Monday, 20 July 2026

A Mandelbrot-like Set for Quadratics

   The Mandelbrot set can be thought of as a catalog of closed Julia Sets over the complex plane. Each point on the plane representing a complex number, and the coloring representing whether the Julia set for that point had a closed or open orbit.


The equation y= 1/4 x2 on the coordinate plane can, in similar fashion, serve as a catalog of all possible quadratic equations. The method was discovered by a high school age British student by the name of Anthony Bayes around 1955 as reported in the Mathematical Gazette in September of that year by H. Gebert, the young man's teacher.

If every point (b,c) on the coordinate plane is representative of a quadratic equation x2+bx+c=0, then the set of all points in the cup of the parabola have only complex solutions [for example, the point (2,5) would represent the equation x2+2x+5=0 which has only complex roots]. Those points beneath the curve have two real distinct solutions, and the points on the curve specify equations which have a double root[ again, (2,1) would represent the perfect square trinomial x2+2x+1=0]. For any point on the curve, the solutions are -1/2 the x-coordinate. In the case of (2,1) the double root of x2+2x+1=0 is at -1/2 of 2 = -1.

Any line tangent to the curve passes only through points representing equations which share at least one solution. The line y=x-1 which is tangent to the curve at the point (2,1). Since the solutions for x2+2x+1=0 are both -1; all the points on this tangent represent quadratic equations which have x=-1 as one solution. As a case in point, (or a point in this case), (5,4) is on the tangent line, and the solutions of the quadratic equation x2+5x+4=0 are x=-1 and x=-4. If you drew the other tangent to the parabola passing through the point (5,4) it would contain the point (8,16) on the parabola representing the quadratic with a double root at x=-4, that is, the quadratic x2+8x+16=0.
 

Desmos 



The reflection of this tangent in the y-axis gives the tangent through the point representing the equation x^2-2x+1, with the double root at x=+1.  At this point your students should know the point of intersection of the tangent at (8,16) and the tangent at (-2,1).


This would also allow a simple approximation method to find the solutions of any quadratic with reasonably small values using only a straightedge and a printed graph of the curve y=1/4 x2. Simply pick the point (b,c) corresponding to the values of the equation, and then lay a straight edge through the point and tangent to the parabola. The solutions would be -1/2 the x values of the points of tangency, as given above.

On This Day in Math - July 20

   


The greatest discoveries of science have always been
those that forced us to rethink our beliefs
about the universe and our place in it.


-Robert L. Park


The 201st day of the year; 201 is a Harshad number... A Harshad number, or Niven number in a given number base, is an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits when written in that base. Harshad numbers were defined by D. R. Kaprekar, a mathematician from India. The word "Harshad" comes from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver. The Niven numbers take their name from Ivan M. Niven from a paper delivered at a conference on number theory in 1997. (Can you find the string of three consecutive Harshad numbers smaller than 201?)

A 3x3 magic square with a magic constant for each row/column of 201 can be created by taking the basic n= 1-9 digits and replacing them with 13n+2

54  119  28

41   67  93

106 15  80



201 is also a lucky number, a number that survives from the sieve process created about 1955 by Stanislaw Ulam, the great Polish mathematician who coinvented the H-bomb and was the father of cellular automata theory. Students who are familiar with the way the Sieve of Erathosthenes produces the primes may wish to compare the lucky numbers produced by this sieve. "Start wtih the odd numbers.The first odd number >1 is 3, so strike out every third number from the list (crossing out the 5, 11,17 etc): 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 19, .... The first odd number greater than 3 in the list is 7, so strike out every seventh number: 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25, 31, .... The numbers that remain are the so called "lucky numbers". Look for similarities to the primes. *Martin Gardner, Mathworld

201 has a largest factor of 67, so a palindrome of 201 with only 6 and 7, 6 x 7 + 7 x 6 + 7 + 6 + 7 + 6 + 7 + 6 x 7 + 7 x 6 = 201

201 is the the difference of two squares, 201 = 101^2 - 100^2=35^2 - 32^2, and just to break the rules, it's also 22.6^2 - 17.6^2

And Wikipedia tells me that Star Trek had an episode with the title, 11001001, which is 201 in binary.
Notice the base four unit digits all appear 3,0,2,1


For more Math Facts for Every Year Date




EVENTS

1632 Pierre de Carcavi became a member of the parliament of Toulouse. His friendship with Fermat dates from this time.*VFR  He was a secretary of the National Library of France under Louis XIV. 

Carcavi is known for his correspondence with Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Christiaan Huygens, Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, Evangelista Torricelli and René Descartes.

 Fermat sent many of his works to Carcavi after he moved to Paris in 1636. In 1650 he sent Carcavi a treatise entitled Novus secundarum et ulterioris radicum in analyticis usus Ⓣ. This work contained the first known method of elimination and Fermat wanted it published. Both Pascal and Carcavi were asked to find a publisher for the work, Fermat writing to Carcavi on 9 August 1654:-

"I was overjoyed to have had the same thoughts as those of M Pascal, for I greatly admire his genius and I believe him capable of solving any problem he attempts. The friendship he offers is so dear to me and so precious that I shall not scruple to take advantage of it in publishing an edition of my Treatises. If it does not shock you, you could both help in bringing out this edition, and I suggest that you should be the editors; you could clarify or augment what seems too brief and thus relieve me of a care which my work prevents me from taking. I would like this volume to appear without my name even, leaving to you the choice of designation which would indicate the author, whom you could qualify simply as a friend."

