Wednesday, 8 July 2026

On This Day in Math - July 8

   


I never came across one of Laplace's "Thus it plainly appears"
without feeling sure that I have hours of hard work before me to fill up the chasm
and find out and show how it plainly appears.

Nathanial Bowditch, Quoted in F Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States
(LaPlace's classic, "Mecanique Celeste", is a very difficult book, and Biot, who helped him prepare it for printing said that Laplace himself would frequently get lost in following his own line of reasoning  and insert, "il est aise a voir".
 Bowditch translated the work and Legendre wrote of the translation, "Your work is not merely a translation with a commentary; I regard it as a new edition, augmented and improved, and such a one as might have come from the hands of the author himself, ... if he had been solicitously studious of being clear." )


The 189th day of the year; 
There are 14 prime years in the 21st Century (2017 will be the third), but the 189th century would be the first to contain as few as five prime years (18803, 18839, 18859, 18869 and 18899). When is the next ?

Narayana, an Indian mathematician in the 14th century, (I believe this refers to Narayana Pandita (about 1325 – 1400)) came up with an interesting Fibonacci-like series: A cow produces one calf every year. Beginning in its fourth year, each calf produces one calf at the beginning of each year. How many cows and calves are there altogether after n years? For the 15th year, the total is 189. (How many mature and immature?)

A "magic diagram" or yantra (a geometric diagram to be used for meditation)by Narayana, 


2357 is a prime number. 23357 is also prime.  233357 is also prime but 2333357 is not, and then 23333357 is; and yes, this is somehow related to the number 189. I came across a sequence on OEIS  which gave "Numbers k such that (7*10^k + 71)/3 is prime." Like you may have, I wondered, "Why would someone search for primes of so unusual a sequence?" Well, if you take those exponents, and subtract 2 from them, you get the number of threes that when placed between the digit 2 and the digits 57, will produce a prime. So I can inform you today that not only is (7*10189 +71 )/3 a prime number, but that prime number is a 2 followed by 187 threes followed by 57.  And you thought 189 was just some hum-drum number!!!!!

189 is the sum of consecutive cubes, 4^3 + 5^3 = 189. and also \(189 = 95^2 - 94^2 \) and it is 6^3 - 3^3; and \(189 = 15^2 - 6^2= 17^2-10^2\)

See More Math Facts for every year date here




EVENTS

1672 Newton's first publication is in a letter to the Philosophical Transactions: “A Serie’s of Quere’s Propounded by Mr. Isaac Newton, to be Determin’d by Experiments, Positively and Directly Concluding His New Theory of Light and Colours; and Here Recommended to the Industry of the Lovers of Experimental Philosophy, as they Were Generously Imparted to the Publisher in a Letter of the Said Mr. Newtons of July 8.1672” (Thanks to Thony Christie) *Philosophical Transactions




1680 Hooke demonstrates sound vibration at the Royal Society. This was done by putting flour on a glass plate, and bowing on the edge of glass. Hooke had observed that the motion of the glass was vibrate perpendicular to the surface of the glass, and that the circular figure of the flour changed into an oval one way, and the reciprocation of it changed it into an oval the other way. This phenomenon was rediscovered by Chladni in the eighteenth century, and given his name "Chladni figures". *Daniel P McVeigh, "An Early History of the Telephone 1664-1865"

Hooke also famously theorized that sound is a wave, and he made one of the first attempts to visualize sound vibrations. According to historical accounts, he used rotating wheels with teeth to create tones at different frequencies, helping to demonstrate that pitch is related to vibration frequency.

Hans Jenny (16 August 1904, Basel – 23 June 1972) was a natural scientist and physician who coined the term cymatics to explain the acoustic impacts of sound wave phenomena. 

Chladni Plate




1706 de Moivre wrote to Johann Bernoulli on 8 July 1706 telling him about Machin's series for π he suggested that Johann Bernoulli might tell Jakob Hermann about Machin's unproved result. He did so and Hermann quickly discovered a proof that Machin's series converges to π. He produced techniques that show other similar series also converge rapidly to π and he wrote on 21 August 1706 to Leibniz giving details. Two years later, on 6 July 1708, de Moivre wrote again to Johann Bernoulli about Machin's series, on this occasion giving two different proofs that it converged to π.
In 1706 William Jones published a work Synopsis palmariorum matheseos or, A New Introduction to the Mathematics, Containing the Principles of Arithmetic and Geometry Demonstrated in a Short and Easie Method ... Designed for ... Beginners. (This is the book in which Jones first uses Pi in the mathematical sens it is now used) This contains on page 243 the following passage:-
There are various other ways of finding the lengths or areas of particular curve lines, or planes, which may very much facilitate the practice; as for instance, in the circle, the diameter is to the circumference as 1 to (16/5- 4/239) - 1/3(16/53- 4/2393) &c. = 3.14159 &c. = π. This series (among others for the same purpose, and drawn from the same principle) I received from the excellent analyst, and my much esteemed friend Mr John Machin; and by means thereof, van Ceulen's number, or that in Art. 64.38 may be examined with all desirable ease and dispatch.
Jones also reports that this formula allows π be calculated:-
... to above 100 places; as computed by the accurate and ready pen of the truly ingenious Mr John Machin. No indication is given in Jones's work, however, as to how Machin discovered his series expansion for π.


1798 After making a parachute drop from beneath a Balloon, (the first person to make a successful high-altitude parachute descent without a rigid frame, making him a pioneering figure in the history of parachuting.) André-Jacques Garnerin went on to stage regular tests and demonstrations at Parc Monceau, Paris.  His demonstrations became a cause célèbre when he announced in 1798 that his next flight would include a woman as a passenger. Although the public and press were in favour, he was forced to appear in front of officials of the Central Bureau of Police to justify his project.

