MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
18th December
On this day in 1703, John Flamsteed revealed his irritation with the choice of Edmond Halley as successor to Wallis as the Savilian Professor of Geometry. In a letter to Abraham Sharp he wrote:-
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1981.
Dr Wallis is dead – Mr Halley expects his place – who now talks, swears and drinks brandy like a sea-captain.
The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1981.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1917: Roger Lyndon Ⓟ
- 1922: Rimhak Ree Ⓟ
- 1942: Lenore Blum Ⓟ
- 1953: Peter Sarnak Ⓟ
Died:
- 1559: Cuthbert Tunstall Ⓟ
- 1760: Charles Hayes
- 1799: Étienne Montucla Ⓟ
- 1848: Bernard Bolzano Ⓟ
- 1855: Charles-François Sturm Ⓟ
- 1880: Michel Chasles Ⓟ
- 1970: Pao Lu Hsu Ⓟ
- 1994: Roger Apéry Ⓟ
- 1995: Konrad Zuse Ⓟ
- 1999: Bertha Swirles Jeffreys Ⓟ
- 2006: Mollie Orshansky Ⓟ
- 2007: Samuel Karlin Ⓟ
- 2020: Peter Neumann Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Étienne Montucla
[Mathematics is] the science of the ratios of size or of number, which can have between them all things that are susceptible of augmentation or of diminution. ... Mathematics divides up naturally into two classes; the one which one calls pure and abstract; the other those which one calls mixed, or more ordinarily physico-mathematical.