Carcavi approached Huygens, trying to publish the papers which Fermat had sent him. Unfortunately neither Carcavi nor Pascal succeeded and Fermat's papers were never published. The most important of the letters that Fermat sent Carcavi was dated 14 August 1659. In it Fermat claimed to be able to prove the following five theorems by the method of infinite descent :

(1) The area of a right-angled triangle whose sides are integers cannot be a square number.

(2) The equation x^3 + y^3 = z^3 has no solutions in integers.

(3) The equation y^2 + 2 = x^3 admits no solutions in integers except  x=3,y=5.

(4) The equation y^2 +4=x^2  admits no solutions in integers except x=2,y=2 and x=5,y=11.

(5) Each prime number of the form  p=4n+1 is uniquely expressible as the sum of two squares.

He ends his letter to Carcavi as follows:-

Here you have a summary account of my dreams on the subject of numbers. I have only written it because I fear I will lack the leisure to fully express myself and to lay out the entirety of my demonstrations and methods; in any case, this outline will serve the savants to be able to prove for themselves that which I have not filled out, especially if MM de Carcavi and Frenicle give them some demonstrations by descent that I have sent them on the subject of some negative propositions. And perhaps posterity will be thankful for my having let them know that which the Ancients did not ...

*SAU *Wik

Carcavi



1676 Reverend Thomas Baker responds to message from John Collins and mentions a problem proposed by James Gregory that Collins had proposed a method to solve by "Billy's Method" (Jacques de Billy). Baker says he had solved the same problem when it had been proposed to him "Michaelmass last". "The sum of the squares and the sum of the cubes of four proportionals being given, to find the proportions themselves." Baker does not supply his method because, "I presumed I would but light a candle to the sun.' (The kind of compliment no one would disagree with.)




1714 Just twelve days before her death, Queen Anne signs "An Act for Providing a Publick Reward for such Person or Persons as shall Discover the Longitude at Sea". *Derek Howse, Britain's Board of Longitude:the Finances 1714-1828


1795 James Woodhouse was elected professor of "Chymistry" at the University of Pennsylvania.
The American Chemist founded the Chemical Society of Philadelphia and authored numerous works on chemistry, including the first book of directed chemical experiments.*rsc.org  

At the University, Woodhouse worked in a small but well-equipped laboratory, from which he produced a number of research findings and publications. Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, was a frequent visitor of the laboratory. Priestley was an adherent of the phlogiston theory, believing in the existence of a flammable principle contained in materials that burn; Woodhouse, however, had produced some of the most telling arguments and demonstrations against the phlogiston theory. These were published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, of which he became a member in 1796. After such presentations by Woodhouse and others, the phlogiston theory became effectively dead in the United States. 

Priestly had turned down the professorship, and after a second choice for the position, Woodhouse was selected.

Ticket for a Woodhouse Lecture






1798 The Battle of the Pyramids during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. It is a myth that his troops damaged the Sphinx by using it for target practice. *VFR (I'm afraid it is a myth I have shared, sorry kids!)


The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church

1860 Great Meteor Procession of 1860 occurred on the evening of July 20. Unlike early morning meteors that are more frequent and run into the Earth head-on as it plows along in its orbit, evening meteors are rarer and have to approach the Earth from behind. In contrast, these often leave slow and stately trains as they move across the evening sky, struggling to keep up with the Earth. *David Dickinson, Universe Today


1925 Clarence Darrow calls William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness for the defense in the Scopes Trial on the teaching of Evolution in Dayton, Tennessee, USA. Bryan testified to his literal interpretation of the Bible. He called the questioning a ridiculing of god. *Des Moines Register, July 21, 1925

Scopes is buried in Paducah, Kentucky. 




*John T Scopes



1959 The first “International Mathematical Olympiad” began in Brasov, Romania. It lasted until 30 July and involved teams from seven Eastern European countries. [The College Mathematics Journal, 16 (1985), p. 333] *VFR A comment from J. points out that the IMO site gives dates one day later for start and finish, "first IMO was organised between 21,July to 31,July." Thanks

: Problems from the first IMO  *Fermat'sLibrary





Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran), the first woman to be honored with a Fields Medal, won 2 gold medals in 1994 and 1995, getting a perfect score in the second year.



1969 Neil Armstrong, now of Lebanon, OH, was the first man on the moon; Edwin Aldrin was a close second. Armstrong all but quoted what D. T. Whiteside wrote two years earlier about Isaac Newton: “May this present edition be a small step towards that long-overdue monument to a man who in so many areas of human thought himself took a giant’s leap.” See The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, I, xxxvi and VIII, xxix. *VFR In 1969, Apollo XI astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon, after their lunar module separated from the command module and landed on the lunar surface at 09:18 GMT/4:18 EDT on the Sea of Tranquillity. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin establish Tranquility Base while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface at 10:56 ET and proclaimed, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Internationally, nearly 700 million television viewers witnessed the event live as it happened.*TIS

Armstrong on moon



1969 The mineral armalcolite was found on the moon, before it was known to exist on the earth. Named for the first letters of the Apollo 11 astronauts who found it, ARMstrong, COLlins, and ALDrin, the mineral was later found in Montana, South Africa, Greenland, and the Ukraine. *FFF pg 220 Then the name should be changed to UkeAfrGreMont.


