can be stated in fifty words or less"
~ Stanislaw Ulam *bt (before twitter)
Thanks to @cytiaB for this one
The 113th day of the year; 113 is prime, its reversal (311) is prime, and the number you get by any reordering of its digits is still prime. Students might try to find other of these "absolute" or "permutable" primes.
Also the sum of the first 113 digits of e is prime. That was also true of yesterday's number, and tomorrow's. (I was just wondering to myself, what is the longest known string of consecutive n for which the first n digits of e are prime? And a similar question for pi? "Anyone...anyone??? Bueller???)
355 is almost exactly \(113 \pi = 354.9999699.. \) No year day is closer,
This is the only solution to a² + b³ = c⁷ in positive integers *Fermat's Library
There are 13 consecutive divisible integers (non-primes) between 113 and 127. How far until the next streak as long, or longer?
********Find more of these at Math Day of the Year Facts. *********************
EVENTS
1635 The 1st public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, was founded. It is still enrolling students. *George Costanza
1827 Sir William Hamilton presented his Theory of Systems of Rays at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. Although he was still an undergraduate, only 21 years old, his work is one of the important works in optics, for it provided a single function that brings together mechanics, optics and mathematics. It led to establishing the wave theory of light, which gives that light is a form of energy that travels in waves. *TIS In it he begins by proving that a system of light rays filling a region of space can be focused down to a single point by a suitably curved mirror if and only if those light rays are orthogonal to some series of surfaces. Moreover, the latter property is preserved under reflection in any number of mirrors. Hamilton’s innovation was to associate with such a system of rays a characteristic function, constant on each of the surfaces to which the rays are orthogonal, which he employed in the mathematical investigation of the foci and caustics of reflected light.
1867, the Zoetrope was patented by William E. Lincoln of Providence, R.I. (No. 64,117). The device was the first animated picture machine. It provided an animation sequence of pictures lining the inside wall of a shallow cylinder, with vertical slits between the images. By spinning the cylinder and looking through the slits, a repeating loop of a moving image could be viewed.
In 1896, the first movie shown to a paying theatre audience in the U.S. was presented using Thomas Edison’s Vitascope. The movie had a series of short scenes, and were part of a program with other acts at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, 34th St, New York City. Included in the film shorts were a ballet scene, a burlesque boxing match, waves on a sea shore, and a comic allegory The Monroe Doctrine,all of which were projected at about half life size.
1906 First American automobile meets the first American speed bump. In March of 1906, residents of Chatham Borough, New Jersey had begun construction of a speed control device, crosswalks that were five Inches high, constructed of flagstones and cobblestones. Their creation was a plan to slow down the "very fast pace" (10-15 miles per hour) of the new motor carriages that have begone to take over the roads of the center of town. On "April 22, 1906 with great fanfare and many spectators. Bystanders set up seating and vendors sold hot dogs and pop corn to serve the growing group of onlookers. The next day local newspapers reported on the wreckage and carnage from the newly discovered speed reducers." Here is the article from the New York Times on April 23:
There were several persons in the machine, and when the heavy rubber tires struck the elevation there was a palpitation of the machinery and the car shot up several feet in the air. Goggles, hats, a monkey wrench, sidecombs, hairpins and other articles flew in all directions. The crowd gave a cheer and decided the borough’s plan was effective. The ‘bumps' installed by the borough officials of the village of Chatham to check the speed of automobiles through the village had their first test yesterday, and proved a decided success.The more conventional speed bumps we are familiar with were not invented until June of 1953. They were created by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Arthur Holly Compton, while he was Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. *Quora.Com, Wik
1948 Contract signed by A. Nielsen for UNIVAC I. The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. Design work was begun by their company, Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and was completed after the company had been acquired by Remington Rand. (In the years before successor models of the UNIVAC I appeared, the machine was simply known as "the UNIVAC".) The image is not the computer, but the operators console... (no mouse for that monster)
The first UNIVAC was delivered to the United States Census Bureau on March 31, 1951, and was dedicated on June 14 that year. The fifth machine (built for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission) was used by CBS to predict the result of the 1952 presidential election. With a sample of just 1% of the voting population it correctly predicted that Dwight Eisenhower would win. The UNIVAC I computers were built by Remington Rand's UNIVAC division (successor of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, bought by Rand in 1950 which later became part of Sperry, now Unisys). *Wik
In 1962, the first American satellite to reach the moon surface, the Ranger IV, was launched at 3:50pm from Cape Canaveral, Florida. As intended, it impacted on the moon three days later at 7:50pm on 26 Apr, travelling at 5,963 mph. The launch vehicle was an Atlas-Agena B rocket, 102 feet high, 16 feet in diameter at the base. The distance the satellite would travel was about 229,541 miles. *TIS
1964 SEAC Computer Retired:
The National Bureau of Standards retires its SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer), which it built in Washington 15 years earlier as a laboratory for testing components and systems for setting computer standards. The SEAC was the first computer to use all-diode logic, a technology more reliable than vacuum tubes, and the first stored-program computer completed in the United States. Magnetic tape in the external storage units stores programming information, coded subroutines, numerical data, and output.*CHM
1973 The US issued a commemorative stamp honoring the 500th year of the birth of Copernicus who wrote the De Revolutionibus.
