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1500 questions
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Has any broad scientific consensus ever been based on corruption rather than evidence?
One of the most disturbing trends in modern politics (at least in America - I can't comment on other countries) is public distrust of science and scientists. There is by now an overwhelming scientific consensus behind the reality of anthropogenic…
Paul Siegel
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Why is the Sophie Germain Identity called thus?
Several authors (z.B.: Arthur Engel in his Problem-Solving Strategies, Alexander Bogomolny in this entry of the Cut the Knot website) refer to the following (straightforward) consequence of the difference of squares factorization formula as the…
José Hdz. Stgo.
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Is the modern "is defined as" notation from computer programming?
To my knowledge, the symbol for "is defined as" historically has been the notation, $\equiv$ or $\triangleq$. More recently, however, the notation $:=$ seems to have overtaken the latter two notations (at least, this seems to be the case in modern…
Matt Hancock
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The history and motivation of eigenvectors
I want to understand more about the history of eigenvectors. Was the discovery of eigenvectors inspired from an application to achieve a result in a historical context, was there a phenomenon which operated in some related way that was observed, was…
Vass
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Did Gauss say "there have been but three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton and Eisenstein"?
In Wikipedia I found this claim by E.T. Bell in his Men of Mathematics. However in the next paragraph it says that "it is doubtful that Gauss put Eisenstein in the same league as Newton", which makes me wonder why is he not considered to be in the…
Nicco
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When was the term "field" first used in maths?
My understanding is that the term "field" in science was first used in physics, while the mathematical term, at least the algebraic one, was more recent.
Does anybody know when the first occurrence of the term appeared, and if there was any…
mau
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History of measure theory
Is there a book anybody here can recommend on the history of measure theory? Or, maybe a book that contains the history of measure theory?
Most books that are supposed to cover this material, i.e. books on the integration theory that lead to the…
Avatrin
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Dmitri Mendeleev's Periodic Table
Dmitri Mendeleev arranged his first periodic table according to the number of protons and valency electrons. How did he, and others of his age, know of these subatomic particles and electron shell capacities? Nowadays, we have technology such as…
StopReadingThisUsername
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When did we learn that our galaxy was merely one amongst many billions?
This Kurzgesagt YouTube video claims that
Without [the Hubble Space Telescope], we would never have known that our galaxy is one of billions in an enormous universe. But, the actual human, Mr. Hubble, discovered another galaxy in 1929…
user67
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Is Coulomb's law the earliest mathematical formula describing electricity?
Is Coulomb's law the earliest formal equation of electricity?
Before Coulomb, many scientists and engineers conducted experiments of electricity.
user2986288
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Was science the driving force behind the Apollo program?
Was science really the driving force behind the Apollo program?
Or was the "race to the moon" the primary reason and the science objectives were put together as a secondary step?
Cedric H.
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What is the reason for the 'electromagnetism terminology' when discussing the conserved quantities found through Noether's theorem?
In (theoretical) physics, it is customary to describe the system under consideration in terms of the Lagrangian. One of the major advantages of this approach is that it allows us to analyze the symmetries of the system in a systematic way. Arguably…
Danu
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When do we see for the first time the use of the Cartesian coordinates?
I want to see an exact image of the first use of the Cartesian plane. I guess it came the first time with Descartes.
copper
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When was it first realized that sound travels with finite speed?
From what date can we trace the knowledge (or the hypothesis) that sound has a finite speed of transmission through air? Thunder/lightning is the most striking clue, but echoes would be the readiest source of controlled observation. However, I would…
David Holden
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What is the origin of the cut and weigh method of integration, is it Galileo's?
I recently heard a story of a clever method of approximating an integral which, instead of using numerical techniques, relied on physically drawing out the graph of a function, cutting it out, and weighing it.
I have not been able to find very much…
Peter Woolfitt
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