MacTutorMathematicians 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.
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: Arthur Milne Ⓟ
- 1981: Henry Forder Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Girolamo Cardano
Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.