In 1994, physicists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory discovered the subatomic particle called the top quark.*TIS A quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.
For some time, Gell-Mann was undecided on an actual spelling for the term he intended to coin, until he found the word quark in James Joyce's 1939 book Finnegans Wake:
– Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
The word quark is an outdated English word meaning to croak and the above-quoted lines are about a bird choir mocking king Mark of Cornwall in the legend of Tristan and Iseult.
Another explanation by some, Especially in the German-speaking parts of the world there is a widespread legend, however, that Joyce had taken it from the word Quark, a German word of Slavic origin which denotes a curd cheese, but is also a colloquial term for "trivial nonsense". *Wik
2012 An active sunspot period leads to incredible aurora in US Midwest. The aurora borealis put on a dazzling show in more than a dozen states Monday night, according to SpaceWeather.com.
A particularly spectacular display was seen in Fergus Falls in western Minnesota, and Douglas Kiesling was on hand to film a stunning time-lapse video of the event,
BIRTHS
1628 Johann Hudde was a Dutch mathematician who worked on maxima and minima and the theory of equations. He gave an ingenious method to find multiple roots of an equation. He worked on improving the algebraic methods of René Descartes, seeking to extend them to the solution of equations of a higher degree by applying an algorithm. He also developed an algorithm based on Fermat's method to deal with the maxima, minima and tangents to curves of algebraic functions. Later, he served as burgomaster of Amsterdam for 30 years. During this time time he made a mathematical study of annuities. Hudde continued with an interest in physics and astronomy, producing lenses and microscopes. He collaborated with Baruch Spinoza, of Amsterdam, on telescopes. Hudde determine that in a telescope, a plano-convex lenses were better than concavo-convex. *TIS He is buried in #58 in the high choir of the Oude kerk (old church) in Amsterdam. (Help, send pictures please?) Unfortunately, Donovan Carroll informed me that his stone is covered over by the choir loft. More about Hudde and the "lost calculus" here. And the Renaissance Mathematics has a nice article about Hudde's circle of associates that is both political and mathematical, and involves a violent murder....
1743 Samuel Williams (23 Apr 1743; 2 Jan 1817 at age 73) American natural philosopher and clergyman who organized the first expedition of its kind in the U.S. (departing on 9 Oct 1780) to observe a total solar eclipse in Penobscot Bay, Maine, although it was held by the British enemy. The eclipse was very slightly less than being total, and he is believed to be the first to observe the “ Baily's Beads” phenomenon seen along the sun's last sliver. Previously, with John Winthrop (under whom he studied) he travelled to St. John's, Newfoundland (1761) to observer the Transit of Venus. When Wintrop died, Williams succeeded him (1779) as the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. He researched and taught astronomy, meteorology, and magnetism. He resigned in June 1788. He also engaged in state boundary surveys: NY and Mass. (1785-88), and Vermont and Canada (1795).*TIS
The Baily's beads, diamond ring or more rarely double diamond ring effects,[1] are features of total and annular solar eclipses. Although caused by the same phenomenon, they are distinct events during these types of solar eclipses. As the Moon covers the Sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places while not in others. They are named for Francis Baily, who explained the effects in 1836.[2][3] The diamond ring effects are seen when only one or two beads are left, appearing as shining "diamonds" set in a bright ring around the lunar silhouette.*Wik
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| *Linda Hall Org |
1853 Alphonse Bertillon (23 Apr 1853, 13 Feb 1914 at age 60) French criminologist who was chief of criminal identification for the Paris police from 1880. He developed an identification system known as anthropometry, or the Bertillon system, that came into wide use in France and other countries. The system records physical characteristics (eye colour, scars, deformities, etc.) and specified measurements (height, fingertip reach, head length and width, ear, foot, arm and finger length, etc) These are recorded on cards and classified according to the length of the head. After two decades this system was replaced by fingerprinting in the early 1900s because Bertillon measurements were difficult to take with uniform exactness, and could change later due to growth or surgery. *TIS
1856 Granville Tailer Woods (April 23, 1856 – January 30, 1910) was an American inventor who held more than 50 patents in the United States. He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars. One of his inventions is the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, a variation of the induction telegraph that relied on ambient static electricity from existing telegraph lines to send messages between train stations and moving trains.
