It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs,
but we can't go on without the facts ...
if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly.
Richard Feynman:
The 226th Day of the Year
The iteration of the sum of the squares of the digits leads to one (a happy number). What percentage of base ten numbers have this property? (see below)
The origin of happy numbers is unclear. Reg Allenby (a British author and senior lecturer in pure mathematics at Leeds University) was introduced to them by his daughter, who had learned of them at school. However, according to Richard Guy, they "may have originated in Russia"
226 = 3!3+2!3+1!3 + 0!3 *Derek Orr
The binary expression for 226 has the same number of ones and zeros. There are only 49 such year days, and this is number 46.
226 is one more than a square, and one less than a prime. (Numbers one more than a power, 226=15^2+1 for example, are called Cunningham numbers after English mathematician A. J. C. Cunningham (1842 - 1928).
226 =15^2 + 1^2. So what might you learn from seeing that written as (8+7)^2 + (8-7)^2?
226 has a totally balanced binary expression, with four ones and four zeros.
226 is the tenth centered pentagonal number.
226 = 3!3+2!3+1!3 + 0!3 *Derek Orr
The binary expression for 226 has the same number of ones and zeros. There are only 49 such year days, and this is number 46.
226 is one more than a square, and one less than a prime. (Numbers one more than a power, 226=15^2+1 for example, are called Cunningham numbers after English mathematician A. J. C. Cunningham (1842 - 1928).
226 =15^2 + 1^2. So what might you learn from seeing that written as (8+7)^2 + (8-7)^2?
226 has a totally balanced binary expression, with four ones and four zeros.
226 is the tenth centered pentagonal number.
About happy numbers: It seems that the answer is surprisingly complex! Happy numbers don't have a well-defined density or percentage. Justin Gilmer proved that the lower density of happy numbers is below 12 percent and the upper density is above 18 percent *Scientific American.
This means that as you look at larger and larger ranges of numbers, the percentage of happy numbers oscillates between these bounds without converging to a single value.
EVENTS
The Eclipse of 2024bfrom Paducah, Ky
1003 al-Biruni observed two lunar eclipses from Gurgān,(Azerbaijan) one on 19 February and the other on 14 August. On 4 June of the following year, 1004, he observed a third lunar eclipse. *Encylopedia . com
A more recent eclipse photo from 2009
1612 Galileo explains his new method of observing the sun in his second letter to Marc Welser:
… I shall now describe the method of drawing the spots with complete accuracy. This was discovered, as I hinted in my other letter, by a pupil of mine, a monk of Cassino named Benedetto Castelli. …
The method is this: Direct the telescope upon the sun as if you were going to observe that body. Having focused and steadied it, expose a flat white sheet of paper about a foot from the concave lens; upon this will fall a circular image of the sun's disk, with all the spots that are on it arranged and disposed with exactly the same symmetry as in the sun. The more the paper is moved away from the tube, the larger this image will become, and the better the spots will be depicted. Thus they will be seen without damage to the eye, even the smallest of them — which, when observed through the telescope, can scarcely be perceived, and only with fatigue and injury to the eyes.”
Previously he had only observed the sun directly near sunrise or sunset. *Galileo's Sunspot Letters at sdsu.edu/
The method is this: Direct the telescope upon the sun as if you were going to observe that body. Having focused and steadied it, expose a flat white sheet of paper about a foot from the concave lens; upon this will fall a circular image of the sun's disk, with all the spots that are on it arranged and disposed with exactly the same symmetry as in the sun. The more the paper is moved away from the tube, the larger this image will become, and the better the spots will be depicted. Thus they will be seen without damage to the eye, even the smallest of them — which, when observed through the telescope, can scarcely be perceived, and only with fatigue and injury to the eyes.”
Previously he had only observed the sun directly near sunrise or sunset. *Galileo's Sunspot Letters at sdsu.edu/
1659 In a letter from Fermat to Carcavi - Fermat claimed to be able to prove the following five theorems by the method of infinite descent:
(1) The area of a right-angled triangle whose sides are integers cannot be a square number.
(2) The equation x^3 + y^3 = z^3 has no solutions in integers.
