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1500 questions
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Where did the popular idea of spacetime come from?
[This question is about popular conceptions and therefore goes into strange directions, don't get too shocked]
The notion of spacetime can be traced back to roughly the 18th century where some people like Lagrange and d'Alembert started to idly…
Slereah
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Can we estimate the first appearance of popular science books?
Is it possible to say which was the first popular science book? I was reading this question Einstein's readings of popular sciences as a kid , and started wondering how far back this kind of distinction between popular science books for…
Mauricio
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When was the first time/s that sheaves entered algebra and algebraic geometry?
I'm interested in knowing about the first published texts in which sheaf-theoretic methods were used in algebra and/or in algebraic geometry.
The oldest instance I am aware of is J.-P. Serre, Faisceaux algébriques cohérents, which was published five…
Elías Guisado Villalgordo
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Poincaré's definition of mathematics (?)
Poincaré is said to have given this definition of mathematics:
It is the art of giving the same name to different objects. I can not believe this quote is from Poincaré.
Did Poincaré really say this? What could he have meant?
Al-Amrani
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9
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2 answers
Who was N.M. Stephens who refuted the Stronger Feit-Thompson Conjecture?
The Stronger Feit-Thompson conjecture states that:
There exist no distinct prime numbers $p$ and $q$ such that:
$\dfrac {p^q - 1} {p - 1}$ and $\dfrac {q^p - 1} {q - 1}$
are not coprime.
This was refuted by N.M. Stephens in July 1971 who published…
Prime Mover
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Context behind Planck's "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents...but rather because its opponents eventually die..."?
The open access paper Lehtola & Karttunen (2022) Free and open source software for computational chemistry education (found in this answer) contains the following paragraph:
2 FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
2.1 Definitions
However, the control of…
uhoh
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Theories on the beginning of photosynthesis, prior to Lynn Margulis work on symbiogenesis
Prior to the theory of symbiogenesis (heralded especially by Lynn Margulis in the late 60s), how did people explained the presence of chlorophyll in various, separate groups such as cyanobacteria, land plants, chromists and a variety of small…
plannapus
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3 answers
What was Richard Courant's saying about mathematical research apart from applications?
I remember reading somewhere (perhaps in The Mathematical Experience) that Richard Courant wrote something to the effect that, without applications to guide the river of mathematical discovery, mathematical research is doomed to wander aimlessly.…
Doubt
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Why was solving polynomial equations historically considered so interesting?
From reading a few accounts of the unsolvability of the quintic, I am told that, e.g., there were public contests in which people competed to solve polynomial equations, and that over the course of 200-300 years so much effort went into trying to…
IssaRice
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9
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3 answers
In which units did Sir Isaac Newton define force at that time as SI system didn't exist then?
Sir Isaac Newton led the foundation of his famous laws of motion during the 17th Century but at that time SI system hadn't existed. So in which units did he define force? Did he define it in some other units or was later redefined by scientists who…
INFOTECH GAMING
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First use of term "Hilbert's Nullstellensatz"
This year (2021) marks the 100th anniversary of Emmy Noether's 1921 paper in which she introduced Noetherian rings and proved the primary ideal decomposition for them. The original version of her paper is here and an English translation is on the…
KCd
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Did Sophie Germain find a flaw in Euler's equations for elastic vibrations?
I am a playwright working on a play about Sophie Germain. When Sophie was competing for the prix extraordinaire to find effective formulas to describe the vibrations of elastic surfaces, she believed a combination of formulas from Lagrange and Euler…
Brenda Kenworthy
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9
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Is Hermann Weyl's book “Space, Time, Matter” (1923) on General Relativity still relevant?
I really liked Hermann Weyl's mathematical books and would like to get accustomed to general relativity from his perspective, but wonder if it's still relevant after almost 100 (!) years?
Can this book be used to actually learn something useful…
Slaus
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9
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What exactly was the Rutherford model of the atom?
I was recently doing research on the "Rutherford model" of the atom. I found that there seem to be three different accounts of Ernest Rutherford's theory circulating online:
Electrons move move randomly in the space around the nucleus. Like…
Mark Morales II
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Did John von Neumann hate pure mathematics that became too abstract?
John von Neumann wrote the following in his essay The Mathematician:
As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly inspired by ideas coming from "reality"…
user4281
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