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| Origami Soma Cube *Tektonten Papercraft (See Deaths:1996 Piet Hein) |
A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds
If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.
~Benjamin Franklin
The 107th day of the year; There is no integer N such that N! has exactly 107 zeros in it. The same is true if we replace 107 by the primes 3, 31, or 43.*Prime Curios (This seems a most remarkable set of facts to me.)
Interestingly, the sum of the first 107 digits of pi is prime, and the sum of the first 107 digits of e is prime. This is trivially true for the first digit of each, but can you find the one (I believe) other number between 1 and 107 for which the sum of the digits of e and pi are both prime?
2107 - 1 is the largest known Mersenne prime not containing all the individual digits.
If you add 107 and the next consecutive prime (109) you get 216 = 6^3. There are only six year day pairs for which the sum of consecutive primes is a perfect power.
Allan Brady proved in 1983 that the maximal number of steps that a four-state Turing machine can make on an initially blank tape before eventually halting is 107.
Another significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain. *Wik
Allan Brady proved in 1983 that the maximal number of steps that a four-state Turing machine can make on an initially blank tape before eventually halting is 107.
EVENTS
1397 Geoffrey Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II, *The British Library @britishlibraryAnother significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain. *Wik
Chaucer was a philomath and his work on astronomy and the astrolabe wee equally well known as his poetry. He is seen as crucial in legitimizing the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey.
Tomb of Chaucer in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, London and a So-called Chaucer Astrolabe dated 1326, similar to the one Chaucer describes, from British Museum
1694, l'Hôpital sent a letter to Bernoulli with a remarkable proposition :-
"I will be happy to give you a retainer of 300 pounds, beginning with the first of January of this year. ... I promise shortly to increase this retainer, which I know is very modest, as soon as my affairs are somewhat straightened out. ... I am not so unreasonable as to demand in return all of your time, but I will ask you to give me at intervals some hours of your time to work on what I request and also to communicate to me your discoveries, at the same time asking you not to disclose any of them to others. I ask you even not to send here to Mr Varignon or to others any copies of the writings you have left with me; if they are published, I will not be at all pleased. Answer me regarding all this ..."
In 1696 L'Hôpital's famous book Analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes courbes was published; it was the first text-book to be written on the differential calculus. In the introduction l'Hôpital acknowledges his indebtedness to Leibniz, Jacob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli but l'Hôpital regarded the foundations provided by him as his own ideas.
This book was an extremely important contribution. It was used for a long time, with new editions produced until 1781, and it was also a model for the next generation of calculus books. *MacTutor
The book is credited with introducing many French mathematicians and others to the differential calculus of Leibniz. In the preface, l'Hôpital mentions that he focuses on just differential calculus since Leibniz was writing a book (which was never finished) on integral calculus. L'Hôpital also credits Johann Bernoulli, whom he had hired to teach him the calculus of Leibniz. In fact, there is some question as to how much of the material in the Analyse is due to l'Hôpital and how much to Johann Bernoulli.*MAA
1707 On the Sunday before Easter, two day old Leonhard Euler was baptized in Saint Martin's Church in Basil. His three Godfathers were city officials, including city privy counselor Leonhard Respinger, a friend of the family for whom Euler was named. *Ronald S. Calinger; Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment
1732 Laura Maria Caterina Bassi defends forty-nine academic theses in public display:
The University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe and at the beginning of the eighteenth century students were still examined by public disputation, i.e. the candidate was expected to orally defend a series of academic theses. At the beginning of 1732 Bassi took part in a private disputation in her home with members of the university faculty in the presence of many leading members of Bolognese intellectual society. As a result of her performance during this disputation she was elected a member of the prestigious Bologna Academy of Science on 20th March. Rumours of this extraordinary young lady quickly spread and on 17th April she defended forty-nine theses in a highly spectacular public disputation. On 12th May following a public outcry she was awarded a doctorate from the university in a grand ceremony in the city hall of Bologna. Following a further public disputation the City Senate appointed her professor of philosophy at the university, making her the first ever female professor at a European university.
