MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
10th March
On this day in 1797, Caspar Wessel presented his one and only mathematics paper to the Danish Academy of Sciences, on the geometric representation of the complex numbers that we use today. The paper was essentially unknown until 1895 when Christian Juel pointed out its significance.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1622: Johann Rahn Ⓟ
- 1748: John Playfair Ⓟ
- 1818: Joel E Hendricks Ⓟ
- 1864: William Osgood Ⓟ
- 1869: Benjamin Fedorovich Kagan Ⓟ
- 1872: Elizabeth Stephansen Ⓟ
- 1885: Karlis Zalts Ⓟ
- 1912: Frank Smithies Ⓟ
- 1922: Lazar Matveevich Gluskin Ⓟ
- 1930: Juan Jorge Schäffer Ⓟ
Died:
- 1825: Karl Mollweide
- 1921: Francis Upton Ⓟ
- 1948: Evgeny Evgenievich Slutsky Ⓟ
- 1981: Yaroslav Borisovich Lopatynsky Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From William Osgood
Geometry is the noblest branch of physics.
