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History of the definition of Injective & Surjective Function
I'm a college student, just beginning to study Elementary Set Theory. In studying about the definition of injective and surjective function, out of curiosity, it came to my mind a question about the definition these functions:
1) How did they came…
Gin99
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Depiction of molecules and reactions prior to the introduction of Lewis structures?
In chemistry, especially organic chemistry, molecules and reactions are usually schematically depicted by Lewis structures which provide a representation that makes it easy to grasp the structure and bonding situation of a molecule. But according to…
Philipp
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Who invented the exponential ansatz for linear differential equations with constant coefficients?
Who invented using $e^{\lambda t}$ as ansatz for solving linear differential equations with constant coefficients?
MrYouMath
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Who was first to differentiate between prime and irreducible elements?
I recently learned about irreducible and prime elements in a commutative ring. However, my professor was not quite sure who was the first to make this distinction, or give an example of an irreducible element which is not prime. Was it Dedekind? If…
David
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Who wrote down the first differential equation?
I am just curious who was the first person to write down a differential equation? And what was this differential equation?
MrYouMath
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9
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2 answers
When was the measurement problem solved?
I have been looking into the measurement problem that arises when considering different interpretations of quantum mechanics. Nowadays it seems to be considered a solved problem (in fact some people on physics.SE seem to be quite annoyed at people…
Wolpertinger
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What would have been the popular textbook to learn mechanics in the 19 th century?
If you were a student of physics of let's say between 14-20 years old, what textbook would you be using to learn physics from ?
copper
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Historical development of power series
I'm very interested to know about historical development of power series, i.e.
$$\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}a_n(x-c)^n=a_0+a_1(x-c)+a_2(x-c)^2+\dots$$
What was the situation and historical context that necessitated the discovery of power series? Why did…
Shahed al mamun
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On Einstein's proof of the so-called Pythagorean theorem
Part I
In E. Maor's book [2, p. 117] we read that, somewhere in his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote this:
An uncle told me about the Pythagorean theorem before the holy geometry booklet had come into my hands. After much effort I succeeded…
José Hdz. Stgo.
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When did people start viewing a matrix as a linear transformation between two vector spaces?
The notion of a matrix appeared far ahead of that of a vector space. So when did people start considering a matrix as a linear transformation between two vector spaces?
wdlang
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How was difference in water pressure perceived in ancient cultures or the middle ages?
I recently wondered: Even when diving to just 2-3 meters without any modern equipment one can feel the change in pressure. Do we have any evidence how this was perceived and explained back in ancient times throughout middle ages, besides ascribing…
Henry Dorsett
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Historical roots of the justification for the rule for multiplication of negative numbers
As a follow up question with respect to : Who wrote down minus times minus is equal to plus? and to : Historically, how did people define multiplication for negative numbers?, it can be interesting to trace the first "modern" justification for the…
Mauro ALLEGRANZA
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Why are microwaves called "microwaves", when they are much longer than a micrometer?
If "millimeter waves" have a wavelength of about 1 mm, one might linguistically expect microwaves to have a wavelength of about three orders of magnitude less, not the same or greater. How did microwaves get their name?
I did consider posting this…
WBT
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Landau doubting conservation of energy---and what followed
When the original beta decay experiments seemed to suggest that energy was not a conserved quantity, Landau (among others) proposed that energy conservation was a statistical law rather then a absolute one. However, I came across this in an article…
Sruli Herskovic
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What are the early applications of differential equations to social sciences?
I am reading Karatzas and Shreeve (Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus) and on page 128, at the beginning of chapter 3 on Stochastic Integrals, one reads:
I can't think of any social problem that was treated by Newton and Leibniz. Speaking of…
Conrado Costa
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