After a ban of several months was lifted Garnerin was ready to proceed. He advertised the ascent:

The young Citoyenne who will accompany me is delighted to see the day approach for the journey. I shall ascend with her from the Parc Monceau, some time during the next ten days.

On 8 July 1798 a large number of spectators gathered in the Parc Monceau to witness the ascent. By all accounts Citoyenne Henri was young and beautiful, and she and Garnerin took several turns around the park to the applause of the crowd before she was assisted into the basket of the balloon by the astronomer Jérôme Lalande. The balloon trip passed without incident and the journey ended at Goussainville about 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the north of Paris *Wik


Citoyenne Henri is often  credited as the first woman "who ever had the courage to trust herself in the regions of air", although several women had already made ascents in a balloon: on 20 May 1784, the Marchioness and Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and a Miss de Lagarde had taken a trip on a tethered balloon in Paris, and Élisabeth Thible had made an ascent in an untethered balloon on 4 June 1784. 

 Shortly after this event , on 10 November 1798, Garnerin's future wife Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse was also taken up in his balloon. Subsequently, both his wife and his niece Élisa Garnerin became well known for their parachuting feats and Madame Blanchard was celebrated for her solo ballooning, relegating the less impressive exploits of Citoyenne Henri to a footnote in history.



1831 Quetelet officially uses the term, "l'homme moyen" (the average man) in an article about the different ages at which men commit crimes. *Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods By Stephen M. Stigler




1835 Liberty bell cracked. *VFR Or maybe not In the 1830s, the bell was adopted as a symbol by abolitionist societies, who dubbed it the "Liberty Bell". It acquired its distinctive large crack sometime in the early 19th century—a widespread story claims it cracked while ringing after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835.*Wik


1842  Francis Baily,  an English astronomer, is most famous for his observations of 'Baily's beads' during an eclipse of the Sun. 

His observations of "Baily's Beads", during an annular eclipse of the sun on 15 May 1836, at Inch Bonney in Roxburghshire, started the modern series of eclipse expeditions. The phenomenon, which depends upon the irregular shape of the moon's limb, was so vividly described by him as to attract an unprecedented amount of attention to the total eclipse of 8 July 1842, observed by Baily himself at Pavia. *Wik

In 1851 A total solar eclipse was photographed for the first time. *VFR The first correctly-exposed photograph of the solar corona was made during the total phase of the solar eclipse of 28 July 1851 at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) by a local daguerreotypist named Berkowski at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia). Berkowski, whose first name was never published, observed at the Royal Observatory. A small 6-cm refracting telescope was attached to the 15.8-cm Fraunhofer heliometer and a 84-second exposure was taken shortly after the beginning of totality.
United Kingdom astronomers, Robert Grant and William Swan, and Austrian astronomer Karl Ludwig von Littrow observed this eclipse and determined that prominences are part of the Sun because the Moon is seen to cover and uncover them as it moves in front of the Sun.*Wik



1842 Dominique Francois Jean Arago (1786-1853), French astronomer. Studied solar eclipse of July 08, 1842 and concluded the sun exist of gas.*NSEC


1881, a patron came into Edward Berner's drug store in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and sat down at the soda-fountain counter. Since it was the Sabbath, the customer couldn't have the desirable, but scandalous, flavored soda water. Berner compromised by putting ice cream in a dish and poured over it the chocolate syrup that was previously only served as flavoring in ice-cream sodas. That was an ice cream Sunday! The name became "sundae", after the day on which Berner served it. TIS  There is limited documentation for this event.  There is another claim for the creation of the ice cream sundae with stronger evidence of the story.  

In 1892 in Ithaca, New York, Reverend John M. Scott and local pharmacy owner, Chester Platt, created the first sundae by topping vanilla ice cream with cherry syrup and a candied cherry at Platt's drugstore.This is supported by  a dated newspaper ad from 1892 in Ithaca promoting "Cherry Sundaes." 



1933 Jansky announced detection of radio radiation from galactic center.*VFR Before Jansky observed the Milky Way in the 1930s, physicists speculated that radio waves could be observed from astronomical sources. In the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell's equations had shown that electromagnetic radiation is associated with electricity and magnetism, and could exist at any wavelength. Several attempts were made to detect radio emission from the Sun by experimenters such as Nikola Tesla and Oliver Lodge, but those attempts were unable to detect any emission due to technical limitations of their instruments.
Karl Jansky made the discovery of the first astronomical radio source serendipitously in the early 1930s. As an engineer with Bell Telephone Laboratories, he was investigating static that interfered with short wave transatlantic voice transmissions. Using a large directional antenna, Jansky noticed that his analog pen-and-paper recording system kept recording a repeating signal of unknown origin. Since the signal peaked about every 24 hours. *Wik

Jansky and his rotating directional radio antenna (early 1930s), the world's first radio telescope.*Wik





2002 Well into his mid-nineties, Donald Coxeter gives the keynote address at the Janos Bolyai Conference on Hyperbolic Geometry with a new paper on the Descartes circle theorem as extended by Phillip Beecroft. His Opening remarks:

The Absolute property of four mutally tangent circles that I am describing seems to have been discovered by Mr. Phillip Beecroft, of Hyde Academy, Cheshire, England, and published in The Lady and Gentleman's Dairy... In Beecroft's own words, "If any four circles be described to touch each other mutually, another set of four circles of mutual contact may be described whose points of contach shall coincide with those of the first four." He then proceeded to give a new and elegant proof of the 1842 theorem, which extended the four circle theorem of Descartes to be, in essence, an eight circle theorem.

*Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space



BIRTHS

1760 Christian Kramp (July 8, 1760 – May 13, 1826) was a French mathematician, who worked primarily with factorials.
As Bessel, Legendre and Gauss did, Kramp worked on the generalized factorial function which applied to non-integers. His work on factorials is independent of that of James Stirling and Vandermonde. He was the first to use the notation n! (Elements d'arithmétique universelle, 1808). In fact, the more general concept of factorial was found at the same time by Arbogast.*TIS 

The notation n! was introduced by Christian Kramp (1760-1826) in 1808. In his élémens d'arithmétique universelle (1808).

