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1500 questions
17
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What are the most precise measurements in science?
In 1957, Littlewood wrote that these are measurements of time in astronomy.
Astronomers operate with times intervals between astronomical events 1000 years apart with accuracy 1/1000 of a second. This gives 14 significant digits. Has this situation…
Alexandre Eremenko
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What was the Big Bang model originally called?
The name "Big Bang theory" was coined by Sir Fred Hoyle. What did scientists originally call the Big Bang model?
blademan9999
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Does Arnold say that Hardy is responsible for Ramanujan's untimely death?
In Yesterday and Long Ago (2007), mathematician Vladimir Arnold wrote:
When I resided at Cambridge as a senior fellow of Trinity College,Indian colleagues told me some details of Ramanujan's life which are not well known.
Once an Indian …
Tyrell
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17
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Has there been an equivalent in physics to Ramanujan in maths?
Ramanujan's story is a well known story of the Indian young man who turned out to be a mathematical genius without a scholarly education. He was "discovered" by the mathematician Hardy at the beginning of last century and came to England where he…
Deschele Schilder
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17
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Was Kolmogorov enraged after learning about the Karatsuba multiplication algorithm?
Some years ago, I read that Kolmogorov was so enraged that Karatsuba disproved one of his conjectures that he terminated his seminar shortly thereafter.
This Wikipedia page claims that Kolmogorov was just "very excited".
Do we have any testimony of…
GEP
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Did the Digges Telescope actually exist?
There are many claimants for the first telescope. Amongst these are the claims placed at the doors of Bacon and Digges. The Bacon claim is very sketchy, boiling down to one sentence and is easy to dismiss.
The Thomas Digges claim seems more…
winwaed
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What does it mean by "d-ism of Leibniz" and "dotage of Newton" in simple English?
I am reading this article by Donald E. Knuth and get stuck by this sentence:
Our mathematical language continues to improve, just as “the d-ism of
Leibniz overtook the dotage of Newton” in past centuries.
I know I can get some hints from the…
Lerner Zhang
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16
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History of various definitions of topology
I have been reading Point Set Topology for a while, and turns out that there are various possible ways to define a topology. Most popular one is using open set axioms. Another one is using closure axioms, which was introduced by Kuratowski.
I am…
Anirban
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16
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What are natural science concepts that were once thought the same, but grew to be distinguished?
The history of physics is full of examples of phenomena that used to be described independently, until additional insight proved they were the same thing.
Some famous instances are
motion of bullets and motion of stars and planets, until Newton…
Alexis
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16
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Why did mathematicians not see that $f_n(x)=x^n$ is a counterexample to Cauchy's "theorem" about limits of continuous functions?
In 1821 Cauchy claimed that the limit of a sequence of continuous functions is continuous. In 1826 Abel gave a complicated trigonometric counterexample. When we teach analysis courses, we usually give the sequence $f_n(x)=x^n$ as a counterexample.…
Helmer.Aslaksen
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A basic mistake by Cayley
Arthur Cayley's first paper on abstract groups, in 1854, can be found in his Collected Papers on the Internet Archive, starting at https://archive.org/stream/collectedmathema02cayluoft#page/122/mode/2up. He states on the 3rd page that groups of…
KCd
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When was the method of getting square roots (invented by Viète in 1610 and developed by Harriot in 1631) first taught to school children?
François Viète's On the Numerical Resolution of Powers by Exegetics published
in 1610 (Viete, 2006, pp. 311-370) introduced one way of numerically solving polynomial equations, a special case of which is the equation where the square of an unknown…
JRN
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16
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Hidden agenda of the Galileo trial?
Redondi argued that Galileo's trial on heliocentrism was merely a show trial concealing the real objection against Galileo among the catholic establishment, which was his atomism thought to be at variance with canon 13.2 of the council of trent…
Mikhail Katz
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Did Newton develop the concept of gravity first for falling objects or for celestial motion?
A benefit of Newton's concept of gravity as a force--despite the fact that it involved what was considered mysterious action at a distance--was that it explained objects falling to earth, and the motion of heavenly bodies, in a unified manner. In…
Mars
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16
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Famous Scientific Conflicts and Controversies
To clear any misunderstandings, I am interested not in the gossipy aspect of the matter (i.e. conflicts that had mainly to do with character-clashes and idiosyncratic psychs) but rather in conflicts that today are characterized by the following: …
Alecos Papadopoulos
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