which we can abandon without regret
because one does not know
what this pretended sign signifies
Cauchy in 1847 in regard to the square root of negative one..
The 143rd day of the year; there are 143 three-digit primes.
5² − 4² − 3² = 0
6³ − 5³ − 4³ − 3³ = 0
7⁴ − 6⁴ − 5⁴ − 4⁴ − 3⁴ = 143 *@diegorattaggi
Also, 1432 is a divisor of 143143.HT to Matt McIrvin who found the pattern for numbers such that n^2 divides n.n (where the dot represents concatenation) and then found it is at OEIS I should point out that every number greater than one for which this is true involves the digits 143, in order, and includes a mystery offering from one-seventh.
143 is also the number of moves that it takes 11 frogs to swap places with 11 toads on a strip of 2(11) + 1 squares (or positions, or lily pads) where a move is a single slide or jump. This activity dates back to the 19th century, and the incredible recreational mathematician, Edouard Lucas *OEIS.
Prof. Singmasters Chronology of Recreational Mathematics suggests that this was first introduced in the American Agriculturalist in 1867, and I have an image of the puzzle below. The fact that they call it, "Spanish Game" suggests it has an older antecedent. (anyone know more?)
1221 "On the first day of the fifth month (May 23), at noon, the Sun was eclipsed and it was total. All the stars were therefore seen. A short while later the brightness returned. At that time we were on the southern bank of the river. The eclipse (began) at the south-west and (the Sun) reappeared from the north-east. At that place it is cool in the morning and warm in the evening; there are many yellow flowers among the grass. The river flows to the north-east. On both banks there are many tall willows. The Mongols use them to make their tents. [Later] (Ch'ang-ch'un) asked (an astronomer) about the solar eclipse on the first day of the month
(May 23). The man replied: 'Here the Sun was eclipsed up to 7 fen (6/10) at the hour of ch'en (7-9 h)'. The Master continued, 'When we were by the Lu-chu Ho (Kerulen River), during the hour wu (11-13 h) the Sun was seen totally eclipsed and also south-west of Chin-shan the people there said that the eclipse occurred at the hour szu (9-11 h) and reached 7 fen. At each of these three places it was seen differently. According to the commentary on the ch'un-ch'iu by K'ung Ying-ta, when the body (of the Moon) covers the Sun, then there will be a solar eclipse. Now I presume that we must have been directly beneath it; hence we observed the eclipse to be total. On the other hand, those people on the sides (of the shadow) were further away and hence (their view) gradually became different. This is similar to screening a lamp with a fan. In the shadow of the fan there is no light or brightness. Further away from the sides (of the fan) then the light of the lamp gradually becomes greater." Refers to a total solar eclipse of 23 May 1221. From: Ch'ang-ch'un Chen-jen Tao-ts'ang('The Journey of the Adept Ch'ang-ch'un to the West'). *NASA Eclipse Calendar
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| *Wik |
1771 Benjamin Franklin visits Joseph Priestley at his home in Leeds just after he begins experimenting with placing mint under a glass to see how long it took to die. Priestly had put insects, small animals, candles etc under glass to measure the time it took to use up the "life force" in the air. To his surprise, the mint flourished in his pneumatic trough. Eventually he would realize that the "spent" air could be rejuvenated by placing a living plant inside the glass. *Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air
1785, a letter from Benjamin Franklin documented his invention of his new bifocal glasses. He was writing from France to a friend describing the solution to carrying around two pairs of glasses to see objects at different distances, with the comment that "I have only to move my eyes up and down as I want to see far or near." Franklin incorporated a two part lens for each eye, each parts having a different focusing power. The invention had limited acceptance at a time when even ordinary spectacles in the colonies already cost as much as $100 per pair. *TIS
1958 Explorer I, the 1st US satellite in orbit, ceases transmission. *David Dickinson @Astroguyz
1994 Java development begins in earnest:
Sun Microsystems Inc. formally announced its new programs, Java and HotJava at the SunWorld '95 convention. Java was described as a programming language that, combined with the HotJava World Wide Web browser, offered the best universal operating system to the online community. The concept behind the programs was to design a programming language whose applications would be available to a user with any kind of operating system, eliminating the problems of translation between Macintoshes, IBM-compatible computers, and Unix machines. *CHM
2014 "Tonight, Tonight, won't be just any night." NASA predicts a never before seen meteor shower. The shower is the May Camelopardalids (a faint constellation near the North Star), caused by dust from periodic comet 209P/LINEAR. No one has ever seen it before, but this year the Camelopardalids could put on a display that rivals the well-known Perseids of August.
2024 showers on the same nights, happy viewing.