See more at *Thony Christie, The Renaissance Mathematicus
1799 Humphry Davy announced in Nicholson's Journal that N2O can be inhaled by humans *A.J. Wright @AJWrightMLS
1912 Two days after the sinking of the Titanic a solar eclipse occurred in England and Europe. It was a hybrid event, starting and ending as an annular eclipse, with only a small portion of totality. Totality was visible over the sea between Spain and France, with annularity continued northeast across Europe and Asia.
This eclipse occurred two days after the RMS Titanic sank in the northwestern Atlantic ocean under the darkness of new moon. *Wik
Eclipse poster from the London Underground for the 1912 Eclipse.
1935 Turkey issued a series of semi-postal stamps commemorating the 12th congress of the Women’s International Alliance. One pictured a school teacher. Another was the first stamp honoring Marie Sklodowska Curie. [Scott #B55, B67]*VFR
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| *Louis Paul Hennefeld, Out of the Closet |
1944 Harvard Mark I Operating:
Harvard University President James Conant writes to IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. to let him know that the Harvard Mark I, developed in cooperation between the two, was operating smoothly. The project was one of the many examples of wartime collaboration among the federal government, universities, and private corporations. In his letter, Conant noted that the Mark I already was "being used for special problems in connection with the war effort." *CHM
In 1964, Geraldine (“Jerrie”) Mock landed in Columbus, Ohio, becoming the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world. She was a Columbus housewife with less than 800 hours logged in 7-1/2 years of flying experience, and had received her instrument rating less than a month before taking off from Columbus, on 19 Mar 1964, in a single-engine Cessna Model 180 aircraft on her 23,206-mile solo air voyage. The trip lasted 29-1/2 days with 21 stopovers. The insignia on the aircraft was “Spirit of Columbus,” but it was nick-named “Three-Eight Charlie.” She was born in Newark, Ohio, and had studied Aeronautical Engineering at Ohio State University. Though not without some problems, the ultimate success of her solo flight also reflects the reliability of small aircraft of the era.
2013 Yitang Zhang announced a proof that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers which differ by 70 million or less. This proof is the first to establish the existence of a finite bound for prime gaps, resolving a weak form of the twin prime conjecture. *Wik Barry Goldman added that "and an online team assembled by Terry Tao chopped 70 milliion down to 246!" (announced on April 14, 2014)
BIRTHS
1598 Giovanni Battista Riccioli (17 April 1598 – 25 June 1671) Italian astronomer who was the first to observe (1650) a double star (two stars so close together that they appear to be one) - Mizar in Ursa Major, the middle star in the handle of the Big Dipper. He also discovered satellite shadows on Jupiter. In 1651, he assigned the majority of the lunar feature names in current use. He named the more prominent features after famous astronomers, scientists and philosophers, while the large dark and smooth areas he called "seas" or "maria". The lunar seas were named after moods (Seas of Tranquillity, Serenity) or terrestrial phenomena (Sea of Rains, Ocean or Storms) His map was published in Almagestum Novum in1651.*TISRiccioli studied seventy-seven objections to the Copernican thesis and after studying them Riccioli said that the weight of argument favored a “geo-heliocentric” hypothesis such as that advocated by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Riccioli's preference for Tycho's model illustrates something important about how science is done. While today anti-Copernicans are often portrayed as Einstein characterized them (opposed to rational thinking, opposed to science), Riccioli, perhaps the most prominent of the anti-Copernicans, examined the available evidence diligently and rationally. The conclusion he reached was indeed wrong, but wrong because at that time neither the diffraction of light and the Airy disk, nor the details of the Coriolis effect, were understood. Riccioli's anti-Copernican arguments were so solid that they would become subjects of further investigation in physics, long after the Copernican theory had triumphed over the Tychonic theory.*Christopher M. Graney, Teaching Galileo, Physics Teacher V50,1
An interesting blog about Riccioli is at the Renaissance Mathematicus
The crescent phases of Venus and detailed representations of its appearance as seen through a telescope, from Riccioli's 1651 New Almagest. Representations from Riccioli's 1665 Reformed Astronomy of Saturn's changing appearance.
