MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
15th December
On this day in 1612, Simon Mayr was the first to observe the Andromeda galaxy through a telescope, although of course he had no notion that he was observing a distant system of stars. He described it in the preface to his Mundus Jovialis of 1614 as, 'like the flame of a candle seen through horn'.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1983.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1983.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1731: Francis Maseres Ⓟ
- 1732: Wenceslaus Johann Gustav Karsten Ⓟ
- 1802: János Bolyai Ⓟ
- 1823: August Yulevich Davidov Ⓟ
- 1827: Samuel Roberts Ⓟ
- 1847: Gaston Floquet Ⓟ
- 1897: Myron Mathisson Ⓟ
- 1912: Louis Goodstein Ⓟ
- 1912: Emil Grosswald Ⓟ
- 1923: Freeman Dyson Ⓟ
- 1929: Yurii Vasilevich Prokhorov Ⓟ
Died:
- 1838: Émile Léger
- 1849: Louis Benjamin Francoeur Ⓟ
- 1921: Leo Königsberger Ⓟ
- 1940: Alfred Young Ⓟ
- 1958: Wolfgang Pauli Ⓟ
- 1970: Theodore Samuel Motzkin Ⓟ
- 1971: Anne Cobbe Ⓟ
- 1971: Paul Lévy Ⓟ
- 2000: William Birnbaum Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From János Bolyai
One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera.
