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What are Philolaos' “even-odd” numbers?
Number, indeed, has two proper kinds (ιδια ειδη), odd and even, and a
third mixed together from both, the even-odd(αρτιοπέριττον). Of each
of the two kinds there are many shapes, of which each thing itself
gives signs.
(Philolaus F5 =…
sand1
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Why was Kronecker dissatisfied with Cantor's submitted paper?
It is said here that
In 1874 Cantor published an article in Crelle's Journal which marks the birth of set theory. A follow-up paper was submitted by Cantor to Crelle's Journal in 1878 but already set theory was becoming the centre of controversy.…
user51309
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how sophisticated was Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics compared to the Greeks
It seems like the focus always tends to be on the achievement of Greek math (which strikes of eurocentrism a little bit) while civilizations like the Egyptians and Babylonians are overlooked
why do we overlook their mathematical contributions?
user4281
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Was it a major cultural event when Van Leeuwenhoek discovered unseen animals under the microscope?
In the 17e century van Leeuwenhoek discovered with his microscope new kind of animals and cells. How was this discovery of van Leeuwenhoek received by the ordinary people when there seemed to be more animals than human kind could ever think of? Was…
Marijn
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6 answers
Examples of abstract proofs that turned out to be false
I found this question that discusses abstract theories that later found application. I am interested in accepted (at least at one point in time) abstract theories that:
was contradicted by attempts to apply and/or observed phenomenon (as currently…
Lugh
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2 answers
What topological ideas did Gauss introduce to his student Möbius?
Recently I found a website with good historical information about the contributions of Gauss to Analysis situs (the old term for topology). The site is in German so I made a Google translate to English on it. The site contains the following remark…
user2554
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Who coined the term “machine learning”?
A lot of sources attribute the definition to Arthur Samuel (1959), "the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed", but none of these sources directly point to where he actually said the quote. Just…
Flair
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5
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Do we have any in depth material on Baudhayana?
I know he wasn't strictly a mathematician, but as I understand, Baudhayana recorded information on (what we know as) the Pythagorean Theorem and other geometrical properties like $\sqrt{2}$, in the Shulba Sutras, c. 800 BCE, about 200 years before…
galois
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To constructivists, is "mind" more than a convenient synonym for "algorithm"?
I could give (but, not being a professional historian, nor a native Dutch speaker, only few) references and background-remarks, but I will keep this short, to make more use of what a Q&A-sites offers, hoping for a summary by professional hiostorians…
Peter Heinig
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What was Zermelo's _reception_ of von Neumann's definition of ordinal numbers?
Redactional note
Like suggested by one of this question's (or so I understand the meta.discussion), this question should be given some too-many-subquestions-redacting, in particular since the easiest sub-question (0) of it has been answered by…
Peter Heinig
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Who first proposed the "colour" charge?
Does anybody know a paper or sorts in which the term "colour" charge in QCD was introduced first? Or any other source in which this label was proposed?
uitty400
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Who gave you infinitesimal epsilon?
As someone reputed among certain historians to have given you the epsilon Cauchy startled me by using $\varepsilon$ to denote an infinitely small number in his 1826 text on differential geometry; see page 98 here:
[S]i l'on désigne par…
Mikhail Katz
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Why did pre-17th century mathematics mostly come from Italy but later mathematics came from France, Germany and England?
The Renaissance created a number of prominent mathematicians. However, later in the 18th and especially 19th century, Germany and France became the hot centers of mathematical thinking.
Shuheng Zheng
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Is there any history into the methodology that Balmer used for the spectral line formula?
What I am referring to is the Balmer formula as it appears in Wikipedia. To come up with this series by trial and error along with its constants is asking a little too much but I can't understand how one would go about deriving this formula which…
Sedumjoy
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Plato's chemical formula for water
In a paper about Plato's Timaeus I came across a cryptic note saying: "Academic research usually avoids noting that Plato's assertion about water consisting of two parts air and one part fire is strikingly similar to the modern chemical formula…
sand1
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