1656 William Molyneux (17 April 1656 in Dublin, Ireland - 11 Oct 1698 in Dublin, Ireland) was an Irish scientist and philosopher who worked on optics.After leaving Bologna, Angeli continued his contacts with Cavalieri(who had been his teacher in Bologna) by correspondence, and was entrusted to publish Cavalieri's final work, Exercitationes geometricae sex, since by 1647 Cavalieri's health had deteriorated to such an extent that he was unable to carry out the work himself. Angeli also corresponded with a number of other mathematicians including Torricelli and Viviani. After Cavalieri's death, later in 1647, Angeli was offered his chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna but he was still too modest about his own mathematical achievements to accept the position. He moved to Rome where he devoted himself to both mathematics and religious studies.
He was perhaps the single most important figure in the history of Irish science, and one of great political significance. The Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, together with numerous other Irish professional societies such as those in mathematics, statistics, political economy, geology, botany, chemistry, physics, and other disciplines trace their origins directly to the Dublin Philosophical Society, and have at various times acknowledged the Society or Molyneux as their inspiration.
*SAU
He followed the goings-on of the Royal Society of London (and would become a Fellow of that Society). Deciding that Ireland deserved a similar institution, he founded the Dublin Philosophical Society in 1683. The group had an up-and-down life in the 17th century, depending mostly on whether Molyneux was around; they never launched their own journal, as the Royal Society of London did, but many of its members, such as William Petty, and Molyneux, published papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The group became inactive after Molyneux died, but was revived several times, and eventually morphed into the Royal Irish Academy. *LH
Sciothericum telescopicum, or A new contrivance of adapting a telescope to a horizontal dial for observing the moment of time by day or night, 1686
1748 Sir Charles Brian Blagden FRS (17 April 1748 – 26 March 1820) was a British physician and scientist. He served as a medical officer in the Army (1776–1780) during the Revolutionary War, and later held the position of Secretary of the Royal Society (1784–1797).
Blagden experimented on himself to study human ability to withstand high temperatures. In his report to the Royal Society in 1775, he was first to recognize the role of perspiration in thermoregulation.
Blagden's experiments on how dissolved substances like salt affected the freezing point of water led to the discovery that the freezing point of a solution decreases in direct proportion to the concentration of the solution, now called Blagden's Law Blagden won the Copley Medal in 1788 and was knighted in 1792. In 1783, Blagden, then assistant to Henry Cavendish, visited Antoine Lavoisier in Paris and described how Cavendish had created water by burning "inflammable air". Lavoisier's dissatisfaction with the Cavendish's "dephlogistinization" theory led him to the concept of a chemical reaction, which he reported to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 24 June 1783, effectively founding modern chemistry. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1789.
He died in Arcueil, France in 1820, and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. *Wik
1766 John Leslie (17 April 1766 in Largo, Fife, Scotland - 3 Nov 1832 in Coates (near Largo), Fife, Scotland) Leslie was a successful professor of mathematics, attracting large classes of students and publishing his lectures in popular textbooks such as the three part work Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis, and Plane Trigonometry (1809). He mixed classical mathematical teaching with some new continental approaches to analysis and algebra particularly in his advanced classes. Leslie became professor in Natural Philosophy in 1819 after the chair fell vacant on Playfair's death. This was not without a battle, for again the Church put up a candidate but, having won a victory in the earlier encounter, this time proved much more straightforward. He gave courses which were filled with experiments on specially made apparatus, for which Leslie himself had paid over half the cost from his own pocket. He soon discovered that one of the main problems of teaching university level physics was the lack of mathematical background of most of his students. He wanted to rectify this by teaching mathematics courses specially tailored for his physics students, but the University of Edinburgh senate prevented him from giving such courses since these topics were deemed the responsibility of the professor of mathematics. *SAU
1798 Étienne Bobillier (April 17, 1798 – March 22, 1840) was a French mathematician. At the age of 19 he was accepted into the École Polytechnique and studied there for a year. However, due to a shortage of money, in 1818 he became an instructor in mathematics at the École des Arts et Métiers in Châlons-sur-Marne. In 1829, he was sent to Angers to be director of studies. The following year he served in the national guard during the 1830 revolution. In 1832 he returned to Châlons after his post was abolished, and was promoted to professor.
In 1836 he began suffering from health problems, but continued teaching; declining to take a leave to recuperate. As a result he died in Châlons at the relatively early age of 41.