1976  Viking I landed on Mars to explore the surface of the Red Planet. The first robots on Mars, Viking I and its successor gave scientists their first information about the planet's surface, including information they hoped would allow people to walk there. Although the Viking probes found no evidence of life on Mars, they returned detailed pictures of the planet and information about the soil's composition. *CHM  

*CHM


2017  To celebrate the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Sotheby’s New York held a special space exploration-themed auction on July 20th. One of the hot-ticket items, a zippered bag laced with moon dust, sold for $1.8 million. The bag’s previous owner is likely thrilled, but NASA certainly isn’t celebrating. The agency recently fought, and lost, a bitter court battle to retrieve the artifact from a private collection.

The bag, which is stamped with the words “Lunar Sample Return,” was used by Neil Armstrong during the first manned mission to the moon in 1969. He had packed the bag with moon rocks so he could transport them back to Earth.

NASA accidentally sold it to a private collector three years before.  Investigators had found the bag while searching through the belongings of Max Ary, the former president of the Kansas Cosmosphere. In 2005, Ary was indicted of stealing and selling museum artifacts, including ones that had been loaned out by NASA.   Due to an error in NASA’s system, the bag was confused with another space bag from a later lunar landing, and was then accidentally sold to an Illinois woman for just $995 at auction,

The buyer, one Nancy Carlson, knew that the bag had been used during a space flight, but she wasn’t sure which one. So she sent the bag of to NASA for testing. The agency, realizing its cosmic goof, refused to return the bag. The item “belongs to the American people,” NASA said in a statement at the time.  But U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled in Carlson's favor. He said that while the bag should never have been put up for sale, he had no recourse to reverse the transaction. NASA was forced to return the artifact in February of 2017.






BIRTHS



1789 Antonio Maria Bordoni (19 July 1789 – 26 March 1860) was an Italian mathematician who did research on mathematical analysis, geometry, and mechanics. Joining the faculty of the University of Pavia in 1817, Bordoni is generally considered to be the founder of the mathematical school of Pavia. He was a member of various learned academies, notably the Accademia dei XL. Bordoni's famous students were Francesco Brioschi, Luigi Cremona, Eugenio Beltrami, Felice Casorati and Delfino Codazzi.

On 1 November 1817 he became full professor of Elementary Pure mathematics at the University and in 1818 he held the chair of Infinitesimal Calculus, Geodesy and Hydrometry, a discipline he taught for 23 years.

In 1827 and 1828 he was dean of the University itself. In 1854, as the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Pavia (it previously belonged to the one of the Philosophy) was established, he was elected Director of Mathematical Studies and held such office until his death, which occurred 26 March 1860, just one month after being appointed senator. *Wik



1805 Ormbsy MacKnight Mitchel (July 20, 1805 – October 30, 1862) American astronomer and major general in the American Civil War.
A multi-talented man, he was also an attorney, surveyor, and publisher. He is notable for publishing the first magazine in the United States devoted to astronomy. Known in the Union Army as "Old Stars", he is best known for ordering the raid that became famous as the Great Locomotive Chase during the Civil War. He was a classmate of Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston at West Point where he stayed as assistant professor of mathematics for three years after graduation.
The U.S. communities of Mitchell, Indiana, Mitchelville, South Carolina, and Fort Mitchell, Kentucky were named for him. A persistently bright region near the Mars south pole that was first observed by Mitchel in 1846 is also named in his honor. *TIA




1806 Alexander (Dallas) Bache (July 19, 1806 – February 17, 1867) was Ben Franklin's great grandson. A West Point trained physicist, Bache became the second Superintendent of the Coast Survey (1844-65). He made an ingenious estimate of ocean depth in 1856. He studied records of a tidal wave that had taken 12 hours to cross the Pacific. Knowing that wave speeds depend on depth, he calculated a 2 1/5-mile average depth for the Pacific (within 15% of the right value). Bache created the National Academy of Sciences, securing greater government involvement in science. Through the Franklin Institute he instituted boiler tests to promote safety for steamboats.*TIS



1820 James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow (July 20, 1820 – February 27, 1867) American statistician and editor, who is regarded as a pioneer of economic statistics for the U.S. Census Office. As a young man, he moved in 1820 to New Orleans, and there began publishing his periodical, DeBow’s Review, on business and the economy. By 1848, he became professor of commerce and statistics at the University of Louisiana, and was appointed some months later to head Louisiana’s new Bureau of Statistics. President Franklin Pierce turned to DeBow to be Superintendent (1853-55) of the Seventh U.S. Census, for which he produced a full report, and also Statistical View of the United States, a summary subsequently known as the Compendium, which was popular for the usefulness of its economic statistics.« *TiS



1855 Pierre Henri Puiseux, a French astronomer, was born July 20, 1855. He began working at the Paris Observatory in 1885, where he soon teamed up with Maurice Loewy, an Austrian Jew who had left Vienna seeking a country more hospitable for a Jewish astronomer. Puiseux and Loewy initially worked on a project known as the Cartes du Ciel, which intended to provide a complete photographic atlas of the stars, but the project, after some initial enthusiasm, withered and died. So the two decided to use the large astrograph (photographic telescope) at the Observatory to record images of the moon, and this enterprise was much more successful. They started taking photographs in 1894, and in 1896, they issued the first fascicule of their Atlas photographique de la lune. Each fascicule had 5-6 heliogravure prints of a section of the Moon and a descriptive text. *Linda Hall Org.