An early factorial symbol, was suggested by Rev. Thomas Jarrett (1805-1882) in 1827. It occurs in a paper "On Algebraic Notation" that was printed in 1830 in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and it appears in 1831 in An Essay on Algebraic Development containing the Principal Expansions in Common Algebra, in the Differential and Integral Calculus and in the Calculus of Finite Differences (Cajori vol. 2, pages 69, 75).  This symbol was still in use after 1960 *PBNotes



For more on the symbols and history of the factorial see here.






1777 Daniel Friedrich Hecht (8 July 1777 in Sosa – 13 March 1833 in Saxony) was a German mathematician. He was a mine manager, then a teacher and finally a professor of mathematics. He is most notable for writing high school textbooks on maths and geometry. 

During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce free and generally compulsory primary education, consisting of an eight-year course of basic education, Volksschule. It provided not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing, and arithmetic), but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience. Children of affluent parents often went on to attend preparatory private schools for an additional four years, but the general population had virtually no access to secondary education.

In 1810, after the Napoleonic wars, Prussia introduced state certification requirements for teachers, which significantly raised the standard of teaching. The final examination, Abitur, was introduced in 1788, implemented in all Prussian secondary schools by 1812 and extended to all of Germany in 1871. The state also established teacher training colleges for prospective teachers in the common or elementary grades.

When the German Empire was formed in 1871, the school system became more centralized. In 1872, Prussia recognized the first separate secondary schools for females. As learned professions demanded well-educated young people, more secondary schools were established, and the state claimed the sole right to set standards and to supervise the newly established schools. *Wik


1838 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin Germany aviation pioneer who built the first rigid dirigible airships, named Zeppelins. He patented his idea on 31 Aug 1895 and formed a company to build airships in 1898. Many thought his invention incredible, and called him "Foolish Count". His first airship took off in 2 Jul 1900 at Lake Constance, where it had been assembled in a floating assembly shed. He continued to improve the design and built a fleet of airships for commercial passenger service. During WW I, Zeppelins were used to bomb Britain beginning 19 Jan 1915 with attacks on Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn. After the war, passenger service included transatlantic flights. Zeppelin use ended after the 6 May 1937 Hindenburg fire disaster at Lakehurst, N.J., U.S.A.*TIS

First flight of the LZ 1





1949 Torsten Carleman (8 July 1892, Visseltofta, Osby Municipality – 11 January 1949, Stockholm), born Tage Gills Torsten Carleman, was a Swedish mathematician, known for his results in classical analysis and its applications. As the director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute for more than two decades, Carleman was the most influential mathematician in Sweden. *Wik




1895 Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) Soviet physicist who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physics with Pavel A. Cherenkov and Ilya M. Frank for his efforts in explaining Cherenkov radiation. Tamm was an outstanding theoretical physicist, after early researches in crystallo-optics, he evolved a method for interpreting the interaction of nuclear particles. Together with I. M. Frank, he developed the theoretical interpretation of the radiation of electrons moving through matter faster than the speed of light (the Cerenkov effect), and the theory of showers in cosmic rays. He has also contributed towards methods for the control of thermonuclear reactions. *TIS
one of my favorite math stories is from George Gamow's autobiography and is about Tamm.

"Here is a story told to me by one of my friends who was at that time
a young professor of physics in Odessa. His name was Igor Tamm (Nobel
Prize laureate in Physics, 1958). Once when he arrived in a neighboring
village, at that period when Odessa was occupied by the Reds, and was
negotiating with a villager as to how many chickens he could get for
half a dozen silver spoons, the village was captured by one of the
Makhno bands, who were roaming the country, harassing the Reds. Seeing
his city clothes (or what was left of them), the capturers [sic]
brought him to the Ataman, a bearded fellow in a tall black fur
hat with machine-gun cartridge ribbons crossed on his broad chest and
a couple of hand grenades hanging on the belt.

'You son-of-a-bitch, you Communist agitator, undermining our Mother
Ukraine! The punishment is death.'

'But no,' answered Tamm, 'I am a professor at the University of Odessa
and have come here only to get some food.'

'Rubbish!' retorted the leader. 'What kind of professor are you ?'

'I teach mathematics.'

'Mathematics?' said the Ataman. 'All right! Then give me an estimate of
the error one makes by cutting off Maclaurin's series at the nth term.
Do this, and you will go free. Fail, and you will be shot!'

Tamm could not believe his ears, since this problem belongs to a rather
special branch of higher mathematics. With a shaking hand, and under
the muzzle of the gun, he managed to work out the solution and handed
it to the Ataman.

'Correct!' said the Ataman. 'Now I see that you really are a professor.
Go home!'

Who was this man? No one will ever know. If he was not killed later, he
may well be lecturing now on higher mathematics in some Ukrainian
university."

I tell this story every other year or so to my physics students when
they cannot be bothered to remember the form of the remainder in Taylor
expansions....



1897  Sir Austin Bradford Hill CBE (8 July 1897 – 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Hill is widely known for pioneering the "Bradford Hill" criteria for determining a causal association.  

In 1922, Hill went to work for the Industry Fatigue Research Board. He was associated with the medical statistician Major Greenwood and, to improve his statistical knowledge, Hill attended lectures by Karl Pearson. When Greenwood accepted a chair at the newly formed London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Hill moved with him, becoming Reader in Epidemiology and Vital Statistics in 1933 and Professor of Medical Statistics in 1947.

