Mathematicians Of The Day

25th October



On this day in 1713, Gottfried Leibniz, in a letter to Johann Bernoulli, observed that an alternating series whose terms monotonically decrease to zero in absolute value is convergent.

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 Évariste Galois
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
Quoted in N Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims (Raleigh N C 1988).