MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
4th August
On this day in 1539, Girolamo Cardan wrote to Niccolò Tartaglia in an attempt to understand why his calculations involving the square roots of negative numbers sometimes gave the correct answer. He said that his calculation was as subtle as it is useless.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1943.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1943.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1805: William Rowan Hamilton Ⓟ
- 1834: John Venn Ⓟ
- 1843: Mauritz Dahlin Ⓟ
- 1893: Francis Murnaghan Ⓟ
- 1909: Saunders Mac Lane Ⓟ
- 1912: Aleksandr Aleksandrov Ⓟ
- 1939: Brian Sleeman Ⓟ
Died:
- 1812: Georg Klügel Ⓟ
- 1874: Otto Hesse Ⓟ
- 1906: Joseph Tilly Ⓟ
- 1920: Karl Rohn Ⓟ
- 1945: Gerhard Gentzen Ⓟ
- 1967: Archibald Macintyre Ⓟ
- 2009: James Wiegold Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Saunders Mac Lane
The standard "foundation" for mathematics starts with sets and their elements. It is possible to start differently, by axiomatising not elements of sets but functions between sets. This can be done by using the language of categories and universal constructions.
