MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
17th March
On this day in 1694, Guillaume de l'Hôpital sent a letter to Johann Bernoulli with a remarkable proposition:-
I will be happy to give you a retainer of 300 pounds, beginning with the first of January of this year. ... I promise shortly to increase this retainer, which I know is very modest, as soon as my affairs are somewhat straightened out. ... I am not so unreasonable as to demand in return all of your time, but I will ask you to give me at intervals some hours of your time to work on what I request and also to communicate to me your discoveries, at the same time asking you not to disclose any of them to others. I ask you even not to send here to Mr Varignon or to others any copies of the writings you have left with me; if they are published, I will not be at all pleased. Answer me regarding all this ...The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1984.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1876: Ernest Esclangon Ⓟ
- 1897: Charles Fox Ⓟ
- 1915: Wolfgang Doeblin Ⓟ
Died:
- 1652: Benjamin Bramer Ⓟ
- 1782: Daniel Bernoulli Ⓟ
- 1808: Carl Friedrich Hindenburg
- 1846: Wilhelm Bessel Ⓟ
- 1853: Christian Doppler Ⓟ
- 1921: Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovskii Ⓟ
- 1922: Heinrich Suter Ⓟ
- 1946: Alexander Morgan
- 1955: Georges Valiron
- 1956: Henry Baker Ⓟ
- 1962: Wilhelm Blaschke Ⓟ
- 1964: Henry Sheffer Ⓟ
- 2003: Buqing Su Ⓟ
- 2007: John Backus Ⓟ
- 2012: Gary Roach Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From John Backus
You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don't work.
And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.