(3) The equation y^2 + 2 = x^3 admits no solutions in integers except x = 3, y = 5. **see below
(4) The equation y^2 + 4 = x^3 admits no solutions in integers except x = 2, y = 2 and x = 5, y = 11.
(5) Each prime number of the form p = 4n + 1 is uniquely expressible as the sum of two squares.
He ends his letter to Carcavi as follows:-
Here you have a summary account of my dreams on the subject of numbers. I have only written it because I fear I will lack the leisure to fully express myself and to lay out the entirety of my demonstrations and methods; in any case, this outline will serve the savants to be able to prove for themselves that which I have not filled out, especially if MM de Carcavi and Frenicle give them some demonstrations by descent that I have sent them on the subject of some negative propositions. And perhaps posterity will be thankful for my having let them know that which the Ancients did not ... *SAU
** The right triangle theorem in number three is the only known complete proof of any of Fermat's "theorems". During his lifetime, Fermat challenged several other mathematicians to prove the non-existence of a Pythagorean triangle with square area, but did not publish the proof himself. However, he wrote a proof in his copy of Bachet's Diophantus, which his son discovered and published posthumously
.
1797 Caroline Herschel, having observed her eighth comet, took the extra measure of riding from Slough to Greenwich to notify Astronomer Royal Maskelyne . A nice article about this event is at The Guardian Web page.
"She reported that “with only the preparation of one hour’s sleep” after her night of observing, she had ridden nearly 30 miles – despite “having in the course of five years never rode above two miles at a time” – to reach the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and the Astronomer Royal. Maskelyne greeted the news with enthusiasm and urged her to call on Banks to tell him personally."
She moved from Germany to England in 1772 to join William in Bath, where she initially helped him with his musical career. However, she soon became involved in his astronomical work, assisting with telescope construction and observations. Caroline had originally gone to England to pursue a career as a singer, but William's growing passion for astronomy gradually drew her into the field as well. She became not just an assistant but an accomplished astronomer in her own right, eventually discovering several comets and becoming the first woman to receive a salary for scientific work in England.
1894 “The first summer meeting of the American Mathematical Society was held in one of the lecture-rooms of the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y.” Only ten papers were presented! The meeting lasted two days; August 15 was the second. *VFR
This was on a Tuesday and Wednesday of the week to immediately precede the dates of the meeting of The American Association for the Advancement of Science. Thomas Friske's papers indicate this was not only the first summer meeting, it was the first meeting ever under the AMS name. The New York Association had dissolved and reformed itself into the AMS.
The following papers were presented :
1. Theorems in the calculus of enlargement. Dr. Emory
McOlintock, New York, N. Y.
2. A method for calculating simultaneously all the roots of
an equation. Dr. Emory McOlintock, New York, N. Y.
3. Elliptic functions and the Cartesian curve. Professor
Frank Morley, Haverford, Pa.
4. Concerning the definition by a system of functional
properties of the function f\z) = sin 7tz . Professor E. Hastings
Moore, Chicago, 111.
5. Bertrand's paradox and the non-euclidean geometry»
Professor George Bruce Halsted, Austin, Texas.
6. Analytical theory of the errors of interpolated values
from numerical tables. Professor R. S. Woodward, New
York, N. Y.
7. Upon the problem of the minimum sum of the distances
of a point from given points. Professor V. Schlegel, Hagen,
Germany.
8. On the fundamental laws of algebra. Professor Alexander
Macfarlane, Austin, Texas.
9. About cube numbers whose sum is a cube number. Dr.
Artemas Martin, Washington, D.O.
10. Reduction of the resultant of a binary quadric and w-ic
by virtue of its semicombinant property. Professor Henry S.
White, Evanston, 111.
In the absence of their authors, paper No. 7 was presented
by Professor Hyde, paper No. 9 by the Secretary, and No. 10
by Professor Ziwet.
*Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
In 1894, the first wireless transmission of information using Morse code was demonstrated by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the British Association at Oxford. A message was transmitted about 150 yards (50-m) from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the University Museum. However, as he later wrote in his Work of Hertz and Some of his Successors, the idea did not occur to Lodge at the time that this might be developed into long-distance telegraphy. "Stupidly enough, no attempt was made to apply any but the feeblest power, so as to test how far the disturbance could really be detected." Nevertheless this demonstration predated the work of Guglielmo Marconi, who began his experiments in 1896.*TIS
Lodge, (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures.
