23rd August

Mathematicians Of The Day

23rd August

On this day in 1638, René Descartes, in a letter to Mersenne, proposed his folium (

x^3 + y^3 = 2axy

) as a test case to challenge Fermat's differentiation techniques. To Descartes' embarrassment, Fermat's method worked better than his own.
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Born:

1683: Giovanni Poleni Ⓟ
1778: Jozéf Hoëné Wronski Ⓟ
1797: Jean Claude Saint-Venant Ⓟ
1829: Moritz Cantor Ⓟ
1842: Osborne Reynolds Ⓟ
1873: Zoárd Geöcze Ⓟ
1893: Joseph Ritt Ⓟ
1908: John Todd Ⓟ
1909: Florence Nightingale David Ⓟ
1919: Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin Ⓟ
1928: Israel Gohberg Ⓟ
1929: Anthony Spencer Ⓟ
1956: Andreas Floer Ⓟ

Died:

1806: Charles Augustin Coulomb Ⓟ
1923: Hertha Marks Ayrton Ⓟ
1935: Julius Gysel Ⓟ
1973: Hellmuth Kneser Ⓟ
1988: Hans Lewy Ⓟ
2004: Leopold Schmetterer Ⓟ
2006: Elemér Kiss Ⓟ
2009: Pierre Samuel Ⓟ
2012: James Serrin Ⓟ
2016: Reinhard Selten Ⓟ
2020: Peter Borwein Ⓟ

Quotation of the day

From Charles Augustin Coulomb

On graduating from school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment.

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