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1500 questions
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Why didn't Aristarchus' theory of Heliocentrism stick?
This might be more a question for historians, but it's a question I've given some thought to.
By using what was essentially Euclidean geometry, Aristarchus was able to calculate, with some measure of accuracy, the distance and the size of both…
userLTK
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Is there a 'lost calculus'?
Are there any 'lost' theorems of calculus that could be used to 'simplify' it? For example, are there ways to calculate derivatives without using limits, maybe by some forgotten methods in calculus?
201044
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Who first distinguished planets from the stars?
This is a pretty straightforward question, when the first observations of the night sky were being made, who was the first person to suggest that a planet, say Mars, was not a star, in the sense that their physical compositions were different? I…
L.R.
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What is the origin of "two straight lines cannot enclose a space" axiom in Euclid's Elements?
This post is prompted by a recent question on MSE asking about "Axiom 10" of Euclid's Elements, as found in editions by Byrne and Conway: "Two right lines cannot enclose a space". This axiom is not in Heath's translation.
Axiom 10 is employed by…
RobinSparrow
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12
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Emmy Noether's announcement in 1932 ICM
I read a book "a history of abstract algebra"- chapter 6 by Israel Kleiner. And in this book, it is said that Emmy Noether gave a presentation at the ICM congress held in Zurich in 1932, and that the content was the starting point of modern…
user1274233
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Who are the youngest mathematicians that published an original research article in a peer-reviewed journal?
There is a lot of interesting information about young mathematicians, but I cannot find any information about the youngest mathematician that published an original research article in a peer-reviewed journal.
Does anyone have this information?…
User303131
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Did Newton know about non-inertial frames?
When answering a Physics.SE question, I made a claim that Newton realized that $F=ma$ worked in some frames, which are called "inertial frames." Nowadays, we know that there are non-inertial frames. One of the commenters suggested that started…
Cort Ammon
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How did the shift from constructed mathematical objects to modern mathematics occur?
How did the shift from the times of Thales, Pythagoras, and even Euclid, where mathematical objects were found, exhibited, or constructed from given entities, to modern mathematics occur? In modern mathematics, entities no longer need to be…
Leandro Caniglia
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How did 'N. Bourbaki' address a conference?
As I understand it, 'N. Bourbaki' was the pseudonym of a collective of French mathematicians. How, then, did 'it' give a conference talk1 in Columbus, Ohio in 1948?
1 N. Bourbaki, Foundations of mathematics for the working mathematician [DOI], The…
bmargulies
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How far did the Great Terror reach into Soviet mathematics?
While reading about Borel sets I came across comments regarding the Luzin Affair, when Luzin was the subject of various accusations made by colleagues.
These accusations appear to have been both political and professional in nature - for example,…
nwr
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Story of a student who solves an open problem
A number of years ago, I read a (non-fiction) story about a young mathematician whose professor wrote an open problem on the board and the student went ahead and wrote down a solution after a moment of thought. The writer goes on to say something…
Favst
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Who was that forgetful mathematician?
Who was the (Japanese?) mathematician who said in a lecture that a certain conjecture still remained to be proved, and one of the students present told him that he (the mathematician) had already proved that conjecture decades earlier?
Maurice Mizrahi
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How many important logicians did NOT receive doctoral degrees?
I can think of three. Saul Kripke quite famously could only be begrudged to finish his undergraduate degree at Harvard before being hired as a full professor. Donald Martin (the set theorist of Martin's Axiom fame) seems to have been hired into…
jmarvin_
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Alexander Grothendieck's "stolen" correspondence in 1985?
On the website that now displays the part of Grothendieck's archives that had been held at the University of Montpellier, it is mentioned that:
Dans une lettre adressée à Monsieur Lefranc datée du 13 octobre 1985 (voir cote 183/97), Grothendieck…
Thomas Sauvaget
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12
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What is the origin of the $\hbar$ symbol?
Equations involving Planck's constant, $h ,$ are often simplified by instead writing them in terms of the reduced Planck's constant, $\hbar \equiv \frac{h}{2 \pi}.$ But where did the symbol for the reduced Planck's constant, $\hbar ,$ come from?
Nat
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