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| The drawing which accompanied the article |
1901 Gustave Albin Whitehead claims that he flew a powered machine successfully several times in 1901 and 1902, predating the first flights by the Wright Brothers in 1903.
Much of Whitehead's reputation rests on a newspaper article which was written as an eyewitness report and describes his powered and sustained flight in Connecticut on 14 August 1901. *Wik
The historical consensus strongly rejects Gustave Whitehead's claims. The Royal Aeronautical Society and Scientific American both conclude that "All available evidence fails to support the claim that Gustave Whitehead made sustained, powered, controlled flights predating those of the Wright brothers."
1912 Why didn't someone warn us sooner??? A newspaper clipping from 1912 that anticipates the global warming potential of burning coal is authentic and consistent with the history of climate science.
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@rainmaker1973 |
1940 John Atanasoff finishes a paper describing the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or ABC, the computer he designed with Clifford Berry to solve simultaneous linear equations. Atanasoff was only able to claim credit for this paper and title of inventor of the electronic digital computer after a long court battle that ended in 1972. The case - initiated on a charge by Honeywell Inc. that Sperry Rand. Corp. had enforced a fraudulent patent - involved lengthy testimony by Atanasoff and ENIAC inventors Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who held the patent under review. A judge's ruling that Atanasoff was the true inventor led to invalidation of the ENIAC patent.
A working replica of the original ABC was completed in 1997 by staff and volunteers at Iowa State University at Ames. *CHM
A working replica of the original ABC was completed in 1997 by staff and volunteers at Iowa State University at Ames. *CHM
The Atanasoff–Berry computer was the first automatic electronic digital computer. Limited by the technology of the day, and execution, the device has remained somewhat obscure. The ABC's priority is debated among historians of computer technology, because it was neither programmable, nor Turing-complete.
2012 A bit after 2:29 pm EDT, the U. S. Census Bureau said that the United States reached 314,159,265 residents.
Notice this is approximately pi * 100,000,000 .
*Hat tip to Tyler Clark, AMS Graduate Student Blog
Notice this is approximately pi * 100,000,000 .
*Hat tip to Tyler Clark, AMS Graduate Student Blog
"Make room for one more!!!"
1530 Giovanni Battista Benedetti (14 August, 1530 - 20 June 1598) He was taught only by his father, by Tartaglia, and as he says in his writing, "N Tartaglia taught me only the first four books of Euclid, all the rest I learned by myself with great care and study. Nothing is difficult to him who would be learned." (A poster for every teachers wall). He demonstrated the classic constructions using only a "broken compass"; a compass of a fixed opening. Interestingly this was a challenge problem from Tartaglia to Cardan and Ferrari. Benedetti had a very low opinion of Tartaglia, perhaps because he had been his student during the loss of face duel with Ferrarri in which he left before the problems were finished. He also wrote before Galileo on the mechanics of free-fall.
1645 Siguenza y Gongora (August 14, 1645 – August 22, 1700) was a Mexican astronomer and philosopher.*SAU was one of the first great intellectuals born in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. A polymath and writer, he held many colonial government and academic positions. In 1691, he prepared the first-ever map of all of New Spain. He also drew hydrologic maps of the Valley of Mexico. In 1692 King Charles II named him official geographer for the colony. As royal geographer, he participated in the 1692 expedition to Pensacola Bay, Florida under command of Andrés de Pez, to seek out defensible frontiers against French encroachment. He mapped Pensacola Bay and the mouth of the Mississippi: in 1693*Wik
1737 Charles Hutton (14 August 1737 – 27 January 1823) was an English mathematician who wrote arithmetic textbooks. A textbook he wrote while at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich was later adopted as the first math text by the USMA in West Point, NY an d served as the principal math text for two decades. Hutton was working in the coal mines near Newcastle. From there he rose to be influential in English mathematics and history. His Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary created the confusion in the meanings of trapezoid and trapezium .
"However, in 1795 a Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary by Charles Hutton (1737-1823) appeared with the definitions of the two terms reversed: Trapezium...a plane figure contained under four right lines, of which both the opposite pairs are not parallel. When this figure has two of its sides parallel to each other, it is sometimes called a trapezoid. No previous use of the words with Hutton's definitions is known. Nevertheless, the newer meanings of the two words now prevail in U. S. but not necessarily in Great Britain (OED2)."