1873 Alberto Santos-Dumont (July 20, 1873 – July 23, 1932) was a Brazilian aviation pioneer, deemed the Father of Aviation by his countrymen. At the age of 18, Santos-Dumont was sent by his father to Paris where he devoted his time to the study of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. His first spherical balloon made its first ascension in Paris on 4 July 1898. He developed steering capabilities, and in his sixth dirigible on 19 Oct 1901 won the "Deutsch Prize," awarded to the balloonist who circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. He turned to heavier-than-air flight, and on 12 Nov 1906 his 14-BIS airplane flew a distance of 220 meters, height of 6 m. and speed of 37 km/h. to win the "Archdecon Prize." In 1909, he produced his famous "Demoiselle" or "Grasshopper" monoplanes, the forerunners of the modern light plane. *TIS

Santos-Dumont circling the Eiffel Tower with the airship No. 5, 13 July 1901




1876 Ludwig Otto Blumenthal (20 July 1876 – 12 November 1944) was a German mathematician and professor at RWTH Aachen University.
He was born in Frankfurt, Hesse-Nassau. A student of David Hilbert, Blumenthal was an editor of Mathematische Annalen. When the Civil Service Act of 1933 became law in 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor, Blumenthal was dismissed from his position at RWTH Aachen University. He was married to Amalie Ebstein, also known as 'Mali' and daughter of Wilhelm Ebstein.

Blumenthal, who was of Jewish background, emigrated from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands, lived in Utrecht and was deported via Westerbork to the concentration camp, Theresienstadt in Bohemia (now Czech Republic), where he died.

In 1913, Blumenthal made a fundamental, though often overlooked, contribution to applied mathematics and aerodynamics by building on Joukowsky's work to extract the complex transformation that carries the latter's name, making it an example of Stigler's Law of eponymy.  *Wik



1894 Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" or the "Cosmic Egg" *Wik





1894 Errett Lobban Cord (20 July 1894 – 2 January 1974) U.S. automobile manufacturer, advocate of front-wheel-drive vehicles. Cord, still in his twenties when he arrived at the Auburn Automobile Company, had a talent for seeking and hiring young, innovative minds, full of drive and ambition. Cord was a brilliant, complex industrialist who helped personal and public transportation come of age. He is best known today for Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg automobiles, Cord's greatest talent may have been his unparalleled ability to construct an automotive empire durable enough to thrive during the darkest years of the Great Depression. Photo: 1929 Cord L-29 Sedan, America's first front-drive production car. Built by the Auburn Automobile Company, Auburn, Indiana. *TIS



1996 Tadeusz Reichstein (20 July 1897 – 1 August 1996) was a Polish-born Swiss chemist, botanist and Nobel laureate.

Reichstein, with Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for his discoveries concerning hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects. With his co-workers, Reichstein accomplished the first isolation of four active hormones from the adrenal cortex, the first synthesis of one of them, the proof of the steroid nature of said hormones, and numerous details on the structure and properties of these important bodies. This made synthesis possible, leading to the creation of new medications *TiS *Wik 



1924 Robert D. Maurer (born July 20, 1924, ) was born. Maurer is an American physicist who co-invented the optical fiber with Donald Keck and Peter Schultz . Optical fiber is a fiber made of glass or plastic that can carry light along its length. They are used in telecommunications and information technology or even illumination. They work as a waveguide because the core keeps the light by total internal reflection. The light bounces off the edges and is reflected back into the fiber without any loss out the side.*Today in History




1947 Gerd Binnig (20 July 1947, ) German-born physicist who co-invented the scanning tunneling microscope with Heinrich Rohrer. They shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ernst Ruska, who designed the first electron microscope. This instrument is not a true microscope ( i.e. an instrument that gives a direct image of an object) since it is based on the principle that the structure of a surface can be studied using a stylus that scans the surface at a fixed distance from it. Vertical adjustment of the stylus is controlled by means of what is termed the tunnel effect - hence the name of the instrument.*TIS





DEATHS

1819 John Playfair (10 March 1748 – 20 July 1819) Scottish mathematician, physicist, and geologist who is remembered for his axiom that two intersecting straight lines cannot both be parallel to a third straight line. His Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802) gave strong support to James Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, essential to a proper understanding of geology. Playfair was the first scientist to recognize that a river cuts its own valley, and he cited British examples of the gradual, fluvial origins of valleys, to challenge the catastrophic theory (based on the Biblical Flood in Genesis) that was still widely accepted. He was also the first to link the relocation of loose rocks to the movement of glaciers. Playfair published texts on geometry, physics, and astronomy. *TIS

I have Playfair's 1802 Elements of Geometry, Second Edition, enlarged.  Signed inside "James Norgate, Caius College, 1808.  It's not too valuable, but earlier than this one at MAA







1866 Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann died in Bolzano, Italy, at age 39 (September 17, 1826 – July 20, 1866). The inscription on his tombstone (translated from the German) reads: “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord.” *VFR Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry. These would subsequently become major parts of the theories of Riemannian geometry, algebraic geometry, and complex manifold theory. The theory of Riemann surfaces was elaborated by Felix Klein and particularly Adolf Hurwitz. This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology, and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics.
Riemann made major contributions to real analysis. He defined the Riemann integral by means of Riemann sums, developed a theory of trigonometric series that are not Fourier series—a first step in generalized function theory—and studied the Riemann–Liouville differintegral.
He made some famous contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a single short paper (the only one he published on the subject of number theory), he introduced the Riemann zeta function and established its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. He made a series of conjectures about properties of the zeta function, one of which is the well-known Riemann hypothesis.
He applied the Dirichlet principle from variational calculus to great effect; this was later seen to be a powerful heuristic rather than a rigorous method. Its justification took at least a generation. His work on monodromy and the hypergeometric function in the complex domain made a great impression, and established a basic way of working with functions by consideration only of their singularities.*Wik