He is noted for his work on geometry, particularly the algebraic treatment of geometric surfaces and the polars of curves. He also worked on statics and the catenary. The crater Bobillier on the Moon is named after him.*Wik
1853 Arthur Moritz Schönflies (17 April 1853 in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany (now Gorzów-Wielkopolski, Poland) - 27 May 1928 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) worked first on geometry and kinematics but became best known for his work on set theory and crystallography. He classified the 230 space groups in 1891 He studied under Kummer and Weierstrass, and was influenced by Felix Klein.
The Schoenflies problem is to prove that an (n − 1)-sphere in Euclidean n-space bounds a topological ball, however embedded. This question is much more subtle than initially appears. *Wik *SAU
1863 Augustus Edward Hough Love (17 Apr 1863; 5 Jun 1940 at age 77) British geophysicist and mathematician who discovered a major type of earthquake wave that was subsequently named for him. Love assumed that the Earth consists of concentric layers that differ in density and postulated the occurrence of a seismic wave confined to the surface layer (crust) of the Earth which propagated between the crust and underlying mantle. His prediction was confirmed by recordings of the behaviour of waves in the surface layer of the Earth. He proposed a method, based on measurements of Love waves, to measure the thickness of the Earth's crust. In addition to his work on geophysical theory, Love studied elasticity and wrote A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity, 2 vol. (1892-93). *TIS (Hard to imagine the newsperson announcing that "Love waves caused the collapse of multiple buildings in San Francisco on this day in 1906.")
He authored the two volume classic, A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity.
1878 Matteo Bottasso (17 April 1878 in Chiusa di Pesio (Cuneo), Italy - 4 Oct 1918 in Messina, ItalyMessina, Italy)was an Italian mathematician who used the vector calculus in studying problems in geometry, mechanics and physics. *SAU
DEATHS
485 Proclus Diadochus (8 Feb 411 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Byzantium (now Turkey) - 17 April 485 in Athens, Greece) was a Greek philosopher who became head of Plato's Academy and is important mathematically for his commentaries on the work of other mathematicians. *SAU
1761 Thomas Bayes (1702, 17 Apr 1761) English theologian and mathematician who was the first to use probability inductively and who established a mathematical basis for probability inference (a means of calculating, from the frequency with which an event has occurred in prior trials, the probability that it will occur in future trials). This became the basis of a statistical technique, now called Bayesian estimation, for calculating the probability of the validity of a proposition on the basis of a prior estimate of its probability and new relevant evidence. Later statisticians cite disadvantages of the method that include the different ways of assigning prior distributions of parameters and the possible sensitivity of conclusions to the choice of distributions. *TIS British mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a special case of Bayes' theorem, which was published posthumously. Bayes died in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He is interred in Bunhill Fields Cemetery in London where many Nonconformists are buried. Bayesian probability is the name given to several related interpretations of probability, which have in common the application of probability to any kind of statement, not just those involving random variables. "Bayesian" has been used in this sense since about 1950.
Only known Portrait that is possibly of Bayes from a 1936 book, but it is doubtful whether the portrait is actually of him.
I remember him more now related to my granddaughter. After getting her first job in statistical analysis, Zoe wrote to tell me she had discovered Bayes theorem and was excited by his writing.
1787 Wenceslaus Johann Gustav Karsten (15 Dec 1732 in Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany - 17 April 1787 in Halle, Germany) He wrote an important article in 1768 Von den Logarithmen vermeinter Grössen in which he discussed logarithms of negative and imaginary numbers, giving a geometric interpretation of logarithms of complex numbers as hyperbolic sectors, based on the similarity of the equations of the circle and of the equilateral hyperbola. *SAU This book influenced Euler's Theoria motus corporum rigidorum
1790 Benjamin Franklin, (17 Jan 1706; 17 Apr 1790) American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. He become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented a type of stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces and the lightning rod, bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get for themselves, he helped establish institutions people now take for granted: a fire company (1736), a library (1731), an insurance company (1752), an academy (1751), and a hospital (1751). In some cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North America. *TIS When he observed a balloon launch by the Montgolfier brothers he was asked of what use it was. He replied: Of what use is a new born baby? *VFR
While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects at Clapham common on a large pond there. "I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water...though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square." He later used the trick to "calm the waters" by carrying "a little oil in the hollow joint of my cane." *W. Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, pgs 80,81
1847 Francois-Joseph Servois (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
1933 Harriet Brooks (July 2, 1876 – April 17, 1933) was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She enjoyed the distinction of being the first graduate student to work with Ernest Rutherford, a giant (both physically and intellectually) of early atomic physics. They enjoyed a happy, productive period of collaboration until their lives diverged in dramatically different directions.