1777 Hans Christian Oersted (14 Aug 1777, 9 Mar 1851 at age 73) Danish physicist and chemist whose discovery (1820) that an electric current in a wire causes a nearby magnetized compass needle to deflect, indicating the electric current in a wire induces a magnetic field around it, marks the starting point for the development of electromagnetic theory. For this, he can be called “the father of electromagnetism,” for which his name was adopted for the magnetic field strength in the CGS system of units (for which the SI system now uses the henry unit). Philosophically, he had believed nature's forces had a common origin. Oersted was the first to isolate aluminum as a metal (1825). He also made the first accurate determination of the compressibility of water (1822). Late in his career, he researched diamagnetism. In his final years, he turned back to philosophy, and started writing The Soul in Nature. *TIS
1842 Jean-Gaston Darboux, born (August 14, 1842, Nîmes – February 23, 1917, Paris) . French mathematician whose work on partial differential equations introduced a new method of integration (the Darboux integral) and contributed to infinitesimal geometry. He wrote a paper in 1870 on differential equations of the second order in which he presented the Darboux integral. In 1873, Darboux wrote a paper on cyclides and between 1887-96 he produced four volumes on infinitesimal geometry, including a discussion of one surface rolling on another surface. In particular he studied the geometrical configuration generated by points and lines which are fixed on the rolling surface. He also studied the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a surface. *TIS
Among his students were Émile Borel, Élie Cartan, Édouard Goursat, Émile Picard, Gheorghe Țițeica and Stanisław Zaremba.
By 1911, Marie Curie was already world-famous — the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (1903, in Physics) and about to win her second (1911, in Chemistry). She sought election to the Académie des Sciences, an institution that had never before admitted a woman.
Her candidacy was championed by several scientists who recognized her groundbreaking work, but it faced fierce opposition from more traditional members, who argued that a woman should not enter the Academy. The debate became public and was tangled up with sexist attitudes, anti-Polish and even anti-Semitic press campaigns (partly fueled by the simultaneous scandal over her affair with Paul Langevin).
Gaston Darboux, who by then was a highly respected elder statesman of French mathematics and the permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences, spoke and voted in favor of Marie Curie.
As secretary, Darboux had a measure of influence over how candidates were presented and how the vote was framed. He defended the scientific merit of her candidacy, emphasizing that Curie’s research on radioactivity was of historic significance and that the Academy’s decision should rest solely on scientific contributions, not gender or nationality.
Unfortunately, despite Darboux’s support and that of others like Paul Appell, Henri Poincaré (who died before the actual vote but had supported her), and Emile Borel, Curie lost the 1911 election by just two votes to Édouard Branly, an older and more conservative physicist known for his work on radio waves.
Gaston Darboux’s support didn’t succeed in getting Curie elected, but it set a precedent for a gradual change in attitudes. The French Academy did not elect a woman until 1962 — more than half a century later — but Darboux’s principled stance is remembered as one of the early signs of resistance to that exclusionary tradition. *PB
1850 Walter William Rouse Ball born in London. (14 August 1850 – 4 April 1925) a British mathematician, lawyer and a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1878 to 1905. He was also a keen amateur magician, and the founding president of the Cambridge Pentacle Club in 1919, one of the world's oldest such societies.*Wik Rouse Ball wrote A short account of the history of mathematics (1888) which provided a very readable and popular account of the subject. The fourth edition of 1908 was reprinted in 1960. He was also the author of the very popular Mathematical Recreations and Essays first published in 1892 which has run to fourteen editions (the last four being revised by H S M Coxeter).*SAU
1865 Guido Castelnuovo, (14 August 1865 – 27 April 1952) Italian algebraic geometer born. When Jewish students were barred from the state universities in the 1930’s, Castelnuovo organized courses for them. *VFR His father, Enrico Castelnuovo, was a novelist and campaigner for the unification of Italy. Castelnuovo is best known for his contributions to the field of algebraic geometry, though his contributions to the study of statistics and probability are also significant.*Wik He studied under Veronese and followed Cremona as the Advanced Geometry teacher in Rome.
