Mathematicians Of The Day

27th July



On this day in 1837, Lejeune Dirichlet presented his first analytic number theory paper at a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He proved the fundamental theorem that bears his name:
Every arithmetical sequence an + b, n = 0, 1, 2, ... of integers, where a and b are relatively prime, contains infinitely many primes.

The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1984.

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From Johann Bernoulli
A quantity which is increased or decreased by an infinitely small quantity is neither increased nor decreased.
Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)