MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
5th November
On this day in 1828, Augustus De Morgan, age 22, gave his introductory lecture, On the study of mathematics, at London University. He was the first mathematics professor at the university.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 2015.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 2015.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1848: James Whitbread Lee Glaisher Ⓟ
- 1866: Alfred Tauber Ⓟ
- 1872: John Meiklejohn Ⓟ
- 1899: Karl Dörge Ⓟ
- 1916: Edmund Hlawka Ⓟ
- 1930: Frank Adams Ⓟ
- 1952: Bob Thomason Ⓟ
Died:
- 1526: Scipione del Ferro
- 1800: Jesse Ramsden Ⓟ
- 1879: James Clerk Maxwell Ⓟ
- 1934: Walther von Dyck Ⓟ
- 1981: Stanisław Mazur Ⓟ
- 1995: Bob Thomason Ⓟ
- 2009: Chandra Kintala Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Frank Adams
I do feel impelled to try and say what needs to be said about a whole way of writing books on algebra from Van der Waerden to Cartan and Eilenberg. Look, you people are writing about a subject I love. I would echo Hardy and say, "The subject is so attractive that only extravagant incompetence could make it dull." All the same, we have books that do that. They are austere and arid. Why is that? ...
This book has good company in a bad tradition, which is to accompany good mathematics with bad teaching. Cartan doesn't lecture this way, Eilenberg doesn't lecture this way, Bass doesn't lecture this way and they don't always write this way. Why do they write books this way?