1866 Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas de la Vallée Poussin (14 August 1866 - 2 March 1962) was a Belgian mathematician. He is most well known for proving the Prime number theorem. This states that π(x), the number of primes ≤ x, tends to x/Ln(x) as x tends to infinity. (actually by this time the method of attack involved the use of Li(n), the logarithmic integral as described by Gauss).
The prime number theorem had been conjectured in the 18th century, but in 1896 two mathematicians independently proved the result, namely Hadamard (whose proof was much simpler) and Vallée Poussin. The first major contribution to proving the result was made by Chebyshev in 1848, then the proof was outlined by Riemann in 1851. The clue to two independent proofs being produced at the same time is that the necessary tools in complex analysis had not been developed until that time. In fact the solution of this major open problem was one of the major motivations for the development of complex analysis during the period from 1851 to 1896.
The king of Belgium ennobled him with the title of baron. *SAU
1867 Charles Albert Noble (August 14, 1867–May 7,1962) was an American mathematician, professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Noble was a son of a farmer from the county of Santa Cruz, South of San Francisco Bay, but since he did not like agricultural work, he went to live with an older sister to San Francisco where he completed his secondary education. He enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley where he graduated in sciences in 1889. He then became a professor of mathematics at the Oakland High School. In 1893, wanting to obtain a doctorate in mathematics, he went to Europe to study at the Göttingen University with Felix Klein and David Hilbert. In 1896, he returned to San Francisco and he was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1901, he defended his doctoral thesis at Göttingen, under the direction of Hilbert.
Noble was a fellow in mathematics, instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, professor, from 1896 to 1937, at Berkeley until his retirement in 1937. During the period 1933–34 he was the chairman of the mathematics department of the university and professor emeritus, 1937–1962.
Along with Earle Raymond Hedrick, another American doctorate in Göttingen, Noble published a translation into English of the book by Klein Elementary Mathematics from an advanced standpoint, in two volumes (1932 and 1939), that had a significant influence on the development of the American mathematical community.
Noble was also very interested in mathematics pedagogy and in 1926 he made a trip to Germany to investigate the teaching system of mathematics in schools. His work was published in 1927 in the journal of the Mathematical Association of America, The American Mathematical Monthly. He had been, in 1901, one of the founders of the San Francisco section of this association.
1886 Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (14 August, 1886 -11 Mar 1950)Canadian-American physicist who in 1918 built the first mass spectrometer (based on the invention of Francis W. Aston) and discovered isotope uranium-235 (1935). The mass spectrometer is an instrument that uses electric and magnetic fields to separate and measure a sample's atoms according to their mass and relative quantity. In 1935, he discovered that naturally occurring uranium, though mostly uranium-238, contained 0.7% U-235 (later used as the primary fuel in atomic bombs and reactors after Niels Bohr predicted it could be used to produce a chain reaction releasing huge amounts of nuclear fission energy). During WW II, Dempster worked with the secret Manhattan Project that developed the world's first nuclear weapons.*TIS
1888 Julio Rey Pastor (14 August 1888 – 21 February 1962) was a Spanish mathematician and historian of science. Rey proposed the creation of a "seminar in mathematics to arouse the research spirit of our school children.” His proposal was accepted and in 1915 the JAE created the Mathematics Laboratory and Seminar, an important institution for the development of research on this field in Spain.
In 1951, he was appointed director of the Instituto Jorge Juan de Matemáticas in the CSIC. His plans in Spain included two projects: the creation, within the CSIC, of an Institute of Applied Mathematics, and the foundation of a Seminar on the History of Science at the university. *Wik
1904 Léon Rosenfeld (14 August 1904 – 23 March 1974) was a Belgian physicist. He obtained a PhD at the University of Liège in 1926, and he was a collaborator of the physicist Niels Bohr. He did early work in quantum electrodynamics that predates by two decades the work by Dirac and Bergmann. He coined the name lepton. In 1949 Léon Rosenfeld was awarded the Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences. *Wik "The mind is able to build any constellation of concepts"
1906 Eugene Lukacs (14 August 1906 – 21 December 1987) was a Hungarian statistician born in Szombathely, notable for his work in characterization of distributions, stability theory, and being the author of Characteristic Functions, a classic textbook in the field.
