Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfillment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.
~Salomon Bochner
The 232nd day of the year; 232 is the maximum number of regions that the plane can be divided into with 21 lines (how many of the regions would be of infinite area?)
And from Derek Orr
232 is sum of the cubes of the factorials of its digits,
232 = (2!)3 + (3!)3 + (2!)3
and the sum of the first 11 Fibonacci numbers
232 = 1+1+2+3+5+8+13+21+34+55+89
If you add up all the proper divisors of a number, n, they can be less than n(deficient), equal to n (perfect, like 6 or 28) or abundant. 12 is the smallest abundant number. Nicomachus wrote only of even numbers because he thought all odd numbers were deficient, but he was wrong. The 232nd abundant number is odd, 945.
1638 William Oughtred writes to instrument maker Elias Allen with instructions for the first physical pair of slide rules using his method. Oughtred had invented the rules as early as 1620, and definitely written about them by 1633, but as he says in the opening of his letter, he had never made one before: “I have here sent you directions (as you requested me being at Twickenham) about the making of the two rulers”. He would continue, “would gladly see one of [the two parts of the instrument] when it is finished: wch yet I never have done”. The slide rule that Allen created seems no longer to exist, but a reverse image printed from the rule, perhaps to show to Oughtred still remains.
Oughtred's method used two rules with logarithmic scales that were positioned so that one slid against the other. Within two decades, the first slide rule with the scales bound together was created by Robert Bissaker. This is the oldest slide rule still existing today and is in the Science Museum, London.
1699 Newton's name introduced outside the Cambridge area. In 1669 Barrow had brought Newton a copy of Nicholas Mercator's Logarithmotechnia, which included the infinite series for ln(1+x). Newton recognized this as a simple example of his more general work on infinite series during his annus mirabilis in Woolsthorpe. Newton began to share some of his work with Barrow, who talked him into allowing him to send some of it, anonymously, to John Collins, which he did. When Collins highly favorable responses were received, Newton allowed Barrow to identify him to Collins. Barrow's letter to Collins on this date was the first time Newton became known to the mathematical community outside Cambridge. *James Gleick, Isaac Newton
1858 The Darwin-Wallace paper was read before the Linnean Society July 1st, 1858 and published in their Proceedings Vol 3 1858. pp 45-62. on this day.
"On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" ; By Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S.., & F.G.S., and Alfred Wallace, Esq. Communicated by Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., F.L.S., and J.D. Hooker, Esq., M.D., V.P.R.S., F.L.S., &c. *Linnean Society
1910 Florence Nightengale was buried on 20 August in the family plot at East Wellow, Hampshire. An offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was refused by her relatives. She died one week earlier. *Victorian Web Org
1955 Observances were held on the Island of Samos commemorating the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the first school of philosophy by Pythagoras. Four postage stamps were issued by Greece. Naturally one of them illustrated the celebrated 47th proposition of Euclid, the Pythagorean Theorem, by a 3–4–5 triangle with squares erected on its sides.
1960 Two mongrel dogs, Belka(Little Squirrel) and Strelka(Little Arrow) became the first living creatures to perform a space flight and return safely to Earth. Korabl-Sputnik-2 (Spaceship Satellite-2), also known as Sputnik 5, was launched on August 19, 1960. Also on board were 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants.
After a day in orbit, the spacecraft's retrorocket was fired and the landing capsule and the dogs were safely recovered. They were the first living animals to survive orbital flight. *Space Today Online
1862 Paul Gustav Samuel Stäckel (20 August 1862, Berlin — 12 December 1919, Heidelberg) was a German mathematician, active in the areas of differential geometry, number theory, and non-Euclidean geometry. In the area of prime number theory, he used the term twin prime (Primzahlzwillinge i.e. "prime number twins")for the first time. *Wik
1863 Corrado Segre (20 August 1863, 18 May 1924) was an Italian mathematician who is remembered today as a major contributor to the early development of algebraic geometry.
Segre spent his entire career at the University of Turin, first as a student of Enrico D'Ovidio. In 1883 he published a dissertation on quadrics in projective space and was named as assistant to professors in algebra and analytic geometry. In 1885 he also assisted in descriptive geometry. He began to instruct in projective geometry, as stand-in for Giuseppe Bruno, from 1885 to 88. Then for 36 years he had the chair in higher geometry following D'Ovidio. Segre and Giuseppe Peano made Turin known in geometry.*Wik
1898 Leopold Infeld born (20 August 1898, Kraków – 15 January 1968, Warsaw), He was a Polish theoretical physicist. In 1948 he published Whom the Gods Love, a biographical novel about Evariste Galois. *VFR
He was awarded a doctorate at the Jagiellonian University (1921), worked as an assistant and a docent at the University of Lwów (1930–1933) and then as a professor at the University of Toronto between 1939 and 1950. In 1939 he married Helen Schlauch, an American mathematician and a graduate of Cornell.
