MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
22nd April
On this day in 1715 (old style), the first total solar eclipse visible in London for 500 years took place. Halley predicted its timing to within four minutes and observed it in London with 3 minutes 33 seconds of totality.
A (personally designed) stamp of one of today's mathematicians is at THIS LINK.
A (personally designed) stamp of one of today's mathematicians is at THIS LINK.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1592: Wilhelm Schickard Ⓟ
- 1811: Otto Hesse Ⓟ
- 1830: Thomas Hirst Ⓟ
- 1861: Emil Müller
- 1884: David Enskog Ⓟ
- 1887: Harald Bohr Ⓟ
- 1891: Harold Jeffreys Ⓟ
- 1903: Taro Morishima Ⓟ
- 1910: Norman Steenrod Ⓟ
- 1929: Michael Atiyah Ⓟ
- 1933: John Frankland Rigby Ⓟ
- 1934: Ene-Margit Tiit Ⓟ
- 1935: Bhama Srinivasan Ⓟ
- 1946: Paul Davies Ⓟ
Died:
- 1945: Wilhelm Cauer Ⓟ
- 1945: Jacques Feldbau Ⓟ
- 1948: Herbert Richmond Ⓟ
- 1994: Rolando Chuaqui Ⓟ
- 2008: Tom Whiteside Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Michael Atiyah
I think it is said that Gauss had ten different proofs for the law of quadratic reciprocity. Any good theorem should have several proofs, the more the better. For two reasons: usually, different proofs have different strengths and weaknesses, and they generalise in different directions -- they are not just repetitions of each other.