In 1953 Eugene joined the Office of Naval Research (ONR) USA, and became the director of Statistics. While at ONR he also taught at American University in Washington, D.C.
Lukacs joined the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. in 1955. There he organized the Statistical Laboratory in 1959 and became its first and only director. Researchers at the Statistical Laboratory included Edward Batschlet, Tatsuo Kawata, Radha Laha, M. Masuyama and Vijay Rohatgi, and many distinguished visitors.
*Wik
1922 Sophie Willock Bryant (15 February 1850, Sandymount, Dublin, – 14 August 1922, Chamonix, France) was an Anglo-Irish mathematician, educator, feminist and activist. She was the first woman to receive a DSc in England; one of the first to serve on a Royal Commission and on the Senate of the University of London.
Bryant was born Sophie Willock in Dublin in 1850. Her father was Revd Dr William Willock DD, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin. She was educated at home, largely by her father. As a teenager she moved to London, when her father was appointed Professor of Geometry at the University of London in 1863, and she attended Bedford College. At the age of nineteen she married Dr William Hicks Bryant, a surgeon ten years older than she was, who died of cirrhosis within a year.
In 1875 Bryant became a teacher and was invited by Frances Mary Buss to join the staff of North London Collegiate School. In 1895 she succeeded Miss Buss as headmistress of North London Collegiate, serving until 1918.
When the University of London opened its degree courses to women in 1878, she started attending. In 1881, she became one of the first women to obtain a First Class Honours degree, in her case a BSc, in the first year that a British university awarded degrees to women. This was in Mental and Moral Sciences (Philosophy). She was awarded second class honours in mathematics. In 1884, she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science in Mental and Moral Sciences. In 1882 she was the third woman to be elected to the London Mathematical Society, and was the first active female member, publishing her first paper with the Society in 1884. Together with Charles Smith, Bryant edited three volumes of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, for the use of schools (Euclid's Elements of Geometry, books I and II (1897); Euclid's Elements of Geometry, books III and IV (1899); Euclid's Elements of Geometry, books VI and IX (1901)).
While in London, she was a member of the London Ethical Society, an early humanist community which advocated moral living independent of religion. She was interested in Irish politics, wrote books on Irish history and ancient Irish law (Celtic Ireland (1889), The Genius of the Gael (1913)), and was an ardent Irish nationalist from a Protestant family background. She was president of the Irish National Literary Society in 1914. She supported women's suffrage but advocated postponement until women were better educated. She serve on consultative committees of the national Board of Education with other suffragists like Isabel Cleghorn.
Bryant loved physical activity and the outdoors. She rowed, cycled, and
swam, and twice climbed the Matterhorn. She died in a hiking accident in the Alps in 1922, aged 72.
1933 Richard Robert Ernst (14 August 1933 – 4 June 2021) was a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel laureate.
Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy while at Varian Associates and ETH Zurich. These underpin applications to both to chemistry with NMR spectroscopy and to medicine with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
He humbly referred to himself as a "tool-maker" rather than a scientist. *Wik
As NMR spectroscopy developed into on of the most important instrumental measuring technique within chemistry, Ernst continued to improve both the sensitivity and the resolution of the instrument. NMR spectroscopy is now applied to determination of molecular structure in solution, to study interactions between different molecules (ex. enzyme/substrate, soap/water), to investigate molecular motion, to get information on the rate of chemical reactions and many other problems in chemistry, physics, biology and medicine.*TiS
1959 Peter Williston Shor (August 14, 1959; New York, NY - ) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT, most famous for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer.
While attending Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California, he placed third in the 1977 USA Mathematical Olympiad. After graduating that year, he won a silver medal at the International Math Olympiad in Yugoslavia (the U.S. team achieved the most points per country that year). He received his B.S. in Mathematics in 1981 for undergraduate work at Caltech, and was a Fellow of William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition in 1978. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 1985. His doctoral advisor was Tom Leighton, and his thesis was on probabilistic analysis of bin-packing algorithms.
After graduating, he spent one year in a post-doctoral position at the University of California at Berkeley, and then accepted a position at Bell Laboratories. It was there he developed Shor's algorithm, for which he was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998. Shor always refers to Shor's Algorithm as "the Factoring Algorithm."
