Most Popular
1500 questions
11
votes
3 answers
Why don't we name the Higgs boson a "higgson"?
We have fermions (named after Fermi) and bosons (named after Bose). Why don't we name the particle corresponding to the Higgs field a "higgson"? The superpartner particle (sparticle) of the Higgs boson is the higgsino, which makes the name "higgson"…
Ooker
- 1,198
- 7
- 24
11
votes
2 answers
When and how it was discovered that sound is related to some kind of oscillations?
Sound is an oscillation of a medium (waves in the medium), and the frequency of thse oscillations we hear as the pitch.
When this was discovered and by what experiment?
I suppose this was already known to Marin Mersenne (whose book was published…
Alexandre Eremenko
- 48,930
- 3
- 80
- 177
11
votes
5 answers
Who gets credit for the real numbers?
If Simon Stevin already pioneered the unending decimal representation for every number (rational, surd, etc.) at the end of the 16th century, why do Cantor and Dedekind (who certainly gave a more detailed account) routinely get credit for the real…
Mikhail Katz
- 5,743
- 18
- 39
11
votes
3 answers
Leibniz's stand on axioms and definitions
Recently, while discussing, a friend claimed that Leibniz was fond of proceeding axiomatically and from definitions, which I find hard to believe. My conception is that Leibniz was more interested in intuition and the process of construction rather…
Mark Fantini
- 561
- 3
- 13
11
votes
2 answers
Did wave optics anticipate quantum mechanics?
I heard in wave optics and electromagnetism that Hamilton could have discovered the Schrödinger equation, or that he was the first man who used the expression
$$ \Psi(x)= \exp(i S(x)/\hbar)\,. $$
I also heard that Hamilton got the idea from the…
Jose Javier Garcia
- 353
- 3
- 8
11
votes
1 answer
Who was Elissaeus Judaeus?
There is an interesting web site called Mathematical Genealogy http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/ which lists about 140000 mathematicians with their student-advisor relations. I think that this site can be useful for historian of sciences in many…
Alexandre Eremenko
- 48,930
- 3
- 80
- 177
11
votes
5 answers
What is the shortest paper in the history of mathematics?
Now-a-days a research paper can have many pages (the paper claiming the proof of abc conjecture is of $500$ pages long!). But is there any paper in the history of mathematics which we can say as the shortest paper ever published in a well-known…
Kushal Bhuyan
- 2,580
- 1
- 16
- 22
11
votes
1 answer
What are the earliest accounts of a scientific method?
The ancient Egyptians used examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, to the treatment of diseases, which are all described in Egyptian medical textbooks from around c. 1600 BC.
Did the ancient Egyptians use some kind of scientific method, if…
WaWaWa
- 591
- 4
- 10
11
votes
1 answer
Who discovered the power rule for derivatives?
Who discovered the general rule for differentiating polynomials, in particular that the derivative of $x^n$ is $n x^{n-1}$, and when? I appreciate the answer may not be a clear-cut individual and year, perhaps more a succession of deeper geometric…
Silverfish
- 221
- 2
- 6
11
votes
2 answers
How was curvature originally defined and calculated?
I am interested in the early history of curvature. Who defined it first and when, who came up with the name, how was it calculated before mathematicians used calculus to define $k=|α''(s)|$? Are there books or articles containing such early…
Paul Mariatte Blue
- 123
- 1
- 5
11
votes
1 answer
When did we first learn that Jupiter was a gas giant?
The term "gas giant" was invented in the 1950s, but I think the concept has been known longer than that.
When did we first learn that Jupiter was a gas giant, not a terrestrial-type planet?
Joe
- 687
- 5
- 15
11
votes
5 answers
I'm looking for books of Muslim scholars/scientists who have had some influence in the development of modern science
In the Golden Age of Islam, Muslim scholars and scientists wrote a lot of books and manuscripts in many sciences such as medicine.
My question is, are there any books which have had some longer (or future) influence on the development modern…
Medi1Saif
- 255
- 2
- 11
11
votes
2 answers
Why were Newton's laws accepted when there exists a counter-example?
Though the planets of Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn seemed to obey Kepler's laws, Mercury did not. I just found this page which states that the discrepancy was noted very soon after newton published his laws of motion. Since a law of…
Happy Phantom
- 213
- 1
- 6
11
votes
2 answers
Could the industrial revolution have happened in Hellenistic Alexandria?
One of my favorite scientists in history is Hero of Alexandria, who invented a variety of clever mechanical devices in the first century AD, long before their economic potential was realized. Included among them are the steam engine, wind power,…
Paul Siegel
- 1,031
- 8
- 17
11
votes
1 answer
How did Young perform his double slit experiment?
Thomas Young is famous for his double slit experiment, but I can't seem to find his experimental setup (such as how is prepared the light before it went through the apparatus. Does anyone know his experimental arrangement? If so please can you…
Quantum spaghettification
- 531
- 4
- 14