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Did Gödel consider himself primarily a philosopher who is interested in mathematics (instead of the other way round)?
Kurt Gödel is one of the "best" logicians of the 20th century.
Here, the user "Jeffrey Kegler" states that:
Kurt Gödel considered himself a philosopher who did mathematics, rather than as a mathematician who did philosophy.
Are there any sources…
user4728
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Who first identified the group structure of an elliptic curve?
I find it amazing that the geometric construction that underlies the group law for elliptic curves gives rise to a group law.
Q: Who was the first to identify the group law for elliptic curves and, if different, who was first to prove that it is…
nwr
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Jacobi's product for the discriminant
Did Jacobi prove the product formula $\Delta(\tau) = (2\pi)^{12}q\prod_{n \geq 1} (1 - q^n)^{24}$ for the modular discriminant function, and if so where?
I have tried without success to track down references (other than looking through Jacobi's…
KCd
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Does anyone know the physics student who passed a quantum mechanics oral exam without taking quantum mechanics?
Many years ago I read an interview with a physics professor, where he recounted a funny situation when he was a graduate student at Harvard.
When a first year, he was supposed to take the quantum mechanics course, but he could not stand the lecture…
FurryTheorem
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Who did first use the Method of Characteristics?
Which mathematician did introduce the Method of Characteristics for solving linear Partial differential equations?
I some papers I saw that Saint Venant, Lagrange, Cauchy or Riemann were attributed with this method. But who was the first…
MrYouMath
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Max Planck's reaction to Einstein's 1905 STR Paper
It is quite well-known that Planck was one of the first people to realize the significance and importance of Einstein's theory of relativity. But I have heard a few times that when Einstein sent his manuscript of the paper to Planck for publication,…
ACat
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What is the origin of the "virtual particle pair" metaphor for vacuum fluctuations?
In any layman level description of vacuum fluctuations in quantum field theory the fluctuations are described as a pair of virtual particles spontaneously appearing then disappearing within some short time determined by the particle energies and the…
John Rennie
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4 answers
Who was the first to say "Shut up and calculate!"?
The best thing I could find on the internet was this apparently forgotten article from 2004:
N. David Mermin, Could Feynman have said this?, Physics Today 57 (5), 2004.
user 85795
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How did the exponential map of Riemannian geometry get its name?
I've read in several books, including Milnor's Morse Theory and Petersen's Riemannian Geometry, that the exponential map in Riemannian geometry is named so because it agrees with the exponential map in Lie theory, at least for a certain choice of…
Ryan Unger
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Why did Einstein develop General Relativity?
I know that ultimately GR was validated by experiment. I'd like to know however, if there was any experimental discrepancy at the time that pointed to a conclusive flaw in Newtonian gravity, and which led Einstein to say "Hmm...you know what?…
Bhagwad Jal Park
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How/why was the Gaussian function invented?
How/why was the Gaussian function invented?
The function reminds me of nothing and I don't understand why Gauss would want to derive such thing, but we can see that it has numerous applications, so is there some connection between applicability and…
mavavilj
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4 answers
What was the longest delay between prediction and confirmation of a theory?
The recent announcement of the detection of gravitational waves by LIGO comes almost exactly 100 years after Einstein predicted gravitational waves in 1916. Are there other examples (in the era of modern science) of such a long delay between a…
Jeremy
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Why did Max Planck forbid women from attending his lectures?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner:
Encouraged by her father and backed by his financial support, she went to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin where famous physicist Max Planck allowed her to attend his lectures, an unusual…
Franck Dernoncourt
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What is the history behind the Erdős number?
The Erdős number is used as a tool to study how mathematicians cooperate to find answers to unsolved problems. But what is the history behind the Erdős number?
WaWaWa
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When did plagiarism become a major misconduct in academia?
...and what was the general view on it before?
Plagiarism in modern day academia is totally prohibited, and people doing such a misconduct would be banned from academia, or would at least get into serious troubles. And definitely lose a lot of…
Taladris
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