He worked together with Albert Einstein at Princeton University (1936–1938). The two scientists co-formulated the equation describing star movements as well as co-wrote a popular science book The Evolution of Physics.
Infeld was one of the 11 signatories to the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955, and is the only signatory never to receive a Nobel Prize. *Wik
1899 Salomon Bochner (20 Aug 1899; 2 May 1982) Galician-born American mathematician and educator responsible for the development of the Bochner theorem of positive-definite functions and the Bochner integral.*TIS
1957 Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson FRS (born 20 August 1957 Cambridge, England - ) In 1986 he received a Fields Medal for his work on the topology of four-manifolds. *VFR Remarkably, Donaldson has solved problems of mathematics by using ideas from physics. From the Yang-Mills generalizations of James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic equations, Donaldson used special solutions to these equations, called instantons, to look at general four-manifolds. After being awarded the Fields Medal, Donaldson continued his exploitation of ideas from physics with applications to mathematics. *TIS
1622 Baha ad-din Muhammad ibn Husayn al-Amili (20 Mar 1546; 20 Aug 1622 at age 76) A Syrian-Iranian theologian, mathematician and astronomer, a.k.a. Shaykh Baha'i). He became a very learned Muslim whose genius touched every field of knowledge from mathematics and philosophy to architecture and landscape design. He revived the study of mathematics in Iran. His treatise on the subject, Khulasat al-hisab (“The Essentials of Arithmetic”), and translations from the original Arabic was in use as a textbook until the end of the 19th century. His treatise in astronomy, Tashrihu'l-aflak ("Anatomy of the Heavens") summarised the works of earlier masters. He was born within a year of William Gilbert in England and Tycho Brahe in Denmark, and was still a child when his family left Syria to escape religious persecution.*TIS
1672 Jan de Witt (September 24, 1625, Dordrecht - August 20, 1672) murdered by a mob from the (William of) Orange faction. For the previous twenty years he served as grand pensionary in Holland, essentially the prime minister of the Netherlands. Consequently this talented mathematician had little time to devote to mathematics. He wrote the first systematic account of the analytic geometry of the straight line and conics. It was published in Van Schooten’s second Latin edition of Descartes’ Geometrie *VFR de Witt and his brother were both killed by a mob which was probably supported by William III of Orange. At the very least, as the Wikipedia articles states, "he protected and rewarded the killers." After a previous attempt on his life, he was lured by a forged letter to the cell where his brother was held, and both were hanged and then their bodies were mutilated. The story of their deaths are a critical element in the plot of Alexander Dumas' "The Black Tulip". *Wik
1677 Pierre Petit (8 Dec 1594 in Montluçon, France - 20 Aug 1677 in Lagny-sur-Marne, France) was a French scientist who had a strong influence on the French government. He was one of Mersenne's collaborators. Petit was an influential figure with important government positions which enabled him to try to influence national science policy. A firm believer, as were the other members of Mersenne's group, of the experimental method rather than the philosophical approach advocated by Descartes, Petit argued strongly for better astronomical facilities in France. He wanted the King to establish a Royal Observatory to allow France to again take a leading role in astronomy. Petit argued that France had fallen behind some other European countries and was relying on observations made in other countries. Petit himself had a fine collection of astronomical instruments and several of these were of his own invention. In particular, late in his life, Petit devised a filar micrometer to measure the diameters of celestial objects such as the Sun, Moon and planets.*SAU
1791 Jacques Charles,(probably 1752, August 20, 1791) Mathematician, born in Cluny, France. He is often confused with the Jacques A. C. Charles who is credited (or mis-credited) with Charles' Law and much of the work of this Jacques Charles. During the Late 18th Century both were active in Paris scientific circles and both were members of the Paris Scientific Academy. They were often distinguished by calling this one Charles the Geometer, and the other Charles the Balloonist since JAC Charles was active in promoting the use of hydrogen balloons and had designed the first balloon that is known to have been used.
This Jacques Charles is also frequently referred to by the historians who are aware of the confusion between them as Charles the Obscure.