Hill had a distinguished career in research and teaching and as author of a very successful textbook, Principles of Medical Statistics, but he is famous for two landmark studies. He was the statistician on the Medical Research Council Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee and their study evaluating the use of streptomycin in treating tuberculosis, is generally accepted as the first modern randomised clinical trial. The use of randomisation in agricultural experiments had been pioneered by Ronald Aylmer Fisher. The second study was rather a series of studies with Richard Doll on smoking and lung cancer. The first paper, published in 1950, was a case-control study comparing lung cancer patients with matched controls. Doll and Hill also started a long-term prospective study of smoking and health. This was an investigation of the smoking habits and health of 40,701 British doctors for several years (British doctors study). 

On Hill's death in 1991, Peter Armitage wrote, "to anyone involved in medical statistics, epidemiology or public health, Bradford Hill was quite simply the world's leading medical statistician."




1904 Henri (-Paul) Cartan, (July 8, 1904 – August 13, 2008) mathematician born in Nancy, France. His father, Elie Cartan, was also a mathematician. Henri made fundamental advances in the theory of analytic functions, worked on the theory of sheaves, homological theory, algebraic topology and potential theory. Along with others, such as Weil and Dieudonné, Henri Cartan wrote under the name Bourbaki. Bourbaki's Eléments de mathématique contains more than 30 volumes and aims to present mathematics so as to illustrate the axiomatic structure of modern mathematics. *TIS




1915 Kenneth O. May (July 8, 1915, Portland, Or. – December 1,1977) was an American mathematician and historian of mathematics, who developed May's theorem  [In a two-candidate election with an odd number of voters, majority rule is the only voting system that is anonymous, neutral, and monotone, and that avoids the possibilites of ties.]  The Kenneth O. May Prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to the history of mathematics. Ken May established Historia Mathematica, and preserved it by separating it from its creator, "The distinguished predecessors of HM were associated with their founders and died with them.  If HM is to avoid this fate, we must prepare and carry through a prompt transfer of editorial responsibility to younger hands." His list of publications numbers above 300.  *Henry S. Tropp, E'loge, Isis 70, Sept 1979, Pgs 419-422





DEATHS

1390 Albert of Saxony   (Latin: Albertus de Saxonia; c. 1320 – 8 July 1390) was a German philosopher and mathematician known for his contributions to logic and physics. He was bishop of Halberstadt from 1366 until his death. He was bishop of Halberstadt from 1366 until his death.. He wrote an excellent logic text and published two works on squaring the circle. *VFR ert was born at Rickensdorf near Helmstedt, the son of a farmer in a small village; but because of his talent, he was sent to study at the University of Prague and the University of Paris.
At Paris, he became a master of arts (a professor), and held this post from 1351 until 1362. In 1353, he was rector of the University of Paris. After 1362, Albert went to the court of Pope Urban V in Avignon as an envoy of Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, in order to negotiate the founding of the University of Vienna. The negotiations were successful, and Albert became the first rector of this University in 1365.
In 1366, Albert was elected bishop of Halberstadt (counted as Albert III), Halberstadt being the diocese in which he was born. As Bishop of Halberstadt, he allied himself with Magnus with the Necklace, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, against Gebhard of Berg, Bishop of Hildesheim, and was taken prisoner by Gebhard in the battle of Dinckler in 1367.
He died at Halberstadt in 1390.*Wik




1695 Christiaan Huygens (14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, who founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and contributed to the science of dynamics - the study of the action of forces on bodies. Using a lens he ground for himself, on 25 Mar 1655, he discovered the first moon of Saturn, later named Titan. In 1656, he patented the first pendulum clock, which he developed to enable exact time measurement while observing the heavens. Huygens studied the relation of the length of a pendulum to its period of oscillation (1673) and stated theories on centrifugal force in circular motion which influenced Sir Isaac Newton in formulating his Law of Gravity. Huygens also studied and drew the first maps of Mars. On 14 Jan 2005, a NASA space probe, named after Huygens, landed on Titan. *TIS


*Mars Solar Cap by Huygens



1902 John Daniel Runkle (October 11, 1822 – July 8, 1902) was a U.S. educator and mathematician. B.S. in mathematics, 1851, Harvard College, second president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was associated with the Nautical Almanac computation project from 1849 to 1884. In 1858 he founded the journal Mathematical Monthly and edited it for three years, when publication ceased. In 1860 he was a member of the committee that prepared the “Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology” which led to the establishment of MIT. In 1862 he became MIT’s first secretary, and in 1865 he joined the new faculty as professor of mathematics, where he remained until 1902. He served as president pro-tem, 1868-1870, and was MIT’s second president, 1870-1878. He was married to Catherine Robbins Bird Runkle. *MIT History




1971 Kurt Werner Friedrich Reidemeister (October 13, 1893 – July 8, 1971) was a mathematician born in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany.
He received his doctorate in 1921 with a thesis in algebraic number theory at the University of Hamburg under the supervision of Erich Hecke. In 1923 he was appointed assistant professor at the University of Vienna. While there he became familiar with the work of Hans Hahn and Wilhelm Wirtinger. In 1925 he became full professor at University of Königsberg, where he stayed until 1933, when he was forced to leave because of his opposition of the Nazis.
Reidemeister's interests were mainly in combinatorial group theory, combinatorial topology, geometric group theory, and the foundations of geometry. His books include Knoten und Gruppen (1926), Einführung in die kombinatorische Topologie (1932), and Knotentheorie (1932). He was the brother of Marie Neurath.*Wik




1979 Shin'ichiro Tomonaga (March 31, 1906 – July 8, 1979) Japanese physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 (with Richard P. Feynman and Julian S. Schwinger of the U.S.) for independently developing basic principles of quantum electrodynamics. He was one of the first to apply quantum theory to subatomic particles with very high energies. Tomonaga began with an analysis of intermediate coupling - the idea that interactions between two particles take place through the exchange of a third (virtual particle), like one ship affecting another by firing a cannonball. He used this concept to develop a quantum field theory (1941-43) that was consistent with the theory of special relativity. WW II delayed news of his work. Meanwhile, Feynman and Schwinger published their own independent solutions.





