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How do we explain the lack of activity in the study of Latin mathematics?
A full professor teaching the history of mathematics at Masters level recently told a friend of mine that there was nothing of interest left to explore in the mathematics written in Latin over the last 1000 years. Given that a significant part of…
user19422
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Mathematicians who wrote fiction
Who among professional mathematicians are also known as fiction writers?
I know Omar Khayyam (11-12 century), and two more recent ones: Sofya Kovalevskaya and Michele Audin.
For the purposes of this question, let us define a "mathematician" as a…
Alexandre Eremenko
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Publication of mathematical papers in journals of enemy country
I restrict my question to mathematics since this is probably the most internationalized of all sciences. During WWII, did any British mathematicians (or mathematicians from allied countries) publish any papers in German journals? And vise versa. Did…
Alexandre Eremenko
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How did the notion of rigour in Euclid’s time differ from that in the 1920 revolution of Math?
I am reading about the 1900s revolution of math pioneered by figures such as Hilbert. I have seen many articles speak very fondly of these figures due to the fact they tried to study Mathematics through the perspective of Logic.
I do agree that it…
tryst with freedom
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History of greater-than symbol used in reverse?
I was surprised to find that Oliver Byrne's 1847 marvelous The Elements of Euclid (color version)1 uses $\sqsubset$ to mean "greater than" and $\sqsupset$ to mean "less than,"
in contrast our current $>$ and $<$ (p. xxvii).
This is especially…
Joseph O'Rourke
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What is the origin of the negation ( ¬ ) operator from logic?
I'm curious as to what the rationale was, and who the idea occurred to, for the ¬ symbol. I'll grant that more common mathematical symbols like +, −, × and ÷ are also likely unknown, but they seem to vaguely relate to their meaning in an…
Michael Macha
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Did a Chinese astronomical text conduct the "Galileo's Ship" thought experiment around the 2nd century BCE?
A math and physics magazine I was browsing through contains the quotation
The Earth is moving constantly, but people do not know it; like the
crew in an enclosed ship, they do not notice it.
The attribution is simply "Chinese astronomical text,…
Mark Eichenlaub
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Articles published without their authors being aware
In 1962, a paper called “Multiplication of Many-Digital Numbers by Automatic Computers”, by Anatoly Karatsuba and Yuri Ofman, was published at the Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was here that the Karatsuba multiplication algorithm…
José Carlos Santos
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Why was Hausdorff not able to move to United States from Nazi Germany?
Felix Hausdorff, who was so well known to American mathematicians through his topology book of 1914, Grundzüge der Mengenlehre, committed suicide together with his wife when facing the threat of deportation to Nazi Concentration camps in 1942.
Based…
No One
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Why do South Asians often use "lakhs" and "crores" instead of "millions"? What is the historical origin of this system?
I noticed that South Asians often write 10,00,000 instead of 1,000,000. My questions are:
What is the origin of this special numbering system? Was there a more practical reason for having a special numbering system for South Asia?
Why hasn't modern…
Arunabh Bhattacharya
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What makes the right angle special enough to be distinguished in the French metric system?
When introducting the metric system, the French tried to decimalise the degrees used for angles. They defined the right angle to contain 100 gradians.
Why was the right angle chosen? A somewhat equivalent question: Out of all possible angles, why is…
Sasha
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When did the word "Real number" begin to be used as an official terminology to refer to both rational and irrational numbers?
I am really curious about and struggling with finding when the word "Real number" began to be used as an official terminology to refer to both rational and irrational numbers.
In Wiki, it says the adjective "Real" was introduced by Descartes, and…
withgrace1040
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Napoleon I and Fulton: Steamship rejection story real?
A fairly well-known story is Fulton offering to build steam ships for The Emperor and Napoleon replying something like, "A ship that sails by bonfires under its decks?? Away with you, visionist!" (This story is alluded to in The Making of the Atomic…
releseabe
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Why did George Cayley never crack the stability problem?
George Cayley, aka "The Father of Aerodynamics" essentially, invented the field of heavier-than-air aerodynamics and built a number of model and man-carrying gliders, all in the first half of the 19th century. He defined the four forces acting on a…
winwaed
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Did Lorentz remain an ether advocate till his death?
I remember that I read somewhere that Lorentz remained an ether advocate till his death despite the empirical successes of Einstein's relativity in rejecting any kind of ether. However, I cannot remember the source. Can anybody please give me a…
Mohammad Javanshiry
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