All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;
the point is to discover them.
~Galileo Galilei
The 163rd day of the year; (e(
*sqrt(163))) is an integer. Ok, not quite, see the bottom of the blog for details. *Prime Curios 1644 Florentine scientist, Evangelista Torricelli described in a letter (to Michelangelo Ricci) the invention of a barometer, or "Torricellian tube."
"Many have said that a vacuum does not exist, others that it does exist in spite of the repugnance of nature and with difficulty; I know of no one who has said that it exists without difficulty and without a resistance from nature. I argued thus: If there can be found a manifest cause from which the resistance can be derived which is felt if we try to make a vacuum, it seems to me foolish to try to attribute to vacuum those operations which follow evidently from some other cause; and so by making some very easy calculations, I found that the cause assigned by me (that is, the weight of the atmosphere) ought by itself alone to offer a greater resistance than it does when we try to produce a vacuum."1742, Benjamin Franklin invented the Franklin stove. The wood fuel burns on an iron surface over a cold air duct which heats air which then passes through baffles in the back wall. The heated air is released through vents on each side of the stove. Rather than patent it, he chose to write about it in a book so that others could freely copy his design. As he wrote, "That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."*TIS
1929 Walt Disney files a trademark application for the image of Mickey Mouse with the United States Patent Office.
1955 France issued a postage stamp with a portrait of
Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749–1827)
BIRTHS
1656 Charles René Reyneau (11 June 1656 in Brissac, Maine-et-Loire, France - 24 Feb 1728 in Paris, France) was a French mathematician who published an influential textbook on the newly invented calculus.*SAU (He) "undertook to reduce into one body, for the use of his scholars, the principal theories scattered here and there in Newton, Descartes, Leibnitz, Bernoulli, the Leipsic Acts, the Memoirs of the Paris Academy, and in other works; treasures which by being so widely dispersed, proved much less useful than they otherwise might have been. The fruit of this undertaking, was his “Analyse Demontree,” or Analysis Demonstrated, which he published in 1708, 2 vols. 4to. He gave it the name of “Analysis Demonstrated,” because he demonstrates in it several methods which had not been handled by the authors of them, with sufficient perspicuity and exactness. The book was so well approved, that it soon became a maxim, at least in France, that to follow him was the best, if not the only way, to make any extraordinary progress in the mathematics and he was considered as the first master, as the Euclid of the sublime geometry." (From the 1812 Chalmer's Biography, vol. 26, p. 151)1723 Johann Georg Palitzsch (June 11, 1723 – February 21, 1788) was born. As a German farmer and amateur astronomer from the village of Prohlis near Dresden, he would observe a comet on Christmas day in 1758 and confirm one of the most significant scientific theories in history. See the full story of his Christmas/birthday observation from Thony Christie.
1862 Lothar Heffter (June 11th 1862 in Koszalin , January 1 1962 in Freiburg )At the age of 99 he published the second edition of his Begr¨undung der Funktionentheorie. *VFR He did research in the theory of linear differential equations , the complex analysis and analytic geometry and worked on the four-color problem. Lazarus Fuchs was his teacher. His main concern was the popularization of mathematics.
1886 David Barnard Steinman (June 11, 1886 - August 21, 1960) Designer of the BIG MAC Bridge between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan (above). American engineer whose studies of airflow and wind velocity helped make possible the design of aerodynamically stable bridges. Steinman's thesis for his Ph.D. from Colombia University (1911) was published as "The Design of the Henry Hudson Memorial Bridge as a Steel Arch, and more than 20 years later he built the bridge he had planned over the Harlem River. Steinman designed more than 400 bridges, for instance Sidney Harbor Bridge in Australia, Mackinac Straits Bridge, Carquinez Strait Bridge, San Francisco (1937), Saint Johns Bridge, Portland, Ore, Deer Isle Bridge, Maine, Mount Hope Bridge, Rhode Island. *TIS
DEATHS
1292 Roger Bacon (Ilchester, Somersetshire, about 1214 - Oxford, perhaps 11 June, 1294) English scholar who was one of the first to propose mathematics and experimentation as appropriate methods of science. He studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchemy, and languages. He elucidated the principles of refraction, reflection, and spherical aberration, and described spectacles, which soon thereafter came into use. He developed many mathematical results concerning lenses, proposed mechanically propelled ships, carriages, and flying machines, and used a camera obscura to observe eclipses of the Sun. Bacon was the first European give a detailed description of the process of making gunpowder.*TIS1895 Daniel Kirkwood (September 27, 1814 - June 11, 1895) American mathematician and astronomer who noted in about 1860 that there were several zones of low density in the minor-planet population. These gaps in the distribution of asteroid distances from the Sun are now known as Kirkwood gaps. He explained the gaps as resulting from perturbations by Jupiter. An object that revolved in one of the gaps would be disturbed regularly by the planet's gravitational pull and eventually would be moved to another orbit. Thus gaps appeared in the distribution of asteroids where the orbital period of any small body present would be a simple fraction of that of Jupiter. Kirwood showed that a similar effect accounted for gaps in Saturns rings.*TIS
1931 Franklin H(enry) Giddings (March 23, 1855 – June 11, 1931) American sociologist, one of the first in the United States to turn sociology from a branch of philosophy into a research science dependent on statistics. He was noted for his doctrine of the "consciousness of kind," which he derived from Adam Smith's conception of "sympathy," or shared moral reactions. His explanation of social phenomena was based this doctrine - his theory that each person has an innate sense of belonging to particular social groups. He encouraged statistical studies in sociology. *TIS
1934 Friedrich Wilhelm Franz Meyer (2 Sept 1856 in Magdeburg, Germany - 11 June 1934 in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) studied algebraic geometry, algebraic curves and invariant theory. *SAU
*** Actually, it is approximately 262537412640768743.9999999999992
In the April 1975 issue of Scientific American, Martin Gardner wrote (jokingly) that Ramanujan's constant (e^(
*sqrt(163))) is an integer. The name "Ramanujan's constant" was actually coined by Simon Plouffe and derives from the above April Fool's joke played by Gardner. The French mathematician Charles Hermite (1822-1901) observed this property of 163 long before Ramanujan's work on these so-called "almost integers."Credits
*CHM=Computer History Museum
*FFF=Kane, Famous First Facts
*NSEC= NASA Solar Eclipse Calendar
*SAU=St Andrews Univ. Math History
*TIS= Today in Science History
*VFR = V Frederick Rickey, USMA
*Wik = Wikipedia
*WM = Women of Mathematics, Grinstein & Campbell
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