Shor began his MIT position in 2003. Currently the Henry Adams Morss and Henry Adams Morss, Jr. Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at MIT, he also is affiliated with CSAIL and the Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP).
He received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Caltech in 2007*Wik
While attending Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California, he placed third in the 1977 USA Mathematical Olympiad. After graduating that year, he won a silver medal at the International Math Olympiad in Yugoslavia (the U.S. team achieved the most points per country that year). He received his B.S. in Mathematics in 1981 for undergraduate work at Caltech, and was a Fellow of William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition in 1978. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 1985. His doctoral advisor was Tom Leighton, and his thesis was on probabilistic analysis of bin-packing algorithms.
After graduating, he spent one year in a post-doctoral position at the University of California at Berkeley, and then accepted a position at Bell Laboratories. It was there he developed Shor's algorithm, for which he was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998. Shor always refers to Shor's Algorithm as "the Factoring Algorithm."
Shor began his MIT position in 2003. Currently the Henry Adams Morss and Henry Adams Morss, Jr. Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at MIT, he also is affiliated with CSAIL and the Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP).
He received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Caltech in 2007*Wik
1795 George Adams Jr. (1750– August 14, 1795), continued his father's work with his younger brother Dudley, publishing an Essay on Vision (1789) and Astronomical and Geometrical Essays (1789) and succeeding his father as Instrument Maker to King George II and the British East India Company. Born in Southampton he was later appointed Optician to the Prince of Wales. His instruments included barometers, microscopes, orreries, sectors, telescopes, and a variety of electrical appliances. He also made geographical globes. Wik
1886 Edmond Nicolas Laguerre, (April 9, 1834, Bar-le-Duc – August 14, 1886, Bar-le-Duc) studied approximation methods and is best remembered for the special functions: the Laguerre polynomials.*SAU
He also investigated orthogonal polynomials (see Laguerre polynomials). Laguerre's method is a root-finding algorithm tailored to polynomials. He laid the foundations of a geometry of oriented spheres (Laguerre geometry and Laguerre plane), including the Laguerre transformation or transformation by reciprocal directions.*Wik
1858 George Combe (21 Oct 1788- 14 Aug 1858) Scottish lawyer who turned to the promotion of phrenology and published several works on the subject. He followed Johann Spurzheim who coined the word "phrenology" and promoted it in Europe and Britain, elaborating on "cranioscopy" he learned from Franz Josef Gall in Paris. Gall was a French physician who identified a number of areas on the surface of the head that he linked with specific localizations of cerebral functions and the underlying attributes of the human personality. Combe established the first infant school in Edinburgh and gave evening
lectures. He studied the criminal classes and lunatic asylums wishing to reform them. Andrew Combe, physiologist, was his younger brother. *TIS phrenology was commonly accepted in the 19th and early 20th century. The device pictured here was used to measure the characteristics of the skull for phrenology. *CabinetOfCuriosities @wunderkamercast1930 Florian Cajori (28 Feb 1859 - 14 Aug 1930)Swiss-born U.S. educator and mathematician whose works on the history of mathematics were among the most eminent of his time.*TIS at times Cajori's work lacked the scholarship which one would expect of such an eminent scientist, we must not give too negative an impression of this important figure. He almost single-handedly created the history of mathematics as an academic subject in the United States and, particularly with his book on the history of mathematical notation, he is still one of the most quoted historians of mathematics today. *SAU
1958 Frederic Joliot-Curie (19 Mar 1900 - 14 August, 1958) French physical chemist, husband of Irène Joliot-Curie, who were jointly awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discovery of artificially prepared, radioactive isotopes of new elements. They were the son-in-law and daughter of Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie.*TIS
1967 Jovan Karamata (February 1, 1902–August 14, 1967) was one of the greatest Serbian mathematicians of the 20th century. He is remembered for contributions to analysis, in particular, the Tauberian theory and the theory of slowly varying functions. Karamata was one of the founders of the Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1946. *Wik
1987 Shigeo Sasaki (18 November 1912 Yamagata Prefecture, Japan – 14 August 1987 Tokyo) was a Japanese mathematician working on differential geometry who introduced Sasaki manifolds. He retired from Tohoku University's Mathematical Institute in April 1976.*Wiki
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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
