Most Popular
1500 questions
13
votes
1 answer
What was the motivation for the choice of the subset symbol?
I gather that the symbols $\subset$ and $\supset$ were introduced by Ernst Schröder in his 1890 Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik. This account also appears—attributed to good old Cajori—in an answer on the Mathematics SE site along with a…
Paul Tanenbaum
- 255
- 1
- 8
13
votes
2 answers
Who coined the term "signal-to-noise ratio" and when did statisticians start using the term "noise" to describe randomness?
I'm writing about the history of the concept of noise and am having trouble tracking down references from when the term "noise" started being associated with statistical noise such as Gaussian Noise and not just things like people talking in the…
vy32
- 635
- 4
- 12
13
votes
2 answers
What group theoretic results were known for several special cases before the general definition of a group was established?
Many results in group theory were proven for permutation groups before the general definition of a group was established (for example: Lagrange's theorem, Sylow's theorems). However, permutation groups weren't the only groups being studied in the…
Jack M
- 3,119
- 16
- 32
13
votes
1 answer
Inscriptions on Newton's tomb
Whiteside in "The Mathematical Principles underlying Newton's
Principia Mathematica" wrote
.. if we can give credence to an account in The Postboy of 12 April 1731, his tomb in Westminster Abbey in London was once inscribed (on the stone 'parchment'…
Tom Copeland
- 840
- 4
- 14
13
votes
3 answers
What happened in astronomy between Hipparchus and Ptolemy?
Hipparchus applied Apollonius's epicycle/eccenter construction to the motion of the Sun and the Moon, but not to the planets. There are speculations about epicyclic gears for planets in the Antikythera mechanism, but apparently they did not survive.…
Conifold
- 75,870
- 5
- 181
- 284
13
votes
1 answer
Why was Alain Aspect discouraged from doing his now Nobel-winning work?
In an interview following Aspect's winning of the Nobel Prize in Physics, he claims that John Stuart Bell discouraged him from pursuing his now-famous 1982 experiment on quantum entanglement. The reason for this being that it would somehow hurt his…
Tfovid
- 233
- 1
- 4
13
votes
2 answers
Who was the first to hypothesise that gravity from one mass causes the spacetime around another mass to curve?
Was it Einstein? Or was there someone before him to hypothesise this?
Shannon T
13
votes
12 answers
Which physicists died very young or in a tragic way?
Inspired by Which mathematicians died very young or in a tragic way? , I wonder which physicists had similar fates.
A quick search lead me to Heinrich Hertz who died from a malignant bone condition at 36. Ludwig Boltzmann is also known for…
Mauricio
- 3,897
- 17
- 35
13
votes
4 answers
Who invented the steam engine: Newcomen or Watt?
The steam engine was one of the main enabling technologies of the industrial revolution.
Many histories of the Industrial Revolution chart the steam engine's rise with James Watt. However, Thomas Newcomen is often credited with inventing the steam…
winwaed
- 2,068
- 14
- 39
13
votes
2 answers
History of poster sessions
Just curious: when (approximately) was the first scientific conference which contained a poster session? Wikipedia does not give an answer.
markvs
- 882
- 3
- 15
13
votes
3 answers
Why are quaternions more popular than tessarines despite being non-commutative?
Is this simply because of marketing, hype, etc?
The bicomplex numbers (especially tessarines) look just great being commutative and all.
Images source:https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.527.356&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Anixx
- 652
- 5
- 13
13
votes
7 answers
What are the earliest inventions to store and release energy (e.g. fly wheels)?
I am interested in very early inventions that allowed energy to be stored and released after a delay even it's just a short time. With "invention" I mean a novelty that is the result of humans' intellectual creativity. Someting that cannot just be…
Jan
- 247
- 2
- 7
13
votes
4 answers
How was Fourier analysis important to the development of set theory?
I recently read the following quote (unfortunately, I copied it down without attribution):
You may be surprised to know that Fourier analysis played a role in the early development of set theory. In fact, it was a Fourier-analytic question that led…
10GeV
- 259
- 1
- 4
13
votes
3 answers
What was the first electronic computer?
I would like to know what is considered to be the first electronic digital computer.
A literature ambiguous on this. I found these claims:
ENIAC - a computer constructed by Mr. Eckert and Mr. Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania
Colossus - a…
Martin Vesely
- 542
- 5
- 19
13
votes
1 answer
Who started calling the matrix multiplication "multiplication"?
As I searched for linear algebra, I found it odd that the linear map composition corresponds to the multiplication of matrices. Considering the intuition that the repetition of addition is multiplication, and the definition of a module, I thought it…
ististyle
- 303
- 1
- 7