Mathematicians Of The Day
28th March
On this day in 1949, the phrase "Big Bang" was created. Fred Hoyle used the term on the BBC's Third Program, in describing theories that contrasted with his own "continuous creation" model for the Universe.
...based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang ...He intended it as a pejorative, but the name caught on.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1847: Gyula Farkas Ⓟ
- 1923: Yitz Herstein Ⓟ
- 1928: Alexander Grothendieck Ⓟ
- 1949: Fritz Grunewald Ⓟ
- 1949: Leslie Valiant Ⓟ
Died:
- 1678: Claude Dechales
- 1840: Simon Lhuilier
- 1850: Bernt Holmboe Ⓟ
- 1946: David Gibb Ⓟ
- 1950: Ernst Hellinger Ⓟ
- 1973: Doris Hellman Ⓟ
- 2011: Pilar Ribeiro Ⓟ
- 2013: George Box Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Alexander Grothendieck
The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps ...