for “Cramer’s Rule,” a method for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations using determinants. *VFR Gabriel Cramer (31 July 1704 – 4 January 1752) was a Swiss mathematician, born in Geneva. He showed promise in mathematics from an early age. At 18 he received his doctorate and at 20 he was co-chair of mathematics. In 1728 he proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox that came very close to the concept of expected utility theory given ten years later by Daniel Bernoulli. He published his best known work in his forties. This was his treatise on algebraic curves, "Introduction à l'analyse des lignes courbes algébriques", published in 1750. It contains the earliest demonstration that a curve of the nth degree is determined by n(n + 3)/2 points on it, in general position. He edited the works of the two elder Bernoullis; and wrote on the physical cause of the spheroidal shape of the planets and the motion of their apsides (1730), and on Newton's treatment of cubic curves (1746). He was professor at Geneva, and died at Bagnols-sur-Cèze.*Wik
1826 Nikolai Fuss (30 Jan 1755 in Basel, Switzerland - 4 Jan 1826 in St Petersburg, Russia) was a Swiss mathematician whose most important contribution was as amanuensis to Euler after he lost his sight. He married Euler's granddaughter.Most of Fuss's papers are solutions to problems posed by Euler on spherical geometry, trigonometry, series, differential geometry and differential equations. His best papers are in spherical trigonometry, a topic he worked on with A J Lexell and F T Schubert. Fuss also worked on geometrical problems of Apollonius and Pappus. He made contributions to differential geometry and won a prize from the French Academy in 1778 for a paper on the motion of comets near some planet Recherche sur le dérangement d'une comète qui passe près d'une planète . Fuss won other prizes from Sweden and Denmark. He contributed much in the field of education, writing many fine textbooks. *SAU
1882 John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an American (English-born) scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the Moon (1840). He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of Medicine. One of Draper's books, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, received worldwide recognition and was translated into several languages, but was banned by the Catholic Church. His son, Henry Draper, and his granddaughter, Antonia Maury, were astronomers, and his eldest son, John Christopher Draper, was a chemist. *Wik
1904 Anna Winlock (15 Sept 1857– 4 Jan 1904) was an American astronomer and human computer, one of the first members of female computer group known as "the Harvard Computers." She made the most complete catalog of stars near the north and south poles of her era. She is also remembered for her calculations and studies of asteroids. In particular, she did calculations on 433 Eros and 475 Ocllo.
Winlock attended the Cambridge, Ma. Schools as a child and began to develop an interest in both mathematics and the Greek language. By age 10, Anna had watched her father go from Superintendent at the American Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Director of the Harvard College Observatory as well as a professor of Astronomy at the main Harvard College. Upon her graduation she received a letter from her principal expressing his appreciation for her Greek and of her character. Her father influenced her interest in astronomy. When she was twelve, she attended a solar eclipse expedition with her father in his home state of Kentucky. In June 1875, Joseph died shortly after Winlock had graduated from secondary school. Winlock quickly followed in her father's footsteps becoming one of the first female paid staff members of the Harvard College Observatory. *Wik
1950 Virgil Snyder (9 Nov 1869 in Dixon, Iowa, USA 4 Jan 1950 in Ithaca, New York, USA ) Up until the 1920s, Snyder's prolific output and his talents as a teacher made him, together with Frank Morley of Johns Hopkins, one of the most influential algebraic geometers in the nation. Together with Henry White, in fact, Snyder emerged as a principal heir to Klein's geometric legacy. *SAU
In 1886, Snyder matriculated at Iowa State College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1889. He attended Cornell University as a graduate student from 1890 to 1892, leaving to study mathematics in Germany on an Erastus W. Brooks fellowship. In 1895, he received a doctorate from the University of Göttingen under Felix Klein. In 1895, Snyder returned to Cornell as an instructor, becoming an assistant professor in 1905 and a full professor in 1910. In 1938, he retired as professor emeritus, having supervised 39 doctoral students, 13 of whom were women.[1] Of these students, perhaps the most well known is C. L. E. Moore. Snyder served as president of the American Mathematical Society for a two-year term in 1927 and 1928.*Wik
1961 Erwin Schrödinger (12 Aug 1887, 4 Jan 1961) Austrian theoretical physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with the British physicist P.A.M. Dirac. Schrödinger took de Broglie's concept of atomic particles as having wave-like properties, and modified the earlier Bohr model of the atom to accommodate the wave nature of the electrons. This made a major contribution to the development of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger realized the possible orbits of an electron would be confined to those in which its matter waves close in an exact number of wavelengths. This condition, similar to a standing wave, would account for only certain orbits being possible, and none possible in between them. This provided an explanation for discrete lines in the spectrum of excited atoms.*TISHe also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is best known for his "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.
1990 Harold E(ugene) Edgerton (6 Apr 1903, 4 Jan 1990) American electrical engineer and ultra-high-speed photographer. As a graduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1926), he used a strobe light in his studies. By 1931, he applied the strobe to ultra-high-speed photography. He formed a company (1947) to specialize in electronic technology, which led to inventing the Rapatronic camera, capable of photographing US nuclear bomb test explosions from a distance of 7 miles. Throughout his career he applied high-speed photography as a tool in various scientific applications. He also developed sonar to study the ocean floor. Using side-scan sonar, in 1973, he helped locate the sunken Civil War battleship USS Monitor, lost since 1862, off Cape Hatteras, NC. *TIS
2005 Frank Harary (March 11, 1921 – January 4, 2005) was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory. Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together with his many doctoral students, he standardized the terminology of graphs. He broadened the reach of this field to include physics, psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. Gifted with a keen sense of humor, Harary challenged and entertained audiences at all levels of mathematical sophistication. A particular trick he employed was to turn theorems into games—for instance, students would try to add red edges to a graph on six vertices in order to create a red triangle, while another group of students tried to add edges to create a blue triangle (and each edge of the graph had to be either blue or red). Because of the theorem on friends and strangers, one team or the other would have to win.*Wik
Harrary and Frank Harary (left) and Klaus Wagner in Oberwolfach, 1972
2013 James Okoye Chukuka Ezeilo (17 January 1930 – 4 January 2013) was the first professor of mathematics in Nigeria. He was often regarded as the father of modern mathematics in the country[2] and was the fifth vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano from 1977 to 1978. He was an alumnus of Cambridge University and died in 2013.
Ezeilo had been born in Nanka, a town in Anambra State.*Wik
Credits :
*CHM=Computer History Museum
*FFF=Kane, Famous First Facts
*NSEC= NASA Solar Eclipse Calendar
*RMAT= The Renaissance Mathematicus, Thony Christie
*SAU=St Andrews Univ. Math History
*TIA = Today in Astronomy
*TIS= Today in Science History
*VFR = V Frederick Rickey, USMA
*Wik = Wikipedia
*WM = Women of Mathematics, Grinstein & Campbell
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