1937 Guglielmo Marconi (25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937)Italian inventor, born in Bologna. He was a physicist, who invented the wireless telegraph in 1935 known today as radio. Nobel laureate (1909). In 1894, Marconi began experimenting on the "Hertzian Waves" (the radio waves Hertz first produced in his laboratory a few years earlier). Lacking support from the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, Marconi turned to the British Post Office. Encouraging demonstrations in London and on Salisbury Plain followed. Marconi obtained the world's first patent for a system of wireless telegraphy, in 1897, and opened the world's first radio factory at Chelmsford, England in 1898. In 1900 he took out his famous patent No. 7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy."*TIS




1922 Andrey Andreyevich Markov (14 June 1856 N.S. – 20 July 1922) Russian mathematician who helped to develop the theory of stochastic processes, especially those called Markov chains, sequences of random variables in which the future variable is determined by the present variable but is independent of the way in which the present state arose from its predecessors. (For example, the probability of winning at the game of Monopoly can be determined using Markov chains.) His work based on the study of the probability of mutually dependent events has been developed and widely applied to the biological and social sciences.*TIS - Simple Markov chain problem for students, The probability of Events A, B and C are 1/2, 1/3, and 1/6 respectively.  If one of these events occurs on each trial, what is the probability that it takes six or less trials to get all three outcomes?





1997 Eric Charles Milner, FRSC (May 17, 1928–July 20, 1997) was a mathematician who worked mainly in combinatorial set theory.
A former London street urchin, Milner attended King's College London starting in 1946, where he competed as a featherweight boxer. He graduated in 1949 as the best mathematics student in his year, and received a masters degree in 1950 under the supervision of Richard Rado and Charles Coulson. Partial deafness prevented him from joining the Navy, and instead, in 1951, he took a position with the Straits Trading Company in Singapore assaying tin. Soon thereafter he joined the mathematics faculty at the University of Malaya in Singapore, where Alexander Oppenheim and Richard K. Guy were already working. In 1958, Milner took a sabbatical at the University of Reading, and in 1961 he took a lecturership there and began his doctoral studies; he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1963. He joined his former Singapore colleagues Guy and Peter Lancaster as a professor at the University of Calgary in 1967, where he was head of the mathematics department from 1976 to 1980. In 1973, he became Canadian citizen, and in 1976 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
In 1954, while in Singapore, Milner married Esther Stella (Estelle) Lawton, whom he had known as a London student; they had four children. Estelle died of cancer in 1975, and in 1979 Milner remarried Elizabeth Forsyth Borthwick, with whom he had another son.
Milner's interest in set theory was sparked by visits of Paul Erdős to Singapore and by meeting András Hajnal while on sabbatical in Reading. He generalized Chang's ordinal partition theorem for arbitrary finite k. He is also known for the Milner–Rado paradox. *Wik




2007 Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) Swedish physicist who shared (with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur L.Schawlow) the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics for “his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy.” He analyzed the resulting electrons that were knocked out from the interior of an atom by a high energy X-ray photons. Thus he could measure the binding energy of atomic electrons with higher accuracy than was previously possible. Furthermore, since that binding energy was somewhat dependent upon the chemical environment of the atom, this provided a new tool of chemical analysis—ESCA (Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis). ESCA is now used by hundreds of laboratories around the world to investigate surface reactions, such as corrosion or catalytic reactions, and others also of great important in industrial chemistry. His father, Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn, received the 1924 Nobel Prize in Physics. *TiS




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


Sunday, 19 July 2026

Pig Latin Magic Square

 My friend David Brooks sent me this breaking Math News from Old Hickory, Tn on a newly discovered (June 8, 2014) Alpha-Magic Square :


consider  the following magic square:



Now this is the Pig-Latin (or if you prefer, Igpay Atinlay, notation of these same numbers:

Now count the number of letters in each word and replace them with the counts:
And in the words of Brahma Gupta..... BEHOLD!

My thanks to David Brooks the input... and I wondered, "Do students today still speak Pig-Latin?"

I recently learned that the idea of alphamagic squares is very young.  They were first invented by English Engineer and recreational mathematician Lee Sallows in 1986 Sallows, L. C. F. "Alphamagic squares." Abacus 4 (No. 1): 28-45, 1986.) Sallows is also known for inventing golygons, a polygon containing only right angles, such that adjacent sides exhibit consecutive integer lengths. He also recently discovered a very clever relationship about the triangles formed by the medians of another triangle, for which I was able to add a small extension.

It turns out that there is a surprisingly large number of alphamagic squares, not only in English but also in many other languages. In French, there is just one alphamagic square involving numbers up to 200, but an additional 255 squares if the size of the entries is increased to 300. For entries less than 100, none occurs in Danish or in Latin, but 6 occur in Dutch, 13 in Finnish, and an incredible 221 in German.
(From David Darling.info)
I have not seen a alphamagic square larger than 3x3, but they seem to be possible.....Anyone, Anyone, ......Bueller?


