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Source for Hilbert's famous quote "Mathematics in Göttingen? There really is none anymore"
Reportedly this was uttered at a banquet in which Hilbert was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, in response to Rust inquiring as to the state of mathematics in Göttingen now that it had been "freed of the Jewish…
silvascientist
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What is the modern significance of Theaetetus's classification of quadratic irrationals?
Before Eudoxus's theory of proportion there was a theory of irrationals based on continued fraction expansions, which Fowler calls anthyphairesis. Theaetetus is said to develop a classification of quadratic irrationals in this setting. Given…
Conifold
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21
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What happened to analog computers?
When was the last analog computer developed? What about one that is still in use (as in computation or experiment)? Were there major improvement done from the day digital computers became so popular?
user234487
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How did Kepler "guess" his third law from data?
It is amazing that Kepler determined his three laws by looking at data, without a calculator and using only pen and paper. It is conceivable how he proved his laws described the data after he had already conjectured them, but what I do not…
Joshua Benabou
21
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Who first measured the distance to the Moon? How was it done?
Who first measured the distance to the Moon? How was it done? I think it had to happen after Newton, but I am not sure.
Milkman
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What hair color did Évariste Galois have?
There is one historic black and white portrait of Évariste Galois that is often used [1]. However there are a number of more recent colorful portraits that imagine him to be anything from straw blond[2], things in between[3], brown[4] and…
worldsmithhelper
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Did Galileo Galilei believe in astrology?
The Wikipedia page on Gallileo Galilei mentions, among other things:
His multiple interests included the study of astrology, which at the time was a discipline tied to the studies of mathematics and astronomy.
My question is - did he actually…
Kostya
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When & how was it known that our Sun is the same thing as the night time stars?
Who was the first person to conjecture that our Sun is just another star?
Relatedly, what was the first evidence that this was true?
BMS
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How did Babylonians figure out that the evening star is the morning star?
Hesperus (Roman Vesper) is the name ancient Greeks gave to the evening star that appears in the sky for an hour after the Sun sets. Phosphorus (Roman Lucifer, sic!), was the name of the morning star that appears shortly before the dawn. Depending on…
Conifold
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What was the motivation for the development of modern, intrinsic, differential geometry?
I know that tensor calculus was developed around the same time as general relativity. Tensor calculus was the prime way to deal with geometric objects, based on expliciting all coordinates and doing computations with them (the so called "debauch of…
Mark Fantini
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Claims of mathematical breakthroughs while in an altered state of consciousness?
A similar question is found below:
Scientific progress claimed to be caused by dreaming
Has anyone ever made similar claims regarding other altered states of consciousness, besides dreaming? I know similar claims have been found in the sciences,…
Paul Burchett
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Conditionally convergent series
I am looking for the original reference discussing a specific, elementary example of a rearrangement of series converging to a value different from the original series. In what follows, I give some (meager) context and make explicit the example…
Andrés E. Caicedo
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Who invented the Leibnitz notation $\frac{d^2y}{dx^2}$ for the *second* derivative?
This MSE question made me wonder where the Leibnitz notation $\frac{d^2y}{dx^2}$ for the second derivative comes from. It does not arise immediately as the obvious generalization of $\frac{dy}{dx}$. Did Leibnitz use it himself? Or was it introduced…
Federico Poloni
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Before 1964, did scientists generally believe there was life on Mars?
Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to return photographs of Mars from near the planet, making its flyby of Mars in 1964. Those photographs showed what appeared to be a barren, desert surface. Mariner 4 also discovered that Mars had no magnetic…
Joe
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How did Ramanujan learn to do mathematics?
Did Ramanujan have any formal training in mathematics? I read that he did not. Then how did he learn to do mathematics? Mathematics does not come from instinct. You have to learn the basic facts. How did Ramanujan manage to solve hard mathematical…
Soham
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