"Some forecasters have predicted more than 200 meteors per hour," *science.nasa.gov
BIRTHS
1606 Juan Caramuel Y Lobkowitz (May 23, 1606 in Madrid — September 8, 1682 in Vigevano) His Mathesis biceps of 1670 expounds the general principle of number systems with an arbitrary base b. Caramuel points out that some of these might be of more use than the decimal system. [DSB 3, 61] *VFR
Donald Knuth writes in The Art of Computer Programming Volume 2:- The first published discussion of the binary system was given in a comparatively little-known work by a Spanish bishop, Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz, 'Mathesis biceps' (Campaniae, 1670) pp. 45-48: Caramuel discusses the representation of numbers in radices 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 60 at some length, but gave no examples of arithmetic operations in nondecimal systems (except for the trivial operation of adding unity). He loved puzzles and published a collection containing some that he had composed when he was only ten years old. Mathematical puzzles and games of chance form part of Mathesis biceps (1670). He proposed a new method of trisecting an angle and developed a system of logarithms to base 109 where log 1010 = 0 and log 1 = 10. He was the first to publish log tables in Spanish. Among Caramuel's other scientific work ...a system he developed to determine longitude using the position of the moon. He wrote widely on grammar, linguistics and rhetoric but perhaps his most interesting proposal in this area was to argue for the creation of a universal language. *SAU
1820 James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was an American engineer who built the two-tier triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 22, he invented a boat and diving bell which enabled walking on the river bottom. In 12 years' time he made a fortune with his salvage boat operation. During the Civil War, he built ironclad warships. After the war, he built the Mississippi River bridge, the first major bridge to use steel and cantilevered construction, which was opened 4 Jul 1874. Each roughly 500-ft span rested on piers built on bedrock about 100 feet beneath the river bottom. He created a year-round navigation channel for New Orleans scoured out with a system of jetties harnessing the river's water flow (1879)*TIS
1849 Arthur Edwin Haynes,(May 23, 1849;Baldwinsville, Onondaga County, New York, USA - Mar. 12, 1915; Minneapolis, Minnesota) Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Hillsdale College from 1875 until 1890. He came to Michigan in June 1858. They located near the village of Reading in southwestern Hillsdale Co. where the father had a farm.
Arthur received a common school education and remained on the family farm until he reached twenty years of age.
In the fall of 1870, Arthur entered Hillsdale College where he remained, a diligent student, until he was graduated from that institution in June 1875. He taught several terms of district school before graduation and was also employed during his college course as a tutor in mathematics in the college. During the summer between his junior and senior years, he assisted in the erection of the Central College building, in order to earn money to continue his studies. He carried a hod from the first story until the completion of the fourth, shouldering 80 pounds of brick and walking from the bottom to the top of the ladder (20 feet) without touching the hod handle, a feat that he was justly proud of. His classroom at Hillsdale was in that same building.
Immediately following graduation,he married and was appointed instructor in mathematics in Hillsdale College in the fall of 1875, and two years later was elected to the full Professorship. In 1885 he was elected a member of the London Mathematical Society. In 1890 he switched to the University of Minnesota. He wrote a paper on "The Mounting and Use of a Spherical Blackboard." He died in Minneapolis in 1915 and his body was removed back to Hillsdale where he was buried in Oak Grove Cemetary *PB notes
1907 Boris A. Kordemsky ( 23 May 1907 – 29 March, 1999) was a Russian mathematician and educator. He is best known for his popular science books and mathematical puzzles. He is the author of over 70 books and popular mathematics articles.
Kordemsky received Ph.D. in education in 1956 and taught mathematics at several Moscow colleges.
He is probably the best-selling author of math puzzle books in the history of the world. Just one of his books, Matematicheskaya Smekalka (or, Mathematical Quick-Wits), sold more than a million copies in the Soviet Union/Russia alone, and it has been translated into many languages. By exciting millions of people in mathematical problems over five decades, he influenced generations of solvers both at home and abroad. *Age of Puzzles, by Will Shortz and Serhiy Grabarchuk (mostly)
1908 John Bardeen (23 May 1908; 30 Jan 1991 at age 82) American physicist who was cowinner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in both 1956 and 1972. He shared the 1956 prize with William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain for their joint invention of the transistor. With Leon N. Cooper and John R. Schrieffer he was awarded the 1972 prize for development of the theory of superconductors, usually called the BCS-theory (after the initials of their names). *TIS
1917 Edward Norton Lorenz (May 23, 1917 - April 16, 2008) American mathematician and meteorologist known for pointing out the "butterfly effect" whereby chaos theory predicts that "slightly differing initial states can evolve into considerably different states." In his 1963 paper in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, he cited the flapping of a seagull's wings as changing the state of the atmosphere in even such a trivial way can result in huge changes in outcome in weather patterns. Thus very long range weather forecasting becomes almost impossible. He determined this unexpected result in 1961 while running a computer weather simulation that gave wildly different results from even tiny changes in the input data. *TIS
1934 Willie Hobbs Moore (May 23, 1934 – March 14, 1994) became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in physics in the United States.
