MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
21st April
On this day in 1702, Maria Winckelmann became the first woman to discover a comet. Her husband Gottfried Kirch wrote:-
Early in the morning the sky was clear and starry. Some nights before I had observed a variable star, and my wife wanted to find and see it for herself. In so doing she found a comet in the sky. At which time she woke me and I found that it was indeed a comet ... I was surprised that I had not seen it the night before.In fact Kirch claimed the discovery for himself and did not give the above account until 1710.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1652: Michel Rolle
- 1774: Jean-Baptiste Biot Ⓟ
- 1851: Alexander Macfarlane Ⓟ
- 1869: Philipp Furtwängler Ⓟ
- 1875: Teiji Takagi Ⓟ
- 1895: Archil Kirillovich Kharadze Ⓟ
- 1903: Isaac Schoenberg Ⓟ
- 1904: Jurjen Koksma Ⓟ
- 1909: Eduard Stiefel Ⓟ
- 1931: Robert C Thompson
- 1936: Richard Schelp Ⓟ
- 1946: Anzelm Iwanik Ⓟ
- 1951: Michael Freedman Ⓟ
Died:
- 1552: Petrus Apianus Ⓟ
- 1718: Philippe de la Hire Ⓟ
- 1825: Johann Friedrich Pfaff Ⓟ
- 1922: Alfred Kempe Ⓟ
- 1946: John Maynard Keynes Ⓟ
- 1954: Emil Post Ⓟ
- 2005: William Kruskal Ⓟ
- 2008: Aleksandr Yakovlevich Povzner Ⓟ
- 2010: Herbert Federer Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From John Maynard Keynes
Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women.
