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Are there any anonymous contributions to mathematics that had a great impact?
Are there any examples of mathematical ideas being communicated in an anonymous manner that had a substantial impact on mathematics at the time. It seems to me that it is very rare for an author to not take credit for their work, rarer still for it…
Ali Caglayan
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Was Dirac really trying to take the square root of the Klein-Gordon operator?
As a student of physics one will, on several occasions, indubitably hear professors or other physicists (here is an example, from Physics.SE's highest-rep user John Rennie) tell the famous story that Paul Dirac came upon his relativistic wave…
Danu
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Who first used the word "calculus", and what did it describe?
This comment cites Wikipedia in stating that, before the development of the modern-day subject of calculus (i.e. analysis), the term "calculus" referred to general mathematics.
Who first used the term "calculus" in mathematics, and what specifically…
HDE 226868
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What language was spoken at the International Mathematical Congress?
Over the years, what language was spoken at the International Mathematical Congress? I assume it is English right now, but it was founded by two German mathematicians, so I assume the language was German once, especially since Göttingen (Germany)…
wythagoras
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When did we first begin to suspect that the Earth had an Iron Catastrophe?
I've searched, and found some interesting articles on the subject such as the Wikipedia article, which is a nice summary. But most of the references in these articles are to other popular culture articles/documentaries on the subject. I can't…
ouflak
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Historical Survey of Statistical Mechanics
Statistical mechanics is a subject with a particularly rich history. I think of the early debates of Boltzmann and Loschmidt, the rather confusing differences between the approaches of Gibbs and Boltzmann, the philosophical efforts of E.T. Jaynes to…
tom
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In what instances did Wolfgang Pauli say that something was 'not even wrong'?
One famous quote I've heard of Wolfgang Pauli is
It is not even wrong.
I've also heard that Pauli had a blustery, often unpleasant personality, and I vaguely recall hearing the phrase used in multiple instances. In which instances did Pauli use…
HDE 226868
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Why were 18th century mathematicians interested in extending the factorial to non-integers?
As far as I understand, the Gamma function was developped as a way of calculating "the" factorial of a non-integer number. Why did this problem interest 18th century mathematicians? Was it just a puzzle, or did they have some specific application in…
Jack M
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What were the early empirical tests of Einstein's mass-energy equivalence $E=mc^2$?
Near the end of Einstein's 1905 paper on $E=mc^2$ he states (in the translation by Perrett and Jeffery):
It is not impossible that with bodies whose energy-content is variable to a high degree (e.g. with radium salts) the theory may be successfully…
user466
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Why did 18th century writers think that Mars had 2 satellites?
At least two 18th century writers wrote that Mars has two satellites: Swift in Gulliver's travels (1726) and Voltaire in Micromégas (1752).
How did they guess this? Was Voltaire repeating Swift's prediction?
It was known at that time that Earth has…
Alexandre Eremenko
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Who was Richard Thompson?
There is family of famous groups with unusual group-theoretic properties due to a mathematician called Richard Thompson that are widely studied in group theory. The papers on these groups and the Wikipedia entry simply say that these were written…
Anthony Quas
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First use of "Spur" (trace) for linear maps / matrices
Every student of linear algebra learns about the trace of a linear map. Its easiest (albeit not most conceptual) definition is: write the map as matrix, then the trace is the sum of the diagonal entries.
The question about origin and motivation of…
Torsten Schoeneberg
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What are some early examples of large international scientific collaborations?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN is well known for being one of the largest international collaborations to look for fundamental particles. Other big collaborations include the International Space Station, the Human Genome Project, the…
Mauricio
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Which mathematician traveled to and moved in with each collaborator?
I remember a video, perhaps a Numberphile episode where a mathematician was described who would simply move in to the home of a collaborator with which they were engaged to so that they could work more closely together, essentially sleeping on their…
uhoh
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When was the "Law of Propagation of Error" first stated?
This is my first time posting on HSM, so please bear with me if it's off-topic. I can move it to Stats.SE or Mathematics.SE if necessary.
A widely cited 1966 paper (with currently 1030 citations) mentions the "law of propagation of error" but does…
Nike Dattani
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