MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
13th May
On this day in 1673, James Gregory wrote to John Collins about diffraction:-
If ye think fit, ye may signify to Mr. Newton a small experiment, which (if he know it not already) may be worthy of his consideration. Let in the sun's light by a small hole to a darkened house, and at the hole place a feather, (the more delicate and white the better for this purpose,) and it shall direct to a white wall or paper opposite to it a number of small circles and ovals, (if I mistake them not) whereof one is somewhat white, (to wit, the middle, which is opposite to the sun,) and all the rest severally coloured. I would gladly hear his thoughts of it.The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1950.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1750: Lorenzo Mascheroni Ⓟ
- 1753: Lazare Carnot Ⓟ
- 1899: Pelageia Polubarinova Kochina Ⓟ
- 1926: Franz Kahn Ⓟ
- 1931: András Hajnal Ⓟ
- 1938: Detlef Gromoll Ⓟ
Died:
- 1734: Giovanni Ceva
- 1826: Christian Kramp
- 1866: Nikolai Dmetrievich Brashman Ⓟ
- 1868: Jean-Baptiste Brasseur Ⓟ
- 1915: Morgan Crofton Ⓟ
- 1919: Eugen Netto Ⓟ
- 1939: Stanisław Leśniewski Ⓟ
- 1944: William Berwick
- 1957: Michael Fekete Ⓟ
- 1965: Thomas Arnold Brown
- 1984: Stan Ulam Ⓟ
- 2001: Donald Eperson Ⓟ
- 2005: George Dantzig Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Lazare Carnot
... the sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] over all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas.
