Mathematicians Of The Day

20th July



On this day in 1959, the first International Mathematical Olympiad began in Brasov, Romania.

A (personally designed) stamp of one of today's mathematicians is at THIS LINK.

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From Bernhard Riemann
It is well known that geometry presupposes not only the concept of space but also the first fundamental notions for constructions in space as given in advance. It only gives nominal definitions for them, while the essential means of determining them appear in the form of axioms. The relationship of these presumptions is left in the dark; one sees neither whether and in how far their connection is necessary, nor a priori whether it is possible.
From Euclid to Legendre, to name the most renowned of modern writers on geometry, this darkness has been lifted neither by the mathematicians nor the philosophers who have laboured upon it.
On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry (1854)