Jacques Charles first contact with the Paris Acad of Sci was in a 1770 letter in which he submitted an article on a problem in Algebra at about the age of 18. It was turned down by the academy due to it's elementary level. The address shows that he was living in Cluny at the time. But two years later a second correspondence to the academy is read to the Academy, and Lavosier's minutes list his position as a professor of Mathematics as the school at Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris. It is suspected that this was a preparatory school for young nobles who were training to become engineers that had been located there since the 1760's.
Between 1779 and 1785 Jacques Charles submitted seven articles to the Paris Academy, all of which were deemed worthy of publication, but only the last seemed to merit his admittance to this esteemed group. Condorcet, who was then perpetual secretary of the Academy said that this, as well as his prior papers certainly warranted his admission. It seems that Laplace, who had a conflict with Charles' mentor/sponsor, Bossut, and had been blocking his entry. With some behind the scenes effort by Lavosier had created a new geometry section, he was voted into the Academy on May 11 (often given as May 12).
By 1792 due to the confusion of their names, much of the mathematical work of Charles the Geometer would be credited to Charles the Balloonist and the "Geometer" would become the "obscure". Even the energetic J. C. Poggendorf would miscredit eight papers by the geometer to the other, and in biographies of J. A. C. Charles written even in the 20th century, you will see him credited as a "mathematician" and statements that suggest that "most of his writings were in mathematics." J. B. Gough, writing in an article in Isis in 1979 describes the ballooning Charles as, "nearly a mathematical illiterate."
The confusion between the two men of common names was exacerbated by the timing of this Charles' death. The year 1791 and the problems related to the Revolution made this the Academy of Sciences did not publish a Memoires, and as a result, no eloge's for the members who died in that year. Strangely, this was still four years before the better remembered Charles was admitted to the Academy.
He was buried (according to an old note to Cvomptes Rendes) at St. Germain l'auxerrois, but this seems hard to confirm in the church records. (*J. B. Gough)
Charles was also the Royal Professor of Hydrodynamics, and as such was also inducted into The Academy of Architecture. *Roger Hahn, More Light on Charles the Obscure, Isis, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 83-86
1923 Vilfredo Pareto (15 Jul 1848, 20 Aug 1923) Italian economist and sociologist, known for his application of mathematics to economic analysis and for his theory of the 'circulation of elites'. His initial five-year course in civil engineering, graduating in 1870, gave him a grounding in mathematics. While working as an engineer, he studied philosophy and politics and wrote many periodical articles in which he was one of the first to analyse economic problems with mathematical tools. Pareto's first work, Cours d'economie politique (1896-97), included his famous 'law' of income distribution, a complicated mathematical formulation attempting to prove the distribution of incomes and wealth in society is not random and that a consistent pattern appears throughout history, in all parts of the world and in all societies. *TIS Pareto's Law was not created by him, but named in honor of him. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Pareto, who had observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. *Wik
1930 Herbert Hall Turner (13 Aug 1861, 20 Aug 1930) English astronomer who pioneered many of the procedures now universally employed in determining stellar positions from astronomical photographs. After serving as chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory for nine years, he spent most of his career as Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University. One of the leaders in the worldwide effort to produce an astrographic chart of the sky, he developed improved methods for obtaining both positions and magnitudes from photographic plates. Most of his later work was in seismology; he compiled and published worldwide earthquake data starting in 1918, and he discovered the existence of deep-focus earthquakes in 1922. *TIS
1972 Carol (Vander Velde)Karp (10 August 1926, Forest Grove, Ottawa County, Michigan – 20 August 1972, Maryland) died of breast cancer. At the time she was at the height of her career in logic. She received her Ph.D. in 1959 from Southern California under the direction of Leon Henkin. She created the field of Infinitary Logics which studies logics such as Lω,ω which allowed for the conjunction and disjunction of countably many formulas. This work has become very important in modern logic. *VFR
2001 Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915, 20 Aug 2001) English mathematician and astronomer, best known as the foremost proponent and defender of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds both that the universe is expanding and that matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant. He became Britain's best-known astronomer in 1950 with his broadcast lectures on The Nature of the Universe, and he recalled coining the term "Big Bang" in the last of those talks. Although over time, belief in a "steady state" universe as Hoyle had proposed was shared by fewer and fewer scientists because of new discoveries, Hoyle never accepted the now most popular "Big Bang" theory for the origin of the universe. *TIS
2006 Professor William (Bill) Parry FRS (3 July 1934–20 August 2006) was an English mathematician. During his research career, he was highly active in the study of dynamical systems, and, in particular, ergodic theory, and made significant contributions to these fields. He is considered to have been at the forefront of the introduction of ergodic theory to the United Kingdom. He played a founding role in the study of subshifts of finite type, and his work on nilflows was highly regarded.*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
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