2008 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




2010 David Harold Blackwell (April 24, 1919 – July 8, 2010) was Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is one of the eponyms of the Rao–Blackwell theorem. Born in Centralia, Illinois, he was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the first black tenured faculty member at UC Berkeley.

Blackwell was also a pioneer in textbook writing. He wrote one of the first Bayesian statistics textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. By the time he retired, he had published over 90 papers and books on dynamic programming, game theory, and mathematical statistics.

He was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, in 1956 *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

Tuesday, 7 July 2026

On This Day in Math - July 7

 





Probability is a mathematical discipline whose aims are akin to those, 
for example, of geometry of analytical mechanics.
In each field we must carefully distinguish three aspects of the theory:
(a) the formal logical content,
(b) the intuitive background,
(c) the applications.
The character, and the charm, of the whole structure cannot be appreciated without 
considering all three aspects in their proper relation.

William Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications




The 188th day of the year; 188 is the largest known even number that can be expressed as the sum of two (distinct) primes in exactly five ways. *Prime Curios Students might seek smaller numbers that can be so expressed..

Neither 1882  nor 1883 contain a one or an eight. *@Derektionary

There are 188 11 bead necklaces using two colors, if the necklace can not be turned over.

188 is a Happy number: trajectory under iteration of sum of squares of digits map to 1.

188 is a product of 4 times a number (47). Any such number is the difference of two squares, one of which is the square of one more than the number n/4, and one of which is the square of one less. 48^2-46^2 = 188

The immortal Casey Jones, whose real name was John Luther Jones, of country music ballads was a real guy (and born in the town of Cacey in Fulton County, Ky) and on April 30, 1900 he took off from Jackson, Tennessee bound for Canton, Mississippi on the Cannonball, but was killed in a dark foggy night when a stranded train was on his rail in Vaughn, Mississippi. His skilled driving saved his passengers, but his life ended at mile number 188 of his final drive.




See More Math Facts for every year date here



EVENTS

1339 There was an annular-total eclipse, with the total part of the track finding its way between the Orkney and Shetland Islands without touching either. At this location the track of totality was only 1 km wide, with a duration of 1 second! Presuming that you could position a boat to an accuracy of 1 km, totality must have been a ring of Baily's Beads. *NSEC



1637 In 1625 (Christen Sørensen) Longomontanus suggested to the King, Christian IV, that he should build an observatory to replace Tycho’s Stjerneborg, which had been demolished in 1601. The observatory, the Rundetaarn (Round Tower), was conceived as part of the Trinitatis Complex: a university church, a library and the observatory. The foundation stone was laid on 7 July 1637 and the tower was finished in 1642. Longomontanus was appointed the first director of the observatory, after Leiden, 1632, it was only the second national observatory in Europe. The church and Library were finished in 1657. *RMAT, This 17th Century tower and observatory is one of Copenhagen's most iconic buildings, located on one of the busy shopping streets.



1668, Sir Isaac Newton received his M.A. from Trinity College in Cambridge.*TIS


1742 Goldbach's conjecture was sent in a letter to Leonhard Euler on 7 Jul 1742. Stated in modern terms it proposes that: "Every even natural number greater than 2 is equal to the sum of two prime numbers." It has been checked by computer for vast numbers - up to at least 4 x 1014 - but still remains unproved. *TIS





1747 Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated his Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offering) to Frederick the Great. For a discussion of the mathematical significance of this cerebral music, see Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. *VFR


1777 Johan Bernoulli, then astronomer Royal, Berlin, is paid a sum of 84 pounds for the Sexcentenary tables.  "To Mr. John Hyacinth Magellan....for the use of Mr. Bournoulli .. as a reward for his care and trouble in constructing a manuscript Book of Tables for facilita."
Two years later they would pay 28.35 pounds to Dr. Charles Hutton for translating the preface of the tables.


1788 Caroline Herschel's nebula discovery,* History of Astronomy ‏@HistAstro

Caroline Herschel was a German-born British astronomer who was a pioneer in the field and is considered the first professional female astronomer. She made important contributions to the work of her brother Sir William Herschel, executing many of the calculations connected with his studies. On her own, she detected by telescope three nebulae in 1783, and in 1786 she became the first woman to discover a comet; over the next 11 years she spotted seven other comets.

Caroline contracted typhus at the age of 10, and the disease stunted her growth; she grew only 4 feet 3 inches (1.3 metres) tall. Her mother opposed her education, and Caroline instead helped in the management of the household. In 1772 her brother William took her to Bath, England, where he had established himself as a teacher of music. There Caroline trained and performed successfully as a singer. In addition, William tutored her in mathematics. The siblings gave their last public musical performance in 1782, when her brother accepted the private office of court astronomer to George III; the previous year William had discovered the planet Uranus.


1823 William Rowan Hamilton passed into Trinity College, Dublin. He was easily first out of the 100 candidates. *VFR


1847 Lassel discovered a satellite of Neptune. *VFR (this date does not concur with other dates on these discoveries) In 1846 Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, on October 10, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. In 1848 he independently co-discovered (with William Cranch Bond, his son George Phillips Bond )      Hyperion, a moon of Saturn. In 1851 he discovered Ariel and Umbriel, two new moons of Uranus.*Wik

Hyperion



1855, a letter from Michael Faraday in The Times newspaper, London, described the polluted state of the River Thames he had observed on a boat trip: "The whole of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid. In order to test the degree of opacity, I ... dropped [pieces of card] into the water at every pier the boat came to; before they had sunk an inch below the surface they were indistinguishable, though the sun shone brightly at the time." His words, he said, were no exaggeration, they were "the simple truth." He asserted, "If there be sufficient authority to remove a putrescent pond from the neighborhood of a few simple dwellings, surely the river which flows for so many miles through London ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting sewer." *TIS Things must have gotten better over time, I wrote some dozen years ago about the return of the seahorse to the muddy waters of the Thames. 

