MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
8th February
On this day in 1913, G H Hardy answered the letter he had received from Ramanujan containing the latter's results. Hardy's letter begins:-
I was exceedingly interested by your letter and by the theorems which you state. You will however understand that, before I can judge properly of the value of what you have done, it is essential that I should see proofs of some of your assertions. Your results seem to me to fall into roughly three classes:
(1) there are a number of results that are already known, or easily deducible from known theorems;
(2) there are results which, so far as I know, are new and interesting, but interesting rather from their curiosity and apparent difficulty than their importance;
(3) there are results which appear to be new and important ...
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1627: Jonas Moore Ⓟ
- 1677: Jacques Cassini Ⓟ
- 1700: Daniel Bernoulli Ⓟ
- 1845: Francis Edgeworth Ⓟ
- 1856: Donald Macmillan
- 1875: Thomas Bromwich Ⓟ
- 1889: Robert Dunbar
- 1908: Ivor Etherington Ⓟ
- 1909: Ralph James Ⓟ
- 1922: Gaetano Fichera Ⓟ
- 1924: Irving Reiner Ⓟ
- 1928: Ennio De Giorgi Ⓟ
- 1930: Norman Alling Ⓟ
- 1930: Hans Grauert Ⓟ
- 1960: Yewande Olubummo Ⓟ
Died:
- 1759: Ramiro Rampinelli Ⓟ
- 1907: Giacinto Morera Ⓟ
- 1933: Gomes Teixeira Ⓟ
- 1936: Emilie Martin Ⓟ
- 1956: Johannes Haantjes Ⓟ
- 1957: John von Neumann Ⓟ
- 1971: Louis Antoine Ⓟ
- 1974: Fritz Zwicky Ⓟ
- 1976: Karl Maruhn Ⓟ
- 1983: Robert Geary Ⓟ
- 1998: Franz Kahn Ⓟ
- 2005: Germund Dahlquist Ⓟ
- 2015: Ola Bratteli Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From John von Neumann
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
