MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
15th March
On this day in 1590, François Viète cracked the code of a message from Philip II of Spain and sent it to Henry IV of France.
... when Philip, assuming that the cipher could not be broken, discovered that the French were aware of his military plans, he complained to the Pope that black magic was being employed against his country.The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1993.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1713: Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille Ⓟ
- 1855: Charles Boys Ⓟ
- 1860: Raphael Weldon Ⓟ
- 1868: Grace Chisholm Ⓟ
- 1890: Boris Nikolaevich Delone Ⓟ
- 1924: Aldo Andreotti Ⓟ
- 1940: Jacob Palis Jr Ⓟ
Died:
- 1897: James Joseph Sylvester Ⓟ
- 1900: Elwin Christoffel Ⓟ
- 1912: Cesare Arzelà Ⓟ
- 1941: George Lawson Ⓟ
- 1952: Ernst Julius Amberg Ⓟ
- 1960: Eduard Čech Ⓟ
- 1992: Deane Montgomery Ⓟ
- 1994: Erling Sverdrup Ⓟ
- 2004: John Pople Ⓟ
- 2006: George Mackey Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From James Joseph Sylvester
Writing to his old friend Arthur Cayley, Sylvester confessed, "I expect Poincarre [sic] tomorrow and he will have rooms in College. I rather dread the encounter as there is so little in the way of Mathematics upon which I can hope to talk to him!"