Granville T. Woods invented and patented Tunnel Construction for the electric railroad system and was referred to by some as the "Black Edison". Over the course of his lifetime, Granville Woods obtained more than 50 patents for inventions including an automatic brake and an egg incubator and for improvements to other technologies such as the safety circuit, telegraph, telephone, and phonograph.*Wik
1858 Max Planck, (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) German physicist, born. He studied at Munich and Berlin, where he studied under Helmholz, Clausius and Kirchoff and subsequently joined the faculty.he became professor of theoretical physics (1889-1926). His work on the law of thermodynamics and the distribution of radiation from a black body led him to abandon classical Newtonian principles and introduce the quantum theory (1900), for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918. This assumes that energy is not infinitely subdivisible, but ultimately exists as discrete amounts he called quanta (Latin, "how much"). Further, the energy carried by a quantum depends in direct proportion to the frequency of its source radiation.*TIS
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1910 Sheila Scott Macintyre (née Sheila Scott, April 23, 1910 - March 21, 1960) was a Scottish mathematician well known for her work on the Whittaker constant.(The constant isn't actually a known constant, but is known to be in a small interval. Macintyre lowered the upper bound and reduced the interval of uncertainty by about 10%). Macintyre is also well known for creating a multilingual scientific dictionary: written in English, German, and Russian; at the time of her death, she was working on Japanese.*Wik
1911 Felix Adalbert Behrend (23 April 1911 in Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany -27 May 1962 in Richmond, Victoria, Australia) Behrend studied number theory for his doctorate at the University of Berlin with Erhard Schmidt as his advisor. He was awarded his doctorate in 1933 for his dissertation Über numeri abundantes. Even before the award of his doctorate he had published three papers on number theory, the first two being Über einen Satz von Herrn Jarnik (1932) and Über numeri abundantes (1932). Of course 1933, the year that Behrend was awarded his doctorate, was also the year that Hitler came to power in Germany.
Like many Germans who fled from the Nazi threat, he found himself in England which was at war with his native Germany. He continued his work on number theory and published "On obtaining an estimate of the frequency of the primes by means of the elementary properties of the integers" in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society in 1940. The fact that he was passionately anti-Nazi did nothing to help save him from being interned as an enemy alien in 1940 and he was put on the ship the Dunera bound for Australia. He served periods of internment at Hay, Orange and Tatura in Australia. His experiences in Camp 7 at Hay during 1940-41 are related in . One should not think that internment meant an end to mathematics, for he gave lecture courses at the Camp and prepared some of his younger fellow internees for mathematics examinations at the University of Melbourne.
After his release in 1942, Behrend was appointed as a tutor at the University of Melbourne. He continued his research in number theory and published On the frequency of the primes in the Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1942. This paper was a continuation of the one he had published in London two years earlier. In the following year he published a paper on a totally different topic. This was A polyhedral model of the projective plane which also appeared in the Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales. Behrend is commemorated by the 'Behrend memorial lecture in mathematics', established at the University of Melbourne in 1963 with funds provided by his widow. *SAU
1914 Georgii Nikolaevich Polozii (23 April 1914 in Transbaikal, Russia - 26 Nov 1968 in Kiev, Ukraine) Polozii studied at Saratov University which had been founded in 1919. He graduated in 1937 and then was appointed to the teaching staff of the university. In 1949 Polozii was appointed to the University of Kiev and he remained at Kiev until his death in 1968.
Polozii's major pure mathematical contributions were to the theory of functions of a complex variable, approximation theory, and numerical analysis. He also made major contributions to mathematical physics and applied mathematics in particular working on the theory of elasticity.
Between 1962 and 1966 Polozii developed the theory for a new class of (p,q) analytic functions.
In approximation theory Polozii worked mainly with the aim of developing effective methods to solve boundary value problems which arise in mathematical physics. He work here produced the method of summary representation.*SAU
1970 My Oldest son is born, "Happy Birthday Beau".
DEATHS
1616 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra died and William Shakespeare both died on this date, the former in Madrid, Spain, the latter in Stratford-on-Avon, England. Which one died first? This is not a trick question; they died several days apart. All you need to solve it is some knowledge of the calendar. *VFR (Curiously, Shakespeare was also born on this date in 1564. If you see April 26th, that is date of his baptism.)1839 The Very Reverend James Wood (14 December 1760 – 23 April 1839) was a mathematician, Dean of Ely and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.