FARADAY GIVING HIS CARD TO FATHER THAMES;

And we hope the Dirty Fellow will consult the learned Professor

Punch (21 Jul 1855)



1887  On this day in 1887, Michelson and Morley began the interferometer experiment to try to detect ether. Their result supported special relativity.  *SAU

a supposed medium permeating space that was thought to be the carrier of light waves. The experiment was performed between April and July 1887 by American physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and published in November of the same year.

The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter, including their laboratory, through the luminiferous aether, or "aether wind" as it was sometimes called. The result was negative, in that Michelson and Morley found no significant difference between the speed of light in the direction of movement through the presumed aether, and the speed at right angles.

This result is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against some aether theories, as well as initiating a line of research that eventually led to special relativity, which rules out motion against an aether. Of this experiment, Albert Einstein wrote, "If the Michelson–Morley experiment had not brought us into serious embarrassment, no one would have regarded the relativity theory as a (halfway) redemption."

Michelson and Morley's interferometric setup, mounted on a stone slab that floats in an annular trough of mercury




1959 Planetary occultations of 1st-magnitude stars are extremely rare. The next time will be when Venus occults Regulus on October 1, 2044.  Such events provide information on the planets size, position, and atmosphere.


1960 Press conference announces discovery of laser to the world. "VoilÁ. that Was It! The Laser was Born!" *Hughes Research Lab Web page.


BIRTHS

1638 Francois or Francois Bertrand Barrême Barrême,(7 July 1638, Tarascon, France - 1703, Paris France) is considered one of the founders of accounting . After having engaged in trading in Italy , he moved to Paris where he gave lessons in bookkeeping and became a protégé of Colbert . Expert for the accounts of the Accounting Chamber of Paris and King's ordinary arithmetician, he is the author of books of mathematical conversions. His books were so common that today his name is used for what was once in English called a "ready reckoner", a table of numbers used to facilitate simple calculations, esp one for applying rates of discount, interest, charging, etc, to different sums . *Wik  

The first known book on accounting was, "Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità" by Luca Pacioli, published: 1494 in Venice, Italy.  Though Pacioli didn’t invent double-entry bookkeeping, his work was the first to systematically describe it in print.





1673 George Graham, an English clock- and instrument-maker, was born July 7, 1673. The 18th century saw the transformation of the instrument-maker from a lower-class, ill-respected artisan to an honorable gentleman-craftsman, worthy of membership in genteel society. George Graham was mostly responsible for this metamorphosis. He made telescopes and clocks for patrons who were so pleased with Graham’s meticulous handiwork that they saw to it that Graham got a share of the limelight. When Pierre Maupertuis visited London prior to making his trip to Lapland in 1736 to determine the shape of the earth, he was so impressed by Graham that he outfitted his expedition almost exclusively with Graham sextants, theodolites, and telescopes, and he gave Graham credit in his narrative. James Bradley used a Graham zenith telescope to discover the aberration of light in 1729, the first evidence that the earth moved around the sun, and he too credited Graham for his success. The fourth image above shows a side view of a Graham watch of about 1735.


Graham was later inducted into the Royal Society of London, and when he died in 1751, he was buried in Westminster Abbey (interestingly, sharing the grave of his predeceased colleague, Thomas Tompion). There is a plaque honoring both Tompion and Graham at the site of their shop in London (fifth image).

One of Graham’s most notable inventions was the “orrery”, a clockwork device that reproduces the motions of the earth, sun, and moon. The first orrery was built by James Rowley to Graham's design in 1713 for Charles Boyle, the 4th Earl of Orrery, whence the instrument's name. Later orreries would show the motion of other planets as well. The original Rowley/Graham orrery is on display in the Science Museum in London  *Linda Hall Org





1746 Giuseppe Piazzi (July 7, 1746 - July 22, 1826) an Italian mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the asteroid Ceres and established an observatory at Palermo, now the Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – Giuseppe S. Vaiana. (for more detail see the source article) *Today in Astronomy



1752 Joseph-Marie Jacquard born (7 July 1752 – 7 August 1834). *VFR French silk weaver, (born Lyons), inventor of the Jacquard programmable power loom for brocaded fabric. His loom would mechanically produce any pattern, controlled by perforated control cards (1805). This served as the impetus for the technological revolution of the textile industry and is the basis of the modern automatic loom. The concept of using punched cards was later applied by Hollerith to keeping track of the 1890 US census data. The idea further evolved to computer input punched cards. *TIS






1816 Rudolf Wolf  (7 July 1816 – 6 December 1893) Swiss astronomer and astronomical historian. Wolf's main contribution was the discovery of the 11 year sunspot cycle and he was the codiscoverer of its connection with geomagnetic activity on Earth. In 1849 he devised a system now known as Wolf's sunspot numbers. This system is still in use for studying solar activity by counting sunspots and sunspot groups. In mathematics, Wolf wrote on prime number theory and geometry, then later on probability and statistics - a long paper discussed Buffon's needle experiment. He estimated by Monte Carlo methods.*TIS



1861 Nettie Maria Stevens (July 7, 1861 – May 4, 1912 American geneticist who was born in the year that the Civil War began, and despite difficult times and limited women’s educational opportunities, became one of the first American women to achieve recognition for her contributions to scientific research. As a cell biologist and geneticist, her great contribution to science was as one of the first scientists to find that sex is determined by a single difference between two classes of sperm—the presence or absence of an X chromosome. *TiS




1888 Archibald Goldie (7 July 1888 in Glenisla, Angus, Scotland - 24 Jan 1964 in London, England) studied at the universities of St Andrews and Cambridge. He served in the Meteorological Service of the British Army in World War I and continued to work in various branches of the Meteorological Office.*SAU


