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'.
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 Wolfgang Pauli
The fact that the author thinks slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster than he thinks is inexcusable.