Harriet attended McGill University on scholarships and graduated with honors in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1898. That same summer, Rutherford arrived at McGill as a 28-year-old physics professor fired up about radioactivity.
Together, Brooks and Rutherford studied what he called “radium emanation.” Their joint paper, published in 1901 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, identified this mysterious substance as a heavier-than-air gas.
The new gas appeared to be another new radioactive element, though they dared not label it as such. At the time, no respectable scientist would boast of turning one element into another – a claim that smacked of alchemy. As the pace of discovery and understanding accelerated, however, “emanation” indeed proved to be a new addition to the periodic table: the element radon.
Most likely following her heart, Harriet Brooks left McGill in 1905 to teach physics at Barnard College, the women’s part of Columbia University, where she was reunited with Bergen Davis, a fellow physicist she’d met at the Cavendish. In the summer of 1906, when she informed officials at the college of her engagement to Davis, they requested her resignation.
She stood up to the dean, claiming “a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries.” That said, she broke up with Davis and spent the following year as an independent researcher at the Curie lab in Paris.
Marie Curie had assumed directorship of the lab at the Sorbonne following her husband’s death in April 1906. She was pleased with Brooks, her first hire, and invited the talented young scientist to stay on for at least another year. Brooks chose instead to rejoin Rutherford, who had moved to the University of Manchester. Eager to welcome her again, Rutherford supported Brooks’s fellowship application with a sterling letter of recommendation, in which he insisted that “next to Mme. Curie she is the most prominent woman physicist in the department of radioactivity.”
Harriet Brooks died on April 17, 1933, after a lingering but undisclosed illness. *Linda Hall Library Org
Ernest Rutherford’s research group in Montreal, 1899. Harriet Brooks is at center rear; Rutherford is at far right (aip org)
1942 Jean-Baptiste Perrin (30 Sep 1870, 17 Apr 1942 at age 71) was a French physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids, verified Albert Einstein's explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter. Using a gamboge emulsion, Perrin was able to determine by a new method, one of the most important physical constants, Avogadro's number (the number of molecules of a substance in so many grams as indicated by the molecular weight, for example, the number of molecules in two grams of hydrogen). The value obtained corresponded, within the limits of error, to that given by the kinetic theory of gases. For this achievement he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. *TIS
1977 Richard Dagobert Brauer (10 Feb 1901; 17 Apr 1977 at age 76) German-American mathematician and educator, a pioneer in the development of algebra theory. He worked with Weyl on several projects including a famous joint paper on spinors (published in 1935 in the American Journal of Mathematics). This work provided a background for Paul Dirac's theory of the spinning electron within the framework of quantum mechanics. With Nesbitt, Brauer introduced the theory of blocks (1937). Brauer used this to obtain results on finite groups, particularly finite simple groups, and the theory of blocks would play a big part in much of Brauer's later work. Starting with his group-theoretical characterisation of the simple groups (1951), he spent the rest of his life formulating a method to classify all finite simple groups. *TIS
1996 Piet Hein (December 16, 1905 – April 17, 1996) was a Danish scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, author, and poet, often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym "Kumbel" meaning "tombstone". His short poems, known as gruks or grooks (Danish: Gruk), first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi occupation in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell"
The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes. Piet Hein created the superellipse which became the hallmark of modern Scandinavian architecture.
In addition to the thousands of grooks he wrote, Piet Hein devised the games of Hex, Tangloids, Morra, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the Soma cube. He advocated the use of the superellipse curve in city planning, furniture making and other realms. He also invented a perpetual calendar called the Astro Calendar and marketed housewares based on the superellipse and Superegg. *Wik My Favorite of his grooks is this one:
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.
