MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
20th May
On this day in 1608, the Dalmatian mathematician Marino Ghetaldi wrote to Christopher Clavius saying that with his latest parabolic mirror:-
... the sun melts not only lead, but silver.The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1995.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1861: Henry White Ⓟ
- 1870: Robert de Montessus Ⓟ
- 1874: Friedrich Hartogs Ⓟ
- 1901: Machgielis Euwe Ⓟ
- 1908: Hannes Alfvén Ⓟ
- 1946: George Lusztig Ⓟ
- 1951: Jonathan Borwein Ⓟ
Died:
- 1677: John Kersey Ⓟ
- 1782: William Emerson Ⓟ
- 1798: Erland Bring Ⓟ
- 1943: Henry White Ⓟ
- 1975: Jacy Monteiro Ⓟ
- 2010: Walter Rudin Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Hannes Alfvén
The difference between myth and science is the difference between divine inspiration of 'unaided reason' (as Bertrand Russell put it) on the one hand and theories developed in observational contact with the real world on the other. It is the difference between the belief in prophets and critical thinking, between Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd Tertullian) and De omnibus est dubitandum (Everything should be questioned Descartes). To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly large regions of space and time is science.