I live in France part time now and was interested in the single :
John D. Cook independently searched all candidates by computer and reported:

"My script did not find a French alphamagic with entries no larger than 200, but it did find 254 squares with entries no larger than 300."  (Close enough for me John!)

Here is the original with French spellings of the numbers, I leave it to the reader to confirm the magic square with the word lengths....


    3      204    102
202      103        4
104         2     203  

and the French spelling (I am told) is 

    trois            deux cent quatre           cent deux
deux cent deux       cent trois                       quatre

cent quatra                 duex                       deux cent trois

If anybody knows a bi-magic square larger than a three by three I would love to see it.  





On This Day in Math - July 19

 



[The infinitesimals] neither have nor can have theory; in practise it is a dangerous instrument in the hands of beginners ... anticipating, for my part, the judgement of posterity, I would predict that this method will be accused one day, and rightly, of having retarded the progress of the mathematical sciences.
~Francois Servois


The 200th day of the year; 200 is the smallest unprimeable number - it can not be turned into a prime number by changing just one of its digits to any other digit. (What would be the next one? {easier}What is the smallest odd unprimeable number? {harder})

Sum of first 200 primes divides product of first 200 primes. (How often is this property true of integers?) *Math Year-Round ‏@MathYearRound

The smallest discernible movement of a computer mouse—equal to 1/200th of an inch—is called a MICKEY. Haggard Hawks @HaggardHawks The actual measure depends on the equipment of course, so, like the meter, it will have to be adjusted from time to time.  Many operating systems and mouse configuration software allow users to customize mickey settings, altering the sensitivity to match their specific needs and preferences. This is particularly useful for tasks that demand precise control, such as graphic design or gaming.

And don't forget, When you pass GO, collect $200 (except the lucky Brits, who get 200 Lb.

200  is not a palindrome in any base 2-10, but it is in Roman numerals  CC.  
Which reminds us that 200 is the sum of two squares, 10^2 + 10^2, but also 14^2 + 2^2, 

And as the difference of two squares, 200 = 51^2 - 49^2; 27^2 - 23^2; 15^2 - 5^2

See Here for more Math Facts for every Year Date




EVENTS

418 First report of a comet discovered during a solar eclipse, seen by the historian Philostorgius in Asia Minor. Many chronicles do mention this observation (12 western, 3 Byzantine). Philostorgius mentions that the sun was eclipsed at the 8th hour of the day. In his sketch there is a comet. This Total Solar Eclipse was from the Caribbean, Bay of Bengal, north Spain, central Italy, little Asia and ends in the north of India. *NSEC

Photograph of the Eclipse Comet of 1948 taken on November 13, 1948, taken by V.P. Victor at Harvard Observatory’s southern station in Boyden, South Africa. Courtesy of Harvard University.



1595 “God in creating the universe and regulating the order of the cosmos had in view the five regular bodies of geometry as known since the days of Pythagoras and Plato.” So did Kepler record his discovery that the universe was based on the Platonic solids, a conjecture he published in 1596. *VFR "as I was showing in my class how the great conjunctions [of Saturn and Jupiter] occur successively eight zodiacal signs later, and how they gradually pass from one trine to another, that I inscribed within a circle many triangles, or quasi-triangles such that the end of one was the beginning of the next. In this manner a smaller circle was outlined by the points where the line of the triangles crossed each other.
The proportion between the circles struck Kepler’s eye as almost identical with that between Saturn and Jupiter, and he immediately initiated a vain search for similar geometrical relations.
And then again it struck me: why have plane figures among three-dimensional orbits? Behold, reader, the invention and whole substance of this little book! In memory of the event, I am writing down for you the sentence in the words from that moment of conception: The earth’s orbit is the measure of all things; circumscribe around it a dodecahedron, and the circle containing this will be Mars; circumscribe around Mars a tetrahedron, and the circle containing this will be Jupiter; circumscribe around Jupiter a cube, and the circle containing this will be Saturn. Now inscribe within the earth an icosahedron, and the circle contained in it will be Venus; inscribe within Venus an octahedron, and the circle contained in it will be Mercury. You now have the reason for the number of planets.
Kepler of course based his argument on the fact that there are five and only five regular polyhedrons. *encyclopedia.com

Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar System, from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)



1676 Flamsteed began living at the Observatory with his two servants on July 10. On 19 July, his long series of Greenwich observations began? *Rebekah Higgitt, Teleskopos



1799 The Rosetta stone was found by Napoleon’s troops in the Nile delta. It attracted the interest of the learned men with Napoleon, which included several mathematicians, and copies were circulated to scholars. The text is in Greek, hieroglyphics and demotic Egyptian scripts and was deciphered by Thomas Young and Fran¸cois Champollion. The cartouches on the stone, which contained royal names, were the key to decipherment. It is now a prized possession of the British Museum.*VFR





1819 Poisson submitted a paper on the solution of the wave equation. He used the method of power series, but the techniques advocated by Cauchy and Fourier using complex variables and “Fourier analysis” won out. [Ivor Grattan-Guiness, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, pp. 682, 687ff, 1393] *VFR




1895 On April 30, George Cantor, first uses Aleph-null in a letter to Felix Klein. Prior to this he had use aleph-one for the first infinite cardinal. The first part of his Bietrage was already in print, so his letter to Klein is added, almost verbatim, to explain the changes with the publication date still showing March of that year. *From the Calculus to Set Theory, 1630-1910: An Introductory History, By I. Grattan-Guinness