A superellipse, also known as a Lamé curve after Gabriel Lamé, is a closed curve resembling the ellipse, retaining the geometric features of semi-major axis and semi-minor axis, and symmetry about them, but a different overall shape. |x/a| ^n+ |x/b|^n = 1, also called Lame curves after Gabriel Lame
2006 Gloria Olive (8 June 1923 in New York City, USA - 17 April 2006 in Dunedin, New Zealand) Much of Olive's research was on applications of generalised powers. She published papers such as Binomial functions and combinatorial mathematics (1979), A combinatorial approach to generalized powers (1980), Binomial functions with the Stirling property (1981), Some functions that count (1983), Taylor series revisited (1984), Catalan numbers revisited (1985), A special class of infinite matrices (1987), and The ballot problem revisited (1988). Some of her work on binomial functions overlaps that of Gian-Carlo Rota's "polynomials of binomial type". She has had a special interest in the polynomials which are generated by her generalised powers, and hopes that someone will prove or disprove her conjecture, now about 30 years old, that all their zeros lie on the unit circle. This conjecture has now been verified for infinitely many special cases. *SAU
Olive was one of a small group of approximately seven women who established the precursor group to the Association for Women in Mathematics
She is the author of the book Mathematics for Liberal Arts Students (Macmillan).Wik
2012 Stephen James Rallis (May 17, 1942 – April 17, 2012) was an American mathematician who worked on group representations, automorphic forms, the Siegel–Weil formula, and Langlands L-functions.
Rallis received a B.A. in 1964 from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in 1968 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and spent 1968–1970 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. After two years at Stony Brook, two years at Universite de Strasbourg, and several visiting positions, he joined the faculty at Ohio State University in 1977 and stayed there for the rest of his career.
Beginning in the 1970s, Rallis and Gérard Schiffmann wrote a series of papers on the Weil representation. This led to Rallis's work with Kudla in which they developed a far-reaching generalization of the Siegel–Weil formula: the regularized Siegel–Weil formula and the first term identity. These results have prompted other mathematicians to extend Siegel–Weil to other cases. Rallis' 1984 paper giving proofs of certain examples of the Howe duality conjecture was the start of his work on what is now known as "The Rallis Inner Product Formula" which relates the inner product of a pair of theta functions to a special value or residue of a Langlands L-function. This cornerstone of what Wee Teck Gan et al. term the Rallis program on the theta correspondence has found wide applications. Rallis then adapted the classical idea of doubling a quadratic space to create the "Piatetski–Shapiro and Rallis Doubling Method" for constructing integral representations of L-functions, and thus they obtained the first general result on L-functions for all classical groups. The 1990 Wolf Prize to Piatetski–Shapiro cites this work with Rallis as one of Piatetski–Shapiro's main achievements. Whereas it had previously been assumed that all the L-functions constructed by the Rankin–Selberg integral method were a subset of those constructed by the Langlands–Shahidi method, the 1992 paper by Rallis with Piatetski-Shapiro and Schiffmann on the Rankin–Selberg integrals for the group G_2 showed this was not the case and opened the way for determining many new examples of L-functions represented by Rankin–Selberg integrals.
Rallis's ideas had a significant and lasting impact on the theory of automorphic forms.[18] His mathematical life was characterized by several long term collaborations with several mathematicians including Stephen Kudla, Herve Jacquet, and Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro. *Wik
2016 Albert Messiah (23 September 1921, Nice – 17 April 2013, Paris) was a French physicist.
He spent the Second World War in the French Resistance: he embarked June 22, 1940 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz to England and participated in the Battle of Dakar with Charles de Gaulle in September 1940. He joined the Free French Forces in Chad, and the 2nd Armored Division in September 1944, and participated in the assault of Hitler's Eagle's nest at Berchtesgaden in 1945.
After the war, he went to Princeton to attend the seminar of Niels Bohr on quantum mechanics. He returned to France and introduced the first general courses of quantum mechanics in France, at the University of Orsay. His textbook on quantum mechanics (Dunod 1959) has trained generations of French physicists.
He was the director of the Physics Division at the CEA and professor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University. *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
