Benjamin Franklin


Quick Info

Born
17 January 1706
Boston, Massachusetts, British colony
Died
17 April 1790
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Summary
Benjamin Franklin was an American scientist and diplomat. His mathematical interests included magic squares.

Biography

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, but spent most of his life in Philadelphia (punctuated by residences in London and Passy, France). His formal education lasted less than two years, and so he was mainly self-educated, aided by the convenient access to books provided by an apprenticeship in the printing business.

Franklin is best known in the popular imagination for his nonscientific pursuits: printer, American revolutionary, ambassador, to mention only a few roles he played. His scientific reputation rests mainly on his accomplishments as an inventor and as a pioneering theorist in the physics of electricity, but his interests were also mathematical. His version of magic square - a variant now termed the Franklin magic square - was inspired by the work of Stifel and Frénicle, both of whose magic squares were of a more traditional variety. He also drew magic circles.

His first published magic square and his only published magic circle appeared in a 1767 book which also included unrelated excerpts from work by Thomas Simpson. Two years later, Franklin published this square:
  526141320293645
  143625146353019
  536051221283744
  116595443382722
  555871023263942
  98575641402524
  506321518313447
  161644948333217
Aside from the row and column sums being constant, this square also has many other "magical" properties. Further examples of Franklin's magic squares would not be published until two centuries after his death, and doubtless many more were lost. Those which do survive are quite impressive.

Franklin enjoyed close personal and professional relationships with quite a few of the important thinkers of his day, such as Hume, Priestley, Lavoisier and Condorcet. He was a member of the learned societies of many nations. Among these were the Royal Society, which awarded him its prestigious Copley medal for his work in electricity, and the American Philosophical Society, of which he was a founder. He received several honorary degrees, including a doctorate from St. Andrews.


References (show)

  1. I B Cohen, Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin
  2. Obituary in The Times
    See THIS LINK
  3. P C Pasles, The Lost Squares of Dr. Franklin, American Mathematical Monthly 108 (2001), 489-511.

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Written by Paul C Pasles, Villanova University,USA.
Last Update June 2001