On page 492 of  Mathematische Annalen we find the paragraph Die kleinste transfinite Cardinalzahl Alef-null [The minimum transfinite cardinal number Aleph null], and the following:
...wir nennen die ihr zukommende Cardinalzahl, in Zeichen, *Alef-null* ... [We call the cardinal number related to that (set); in symbol, *Alef-null*]

 



;1983 The first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head via computed tomography (CT) is published. Michael W. Vannier (Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, St. Louis) and his co-workers J. Marsh (Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Deformities Institute, St. Louis Children's Hospital) and J. Warren (McDonnell Aircraft Company) published the first three-dimensional reconstruction of single computed tomography (CT) slices of the human head. Computer-aided aircraft design techniques were adapted to make the cranial imaging possible. Since then, CT imaging has become a cornerstone of the medical profession.*CHM




BIRTHS

1767 Francois-Joseph Servois born (19 July 1768 in Mont-de-Laval (N of Morteau), Doubs, France - 17 April 1847 in Mont-de-Laval, Doubs, France). He worked in projective geometry, functional equations and complex numbers. He introduced the word pole in projective geometry. He also came close to discovering the quaternions before Hamilton.
Servois introduced the terms "commutative" and "distributive" in a paper describing properties of operators, and he also gave some examples of noncommutativity. Although he does not use the concept of a ring explicitly, he does verify that linear commutative operators satisfy the ring axioms. In doing so he showed why operators could be manipulated like algebraic magnitudes. This work initiates the algebraic theory of operators.
Servois was critical of Argand's geometric interpretation of the complex numbers. He wrote to Gergonne telling him so in November 1813 and Gergonne published the letter in the Annales de mathématiques in January 1814. Servois wrote:- I confess that I do not yet see in this notation anything but a geometric mask applied to analytic forms the direct use of which seems to me simple and more expeditious.
Considered as a leading expert by many mathematicians of his day, he was consulted on many occasions by Poncelet while he was writing his book on projective geometry Traité des propriétés projective. *SAU



1806 Alexander (Dallas) Bache (July 19, 1806 – February 17, 1867) was Ben Franklin's great grandson. A West Point trained physicist, Bache became the second Superintendent of the Coast Survey (1844-65). He made an ingenious estimate of ocean depth in 1856. He studied records of a tidal wave that had taken 12 hours to cross the Pacific. Knowing that wave speeds depend on depth, he calculated a 2 1/5-mile average depth for the Pacific (within 15% of the right value). Bache created the National Academy of Sciences, securing greater government involvement in science. Through the Franklin Institute he instituted boiler tests to promote safety for steamboats.*TIS




1817 Charles Auguste Briot (July 19, 1817 - September 20, 1882) undertook research on analysis, heat, light and electricity. His first major work on analysis was Recherches sur la théorie des fonctions which he published in the Journal of the École Polytechnique in 1859, and he also published this work as a treatise in the same year. His researches on heat, light and electricity was all based on his theories of the aether. He was strongly influenced in developing these theories by Louis Pasteur, the famous chemist. Of course Pasteur was a great scientist, but Briot had an additional reason to hold him in high esteem for, like himself and his friend Bouquet, Pasteur was brought up in the Doubs region of France.

In 1859 Briot and Bouquet published their important two volume treatise on doubly periodic functions. They published another joint effort in 1875 when their treatise on elliptic functions appeared. In this same year they published a second edition to their two volume work of 1859. In 1879 Briot, this time in a single author work, produced his treatise on abelian functions. The physical motivation for the mathematical theories which gave rise to this work in analysis was published by Briot in 1864 when he published his work on light, Essai sur la théorie mathématique de la lumière and five years later when he published his work on heat, Théorie mécanique de la chaleur.
We noted above that Briot was a dedicated teacher and as such he wrote a great number of textbooks for his students. This was certainly a tradition in France at this time and it was natural for a teacher of Briot's quality to write up his courses as textbooks. He wrote textbooks which covered most of the topics from a mathematics course: arithmetic, algebra, calculus, geometry, analytic geometry, and mechanics. For his outstanding contributions to mathematics the Académie des Sciences in Paris awarded Briot their Poncelet Prize in 1882 shortly before he died. *SAU




1846 Edward Charles Pickering, (July 19, 1846–February 3, 1919)was born Boston, Mass., U.S. physicist and astronomer. After graduating from Harvard, he taught physics for ten years at MIT where he built the first instructional physics laboratory in the United States. At age 30, he directed the Harvard College Observatory for 42 years. His observations were assisted by a staff of women, including Annie Jump Cannon. He introduced the use of the meridian photometer to measure the magnitude of stars, and established the Harvard Photometry (1884), the first great photometric catalog. By establishing a station in Peru (1891) to make the southern photographs, he published the first all-sky photographic map (1903).*TIS




1851 William Edward Wilson,(19 July 1851 – 6 March 1908)  an Irish astronomer, was born July 19, 1851.  Wilson inherited a mansion, Daramona House, in Westmeath in central Ireland, and in 1871, he built an observatory next to the home, equipping it with a 12-inch reflector made by Howard Grubb, a noted telescope maker in Dublin.  No telescope owner is ever happy with their first telescope – it is always too small – and by 1881, Wilson had traded in the 12-inch reflector for a 24-inch silver-on-glass reflector, and he bought a new mount as well, with an accurate clock drive. 