Wood was born in Holcombe where his father ran an evening school and taught his son the elements of arithmetic and algebra. From Bury Grammar School he proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge in 1778, graduating as senior wrangler in 1782. On graduating he became a fellow of the college and in his long tenure there produced several successful academic textbooks for students of mathematics. (The Elements of Algebra (1795); The Principles of Mechanics (1796); The Elements of Optics (1798))
Wood remained for sixty years at St. John's, serving as both President (1802–1815) and Master (1815–1839); on his death in 1839 he was interred in the college chapel and bequeathed his extensive library to the college, comprising almost 4,500 printed books on classics, history, mathematics, theology and travel, dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries.[3]
Wood was also ordained as a priest in 1787 and served as Dean of Ely from 1820 until his death.{He was succeeded by another eminent mathematician, George Peacock)*Wik
1922 Laroy S. Starrett (25 Apr, 1836-23 Apr 1922) was an American inventor and manufacturer who held over 100 patents, many for fine measurement tools, including the micrometer screw guage (patented 29 Jul 1890) that is familiar to present-day machinists and physics lab workers. His first patent (23 May 1865) was for a meat chopper, which he had manufactured for him, but marketed it himself. This product was successful, and his next patents for shoe studs and hooks provided enough income to establish his own factory. He began making a combination square. This was a try-square with a head that could be moved and clamped at any position along the blade, which he patented 26 Feb 1879. He added products including rules, surface guages, and other small tools. His business became the world's largest in his specialty. When he died, it had over five acres of production space, and 1,000 workers. *TIS The company is still making quality instruments today. I've owned a few fine Starrett micrometers and other gauging equipment in my days.
1930 Henry Ernest Dudeney, (10 April 1857–23 April 1930) England's greatest puzzlist. He was unusually skilled at geometrical dissections, cutting a polygon into the smallest number of pieces that can be refitted to make a different type of polygon. He was also the first to apply digital roots, a term he coined, to recreational mathematics. *VFR
In April 1930, Dudeney died of throat cancer in Lewes, where he and his wife had moved in 1914 after a period of separation to rekindle their marriage. Alice Dudeney survived him by fourteen years and died November 21, 1945, after a stroke. Both are buried in the Lewes town cemetery. Their grave is marked by a copy of an 18th century Sussex sandstone obelisk, which Alice had copied after Ernest's death to serve as their mutual tombstone.(would love a photo if anyone is in that area)
For samples of his puzzles, the Amazon Kindle edition is free.
1960 Max von Laue (9 Oct 1879, 23 Apr 1960 at age 80)German physicist who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays in crystals. This enabled scientists to study the structure of crystals and hence marked the origin of solid-state physics, an important field in the development of modern electronics. *TIS
Norio Ohga, otherwise spelled Norio Oga (January 29, 1930 – April 23, 2011), was the former president and chairman of Sony Corporation, credited with spurring the development of the compact disc as a commercially viable audio format.
In April 1930, Dudeney died of throat cancer in Lewes, where he and his wife had moved in 1914 after a period of separation to rekindle their marriage. Alice Dudeney survived him by fourteen years and died November 21, 1945, after a stroke. Both are buried in the Lewes town cemetery. Their grave is marked by a copy of an 18th century Sussex sandstone obelisk, which Alice had copied after Ernest's death to serve as their mutual tombstone.(would love a photo if anyone is in that area)
For samples of his puzzles, the Amazon Kindle edition is free.
1960 Max von Laue (9 Oct 1879, 23 Apr 1960 at age 80)German physicist who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays in crystals. This enabled scientists to study the structure of crystals and hence marked the origin of solid-state physics, an important field in the development of modern electronics. *TIS
Norio Ohga, otherwise spelled Norio Oga (January 29, 1930 – April 23, 2011), was the former president and chairman of Sony Corporation, credited with spurring the development of the compact disc as a commercially viable audio format.
He insisted that a CD should hold 75 minutes of music, sufficient for the entire Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which accounts for the designed 4.8-inch diameter. Having had a career as an opera singer before he joined the company in the 1950s, he remained a music connoisseur, and recognized the importance of improved sound quality made possible by the CD. Sony issued the world's first CD in 1982, and in Japan, within five years the format overtook LP record sales. He rose through the company to become its chief executive in 1989, always pursuing improvements to quality and appealing design, and led Sony's expansion from hardware to software to entertainment including music, films and video games.
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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