Willie Hobbs Moore was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on May 23, 1934, to Bessie and William Hobbs. In 1954, the same year that the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, she boarded a train for Ann Arbor, where she studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan (UMich)—the only Black woman undergraduate in the program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1958 and her master’s in 1961. She worked as an engineer at several companies before she returned to the University of Michigan to pursue her PhD. In 1972, Dr. Hobbs Moore made history when she received her doctorate in physics.
For five years afterward, Dr. Hobbs Moore worked as a lecturer and research scientist at UMich. She published more than a dozen papers on protein spectroscopy in prestigious journals, including the Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Chemical Physics, and Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.
In 1977, Dr. Hobbs Moore joined Ford Motor Company as an assembly engineer. She went on to help the company expand its use of Japanese methods of quality engineering and manufacturing. This work proved critical to boosting Ford’s competitiveness during Japan’s domination of the automobile market. She eventually became an executive at the company.
But her passions extended far beyond work. Dr. Hobbs Moore was involved in community science and math programs and was a member of The Links, Inc., a service organization for Black women, and Delta Sigma Theta, a historically Black, service-oriented sorority founded in 1913. *APS Org
1940 Cora Susana Sadosky de Goldstein (May 23, 1940 – December 3, 2010) was an Argentine mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at Howard University. She wrote over fifty papers in harmonic analysis and operator theory. She promoted women in mathematics as well encouraging greater participation of African-Americans in mathematics.
Shuch is a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran and active instrument flight instructor. He founded Microcomm Consulting in 1975, where in 1978 he designed and produced a commercial home satellite TV receiver.*Wik
1950 Malcolm John Williamson (May 23, 1950 - ) discovered in 1974 what is now known as Diffie-Hellman key exchange. He was then working at GCHQ.
Williamson studied at Manchester Grammar School, winning first prize in the 1968 British Mathematical Olympiad. He also won a Silver prize at the 1967 International Mathematical Olympiad in Cetinje, Yugoslavia and a Gold prize at the 1968 International Mathematical Olympiad in Moscow. He read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1971. After a year at Liverpool University, he joined GCHQ, and worked there until 1982.
From 1985 to 1989 Williamson worked at Nicolet Instruments in Madison, Wisconsin where he was the primary author on two digital hearing aid patents. *Wik
1691 Adrien Auzout (28 January 1622 – 23 May 1691) was a French astronomer.
In 1664–1665 he made observations of comets, and argued in favor of their following elliptical or parabolic orbits. (In this he was opposed by his rival Johannes Hevelius.) Adrien was briefly a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences from 1666 to 1668, and a founding member of the French Royal Obseratory. (He may have left the academy due to a dispute.) He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1666. He then left for Italy and spent the next 20 years in that region, finally dying in Rome in 1691. Little is known about his activities during this last period.
Auzout made contributions in telescope observations, including perfecting the use of the micrometer. He made many observations with large aerial telescopes and he is noted for briefly considering the construction of a huge aerial telescope 1,000 feet in length that he would use to observe animals on the Moon. In 1647 he performed an experiment that demonstrated the role of air pressure in function of the mercury barometer. In 1667–68, Adrien and Jean Picard attached a telescopic sight to a 38-inch quadrant, and used it to accurately determine positions on the Earth. The crater Auzout on the Moon is named after him. *Wik
1857 Augustin-Louis Cauchy (21 August 1789 – 23 May 1857)Augustin-Louis Cauchy pioneered the study of analysis, both real and complex, and the theory of permutation groups. He also researched in convergence and divergence of infinite series, differential equations, determinants, probability and mathematical physics.*SAU
A few hours before his death, age 68, was talking animatedly with the Archbishop of Paris of the charitable works he had in view—for charity was a life long interest of Cauchy. His last words were “Men pass away but their deeds abide.” [Bell, Men of Mathematics, p 293]. *VFR Cauchy was active in the Saint Vincent de Paul society, Irish relief, and homes for unwed mothers, but he will always be remembered more as the man who refused Abel's paper to the French Academy.
1889 George Henri Halphen (30 October 1844, Rouen – 23 May 1889, Versailles) was a French mathematician. He did his studies at École Polytechnique (X 1862). He was known for his work in geometry, particularly in enumerative geometry and the singularity theory of algebraic curves, in algebraic geometry. He also worked on invariant theory and protective differential geometry. *Wik
1895 Franz Ernst Neumann (11 September 1798 – 23 May 1895) was a German mineralogist and physicist.
His earlier papers were mostly concerned with crystallography, and the reputation they gained him led to his appointment as Privatdozent at the University of Königsberg, where in 1828 he became extraordinary, and in 1829 ordinary, professor of mineralogy and physics. His 1831 study on the specific heats of compounds included what is now known as Neumann's Law: the molecular heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic heats of its constituents.