Although, as we shall see, the 24-inch Grubb could take phenomenal deep-sky photographs, Wilson was initially interested in astronomical measurement.  For example, he and several colleagues used special instruments to measure the temperature of the Sun, and of sunspots.  He also measured the light output of stars, using a selenium cell.  He was amazed at the power of Betelgeuse in Orion, which has no measurable parallax (meaning it is very far away), but still sends a prodigious amount of light our way. One of his collaborators was George Francis FitzGerald, a professor in Dublin, who would later contribute to the Lorenz-FitzGgerald contractions used to explain the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.   The results of Wilson's scientific investigations of the Sun and stars were published in a half-dozen papers in the Philosophical Transactions and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Ring Nebula in Lyra, M57, collotype, photo taken Sep. 9, 1894, with the 24-inch Grubb reflector at Daramona, 20 min. exposure, in William E. Wilson, Astronomical and Physical Researches, 1900 (Linda Hall Library)



*Linda Hall Org


1894 Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin (July 19, 1894 – November 18, 1959) was a Russian mathematician who contributed to many fields including number theory and probability. Khinchin's book Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, translated into English from the original Russian in 1957, is important. It consists of English translations of two articles: The entropy concept in probability theory and On the basic theorems of information theory which were both published earlier in Russian. The second of these articles provides a refinement of Shannon's concepts of the capacity of a noisy channel and the entropy of a source. Khinchin generalised some of Shannon's results in this book which was written in an elementary style yet gave a comprehensive account with full details of all the results.*SAU




1913 Mary Cannell (19 July 1913 in Liverpool, England - 18 April 2000) It was the work which she undertook after she retired which earns her a place as a highly respected historian of mathematics. Her work stemmed from the fact that George Green had worked as a miller near Nottingham. Green was a mathematician who was well known to almost all students of mathematics around the world, yet little was known of his life. Flauvel writes:- ... widespread knowledge of Green himself dates only from the 1970s when Cannell and other Nottingham colleagues worked to restore his windmill and his memory...When I first visited Green's windmill in Nottingham the booklet which I purchased was George Green Miller and Mathematician written in 1988 by Mary Cannell. She produced a major biography of Green, George Green : Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841 : The Background to His Life and Work in 1993. In addition she wrote research articles on Green's life and work bringing to the world of mathematics an understanding of Green's remarkable life.
Flauvel writes:- She charmed audiences on several continents, promoting interest in Green and early 19th-century mathematical physics, in the clear tones and pure vowels of pre-war English, somewhere between Miss Marple and Dame Peggy Ashcroft. ... Mary Cannell was working on projects of one sort or another - the Green website, the revised edition of the biography, research papers, the catalogue in the university of Nottingham library - right to the end, in days filled with her characteristic energy and enthusiasm. *SAU




1921 Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (July 19, 1921 – May 30, 2011) was an American biophysicist who shared (with Andrew V. Schally and Roger Guillemin) the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, making her the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in medicine, “for the development of radioimmuno assays (RIA) of peptide hormone.” RIA brought about a revolution in biological and medical research. With her coworkers, she applied RIA to study of the physiology of the peptide hormones insulin, ACTH, growth hormone, and also to throw light upon the pathogenesis of diseases caused by abnormal secretion of these hormones. This was pioneering work that opened diabetes research in new directions. She has been called the “Madame Curie of the Bronx..” *TiS






DEATHS

1878 Egor Ivanovich Zolotarev (March 31, 1847, Saint Petersburg – July 19, 1878, Saint Petersburg) produced fundamental work on analysis and number theory. *SAU

 In 1857 he began to study at the fifth St Petersburg gymnasium, a school which centered on mathematics and natural science. He finished it with the silver medal in 1863. In the same year he was allowed to be an auditor at the physico-mathematical faculty of St Petersburg university.

He had not been able to become a student before 1864 because he was too young. Among his academic teachers were Somov, Chebyshev and Aleksandr Korkin, with whom he would have a tight scientific friendship. In November 1867 he defended his Kandidat thesis “About the Integration of Gyroscope Equations”, after 10 months there followed his thesis pro venia legendi About one question on Minima. With this work he was given the right to teach as a private lecturer at St Petersburg university.

Zolotarev's steep career ended abruptly with his early death. He was on his way to his dacha when he was run over by a train in the Tsarskoe Selo station. On 19 July 1878 he died from blood poisoning.

Yegor Ivanovich is not to be confused with the probabilist Vladimir Mikhaelovich Zolotarev, Kolmogorov's disciple, who worked on stable distributions with well known results on their parametrization.



1947 John Clark(30 April 1861, 9 July 1947)  graduated from Edinburgh University and became a teacher at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh. He went on to become Rector of this school. He became Secretary of the EMS in 1891 and President in 1897. *SAU


1982 Hugh Everett III (November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation.
Discouraged by the scorn of other physicists for MWI, Everett ended his physics career after completing his Ph.D. Afterwards, he developed the use of generalized Lagrange multipliers for operations research and applied this commercially as a defense analyst and a consultant. He was married to Nancy Everett née Gore. They had two children: Elizabeth Everett and Mark Oliver Everett, who became frontman of the musical band Eels.



1992 Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology. He contributed to the Information Processing Language (1956) and two of the earliest AI programs, the Logic Theory Machine (1956) and the General Problem Solver (1957) (with Herbert A. Simon). He was awarded the ACM's A.M. Turing Award along with Herbert A. Simon in 1975 for their basic contributions to artificial intelligence and the psychology of human cognition *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