1905 Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (7 July 1905 – 19 October 1972) was a French mathematician, the second woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France, the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France, the president of the French Mathematical Society, and an expert on fluid mechanics and abstract algebra.*Wik

In 1926 she ranked second in the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), but was initially deferred to 21st place due to her gender. A successful appeal reinstated her position. *Sau

Rue Marie-Louise-Dubreil-Jacotin, a street in the 13th arrondissement of Paris within Paris Diderot University, is named after her, and the University of Poitiers also has a street with the same name. In semigroup theory, the Dubreil-Jacotin semigroups are also named after her, as is the Dubreil-Jacotin–Long equation, "the standard model for internal gravity waves" in fluid mechanics. *Wik



1906 William Feller (July 7, 1906 – January 14, 1970). He once said that multiplication, especially before breakfast, is seldom commutative. He died in 1970. *VFR
Feller was one of the greatest probabilists of the twentieth century, who is remembered for his championing of probability theory as a branch of mathematical analysis in Sweden and the United States. In the middle of the 20th century, probability theory was popular in France and Russia, while mathematical statistics was more popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, according to the Swedish statistician, Harald Cramér. His two-volume textbook on probability theory and its applications was called "the most successful treatise on probability ever written" by Gian-Carlo Rota. By stimulating his colleagues and students in Sweden and then in the United States, Feller helped establish research groups studying the analytic theory of probability. In his research, Feller contributed to the study of the relationship between Markov chains and differential equations, where his theory of generators of one-parameter semigroups of stochastic processes gave rise to the theory of "Feller operators".*Wik



1906 Gheorghe Mihoc (July 7, 1906 – December 25, 1981) was a Romanian mathematician and statistician.

On April 28, 1934, he earned his Doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest, in front of a commission consisting of Dimitrie Pompeiu, as chairman, Anton Davidoglu, and Onicescu. The subject of his thesis, written under the direction of Onicescu, was On the general properties of interdependent statistical variables.

From 1937, Mihoc went to the University of Bucharest as assistant to Octav Onicescu, first at mechanics, then at algebra and probabilities calculation (1937–1942). That same year (1937) he also taught general mathematics with the students from the preparation year of Politehnica University of Bucharest. Between 1942 and 1946 he was conference lecturer of general mathematics at the Faculty of Physics and Chemistry of the University of Bucharest. Then, in 1946, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Higher-level Commercial and Industrial Studies, for financial mathematics (1946–1949).

In 1948, after the reform of education in all degrees, he was appointed head of the department of probability calculation and mathematical statistics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Bucharest, then as professor and head of the department of applied mathematics. From fall 1962 he was again professor and head of the department of probability calculation and mathematical statistics (successor to Onicescu). As a leading specialist in probability and statistics, he was invited to different countries to give lectures in the field. Mihoc supervised 6 Ph.D. students at the University of Bucharest, including Marius Iosifescu and Radu Theodorescu

In April 1964 he was appointed director of the Statistical Centre of the academy. He was an editor of Gazeta Matematică [ro] and member of the board of C.R.C.C.S. In November 1964 Mihoc was awarded the title of Honorary Professor. In 1971 he was awarded the Order of the Star of the Romanian Socialist Republic, Second class.

A private high school in Bucharest, Sector 1 (founded in 1997) is named after both Onicescu and Mihoc *Wik




1922 Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Marchenko (7 July 1922 - ) is a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician who specialises in mathematical physics.

 He defended his PhD thesis in 1948 under the supervision of Naum Landkof, and in 1951, he defended his DSc thesis. He worked in Kharkiv University until 1961. For 4 decades, he headed the Mathematical Physics Department at the Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Marchenko was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962, the N. N. Krylov Prize in 1980, the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology in 1989, and the N. N. Bogolyubov prize in 1996. Since 1969 he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, since 1987 of the Russian Academy of Sciences and since 2001 of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.

Marchenko turned 100 on 7 July 2022






DEATHS

1900 Eduard Wiltheiss (12 June 1855 Worms, Germany – 7 July 1900 Halle) was a German mathematician who made major contributions to the theory of abelian functions *VFR

The German Mathematical Society (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung) was founded in 1890 at a meeting of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians which took place in Bremen from 15 to 20 September. Wiltheiss was a founder member of the German Mathematical Society along with his colleague at Halle Hermann Wiener, as were Cantor, Gordan, Hilbert, Klein, Minkowski, Study and Heinrich Weber who all gave lectures at the Bremen meeting.

The research which Wiltheiss carried out was mostly in the area of abelian functions, in particular studying hyperelliptic functions and theta functions. Following his habilitation, he published papers such as Über die complexe Multiplication hyperelliptischer Functionen zweier Argumente (1883), Über die partiellen Differentialgleichungen zwischen den Ableitungen der hyperelliptischen Thetafunctionen nach den Parametern und nach den Argumenten  (1885), Über-Thetafunctionen, die nach einer Transformation in ein Product von Thetafunctionen zerfallen  (1886), and Über eine partielle Differentialgleichung der Thetafunctionen zweier Argumente und über die Reihenentwicklung derselben  (1887). Over the next couple of years from 1888 to 1890 his output of papers was very high, both in quality and quantity (eight paper were published over this period). However his health deteriorated and his final research paper was Die partiellen Differentialgleichungen der Abel'schen Thetafunctionen dreier Argumente  (1891). Wirtinger writes that Wiltheiss produced many valuable single results, around which new theories developed .