Devoting himself next to optics, he produced memoirs which earned him a high place among early searchers of a true dynamical theory of light. In 1832, by the aid of a particular hypothesis as to the constitution of the ether, he reached by a rigorous dynamical calculation results agreeing with those obtained by Augustin Louis Cauchy, and succeeded in deducing laws of double refraction closely resembling those of Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
With the mathematician Carl Gustav Jacobi, he founded in 1834 the Mathematisch-physikalisches Seminar which operated in two sections for mathematics and for mathematical physics. Not every student took both sections. In his section on mathematical physics Neumann taught mathematical methods as well as the techniques of an exact experimental physics grounded in the type of precision measurement perfected by his astronomer colleague Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. The objective of his seminar exercises was to perfect one's ability to practice an exact experimental physics through the control of both constant and random experimental errors. Only a few students actually produced original research in the seminar; a notable exception was Gustav Robert Kirchhoff who formulated Kirchhoff's Laws on the basis of his seminar research. This seminar was the model for many others of the same type established after 1834, including Kirchhoff's own at Heidelberg University.
Neumann retired from his professorship in 1876, and died at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1895 at the age of 96.
1949 William Webster Hansen (May 27, 1909 – May 23, 1949) was an American physicist and professor. He was one of the founders of the technology of microwave electronics.
He entered Stanford University at the age of 16, earning his B.A. in 1929 and his Ph.D. in 1933.[2][3]
Hansen went on to become interested in the problem of accelerating electrons for X-ray experiments, using oscillating fields, rather than large static voltages. At the University of California, Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence and his assistant David H. Sloan, had worked on an accelerator driven by a resonant coil. Hansen proposed replacing the coil with a cavity resonator. In 1937, brothers Russel H. Varian and Sigurd F. Varian came to Stanford to work on the foundations of what was to become radar. Hansen exploited some of the Varian's work to develop the klystron and during the years 1937 to 1940, along with collaborators such as John R. Woodyard, founded the field of microwave electronics.[3] In 1941, he moved his team to the Sperry Gyroscope Company where they spent the war years employing their expertise in radar applications and in other problems.
Returning to Stanford in 1945 as a full professor, he embarked on the construction of a series of linear accelerators based on klystron technology and of GeV performance. Along with the Varian brothers and Edward Ginzton, he co-founded Varian Associates in 1948. Sadly, he was never to see the completion of the klystron project. He died at age 39 in Palo Alto, California of berylliosis and fibrosis of the lungs, caused by inhaling the beryllium used in his research. In 1947, the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL) was founded as a facility at Stanford University. The facility is designed to promote interdisciplinary enterprises across different branches of science and was named in his honor.
1960 Georges Claude (24 Sep 1870; 23 May 1960) The French engineer, chemist, and inventor of the neon light, Georges Claude, was born in Paris. He invented the neon light, which was the forerunner of the fluorescent light. Claude was the first to apply an electrical discharge to a sealed tube of neon gas, around 1902 and make a neon lamp ("Neon" from Greek "neos," meaning "new gas.") He first publicly displayed the neon lamp on 11 Dec 1910 in Paris. His French company Claude Neon, introduced neon signs to the U.S. with two "Packard" signs for a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles, purchased by Earle C. Anthony for $24,000. *TIS
2015 John Forbes Nash, Jr (born June 13, 1928- May 23, 2015) was an American mathematicia whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. His theories are used in market economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the later part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.
Nash is the subject of the Hollywood movie "A Beautiful Mind". The film, loosely based on the biography of the same name, focuses on Nash's mathematical genius and struggle with paranoid schizophrenia *Wik Nash, 86, and his wife Alicia, 82, died in a car crash in a taxi on the New Jersey turnpike on May 23, 2015.
2018 Homer Alfred Neal, (June 13, 1942 in Franklin, Kentucky; May 23, 2018 Ann Arbor, Michigan) was an African-American particle physicist and a distinguished professor at the University of Michigan. Neal was President of the American Physical Society in 2016. He was also a board member of Ford Motor Company, a council member of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a director of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation. Neal was the interim President of the University of Michigan in 1996. Neal's research group works as part of the ATLAS experiment hosted at CERN in Geneva.
He received his B.S. in Physics from Indiana University in 1961, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1966. From 1976 to 1981, Neal was Dean for Research and Graduate Development at Indiana University, and from 1981 to 1986 he was provost at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He held Honorary Doctorates from Indiana University, Michigan State University, and Notre Dame University.
On 14 Nov 2009, Dr. Neal described the discoveries of spin at the University of Michigan (UM) with a presentation: History of Spin at Michigan *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
Good afternoon! It is the 144th day of the year - you have had the wrong day of the year for a little while. Good luck!
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