MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
21st September
On this day in 1908 Hermann Minkowski began his famous lecture at the University of Cologne with these words:-
The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.A (personally designed) stamp of one of today's mathematicians is at THIS LINK.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1623: Stephano degli Angeli Ⓟ
- 1845: Elizaveta Litvinova Ⓟ
- 1861: William Briggs Ⓟ
- 1884: Dénes König Ⓟ
- 1895: Joseph Walsh Ⓟ
- 1899: Julius Schauder Ⓟ
- 1917: Phyllis Nicolson Ⓟ
- 1935: Yakov Grigorevich Sinai Ⓟ
Died:
- 1576: Girolamo Cardano Ⓟ
- 1842: James Ivory
- 1937: Chrystal Macmillan Ⓟ
- 1950: E A Milne Ⓟ
- 1960: Frank Ross Ⓟ
- 1981: Henry Forder Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Girolamo Cardano
Scipio Ferro of Bologna well-nigh thirty years ago discovered this rule and handed it on to Antonio Maria Fior of Venice, whose contest with Niccolo Tartaglia of Brescia gave Niccolo occasion to discover it. He [Tartaglia] gave it to me in response to my entreaties, though withholding the demonstration. Armed with this assistance, I sought out its demonstration in [various] forms. This was very difficult.