1927 Magnus Gustaf Mittag-Leffler died (16 March 1846 – 7 July 1927) . Swedish mathematician who founded the international mathematical journal Acta Mathematica and whose contributions to mathematical research helped advance the Scandinavian school of mathematics. Mittag-Leffler made numerous contributions to mathematical analysis (concerned with limits and including calculus, analytic geometry and probability theory). He worked on the general theory of functions, concerning relationships between independent and dependent variables. His best known work concerned the analytic representation of a one-valued function, this work culminated in the Mittag-Leffler theorem.*TIS


Mittag-Leffler Institute



1930 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) Scottish novelist, physician, spiritualist. His fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, emulates the scientist, diligently searching through data and to make sense of it. "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." *TIS


1942 William Henry Young (London, 20 October 1863 - Lausanne, 7 July 1942) discovered Lebesgue integration, independently but 2 years after Lebesgue. He studied Fourier series and orthogonal series in general.*SAU

He was the husband of Grace Chisholm Young, with whom he authored and co-authored 214 papers and 4 books. Two of their children became professional mathematicians (Laurence Chisholm Young, Cecilia Rosalind Tanner). Young's Theorem was named after him.

In 1913 he was the first to be appointed to the newly created chair of Hardinge Professorship of Pure Mathematics in Calcutta University which he held from 1913 to 1917. He also held the part-time Professorship of Philosophy and the History of Mathematics at the University of Liverpool from 1913 to 1919.*Wik




1975 William Hodge (17 June 1903 – 7 July 1975) studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities. After some time at Bristol and in the USA he returned to Cambridge and became Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry. His main interests were in Algebraic Geometry and Differential Geometry. He became an honorary member of the EMS in 1954. He was knighted in 1959. *SAU His discovery of far-reaching topological relations between algebraic geometry and differential geometry—an area now called Hodge theory and pertaining more generally to Kähler manifolds—has been a major influence on subsequent work in geometry. *Wik



1982 Raymond Louis Wilder (3 November 1896 in Palmer, Massachusetts – 7 July 1982 in Santa Barbara, California) was an American mathematician, who specialized in topology and gradually acquired philosophical and anthropological interests.

In 1926, Wilder joined the faculty of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he supervised 26 Ph.Ds and became a research professor in 1947. During the 1930s, he helped settle European refugee mathematicians in the United States. Mathematicians who rubbed shoulders with Wilder at Michigan and who later proved prominent included Samuel Eilenberg, the cofounder of category theory, and the topologist Norman Steenrod. After his 1967 retirement from Michigan at the rather advanced age of 71, Wilder became a research associate and occasional lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Wilder was vice president of the American Mathematical Society, 1950–1951, president 1955–1956, and the Society's Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecturer in 1969. He was president of the Mathematical Association of America, 1965–1966, which awarded him its Distinguished Service Medal in 1973. He was elected to the American National Academy of Sciences in 1963. Brown University (1958) and the University of Michigan (1980) awarded him honorary doctorates. The mathematics department at the University of California annually bestows one or more graduating seniors with an award in Wilder's name. *Wik

Wilder moved to the University of Texas in 1921 where again he was appointed as an instructor while he worked for his doctorate. It was here that his interests moved towards pure mathematics under the influence of Robert Moore. When he asked permission from Moore to take his topology course, Moore replied, "No, there is no way a person interested in actuarial mathematics could do, let alone be really interested in, topology."

After Wilder persuaded Moore to let him take the course, Moore proceeded to ignore him until he solved one of the hardest problems Moore posed to the class. Wilder gave up his plans to study actuarial mathematics and became Moore's research student. He suggested Wilder write up the solution to the problem for his doctorate which indeed he did, becoming Moore's first Texas doctorate in 1923 with his dissertation Concerning Continuous Curves. *SAU




2014 Lars Gårding (7 March 1919 – 7 July 2014) was a Swedish mathematician. He made notable contributions to the study of partial differential equations and partial differential operators. He was a professor of mathematics at Lund University in Sweden 1952–1984. Together with Marcel Riesz, he was a thesis advisor for Lars Hörmander.

His interest was not limited to mathematics, but also in art, literature and music. He played the violin and the piano. Further, he published a book on bird songs and calls in 1987, a result of his interest in bird watching.

Gårding was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1953 and of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1985.

Gårding died on 7 July 2014, aged 95. *Wik





2014 Klaus Peters,( --, July 7, 2014) mathematician and STEM Publisher for over 50 years, passed away on July 7, 2014. Klaus, who received his doctorate from University of Erlangen in 1962, became well-known in the mathematical community largely through A.K. Peters Ltd, publisher of scientific and technical books, specializing in mathematics and computer science, as well as journals Experimental Mathematics, Internet Mathematics, and the Journal of Graphics Tools. Klaus was a familiar face at mathematics meetings around the world, and recently consulted with the AMS publishing division on a number of different projects, including Really Big Numbers. He was a strong and eloquent advocate for scholarly publishing. *AMS



2017 Marina Evseevna Ratner ( October 30, 1938 – July 7, 2017) was a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who worked in ergodic theory. Around 1990, she proved a group of major theorems concerning unipotent flows on homogeneous spaces, known as Ratner's theorems. Ratner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, awarded the Ostrowski Prize in 1993 and elected to the National Academy of Sciences the same year. In 1994, she was awarded the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

She studied mathematics and physics at Moscow State University. Here, she became interested in probability theory, inspired by A.N. Kolmogorov and his group. After graduation, she spent four years working in Kolmogorov's applied statistics group. Following this, she returned to Moscow State university for graduate studies were under Yakov G. Sinai, also a student of Kolmogorov. She completed her PhD thesis, titled "Geodesic Flows on Unit Tangent Bundles of Compact Surfaces of Negative Curvature", in 1969. In 1971 she emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel and she taught at the Hebrew University from 1971 until 1975. She began to work with Rufus Bowen at Berkeley and later emigrated to the United States and became a professor of mathematics at Berkeley.

She became only the third woman plenary speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994.

Marina Ratner died July 7, 2017, at the age of 78. *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