Questions about mathematicians and their lives.
4
votes
2answers
153 views
Photograph of Marjorie Rice
I'm giving a presentation this weekend about Marjorie Rice's work on tilings. The only photograph I have of her (from her website) is small and pixelated, and I haven't been able to make contact with ...
0
votes
2answers
40 views
Is there a book or a list online where Fermat's conjectures are compiled?
I heard/ read somewhere that "Fermat's last theorem" is named as such because it is "Fermat's last conjecture to be disposed of." This got me interested in knowing what Fermat's other conjectures are. ...
3
votes
1answer
175 views
Leonhard Euler phd?
"In 1723, received his Master of Philosophy with a dissertation that compared the philosophies of Descartes and Newton. At this time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, ...
4
votes
1answer
136 views
pronunciation of “Kunen” [closed]
How should the last name of set theorist Ken Kunen be pronounced? I have heard both koo-nen and kyoo-nen from other people. Probably the best answer would be to say how he himself pronounces it, but ...
7
votes
5answers
436 views
Mathematics, Philosophy and writing.
Do you know of any famous mathematicians who were also philosophers? I have heard of Descartes, Plato and Leibniz. Are there other good examples, especially more modern examples?
Also welcome are ...
8
votes
3answers
122 views
Links to Online Videos of Good-Quality Lectures by Mathematicians
I am not trying to do anything new here, but I would like to start an activity that has been going on at Math Overflow. Hopefully, people here at the Math StackExchange can also enjoy the good stuff.
...
4
votes
1answer
126 views
Who is “Euclide Paracelso Bombasto Umbugio”?
I just browsed through the book Foundations of Algebra and Analysis by C. Dodge, which contains a very short biography of a very famous mathematician at the beginning of each chapter, together with ...
9
votes
0answers
215 views
Who was Hermann Künneth?
Question as in the title:
Who was Hermann Künneth? Where can I find some biographical information beyond what is available on Wikipedia?
The well-known Künneth formula, for example in the form of ...
1
vote
1answer
127 views
Anyone here have got reward checks from Knuth? [closed]
I am reading Concrete Mathematics now and found a printing error,I have sent email to him.
How long the email will be got reply?I heard that he do not use email now,is it necessary to write a snail ...
-2
votes
2answers
181 views
How do engineers and mathematicians cooperate? [closed]
Last night, I heard one engineer talking about work. He said that the mathematicians formulate the problems and then send these problems to be solved by engineers.
I thought that mathematicians ...
5
votes
2answers
485 views
Mathematics celebrities that every mathematician should know? [closed]
As a mathematician, sometimes I meet across very embarrassing questions which were posted by who does not learn of mathematics, for example, my wife and so on. She or he always posted such questions: ...
2
votes
0answers
127 views
How many centenarian mathematicians are there? [closed]
I know of two living mathematicians who are centenarians: Kathleen Ollerenshaw (turns 100 in October, so not technically a centenarian yet) and Sergey Nikolsky. Does anyone know any other ones?
21
votes
4answers
641 views
Examples of mathematicians who lost interest in Math and got interested again?
I am looking for some examples, and hopefully some short biographies on mathematicians who lost interest in Math along the way, and somehow got rejuvenated again. (Better still, who managed to do ...
3
votes
3answers
353 views
Sheffer stroke the most important advance in logic?
I think I once read, or heard, that Bertrand Russell once said that the discovery that all logical operators are expressible in terms of the Sheffer stroke was the most significant advance in logic ...
6
votes
1answer
221 views
Unpublished Discoveries by Gauss that Were Later Rediscovered and Attributed to Other Mathematicians
Karl Friedrich Gauss made many discoveries that he did not publish and that remained unknown until later mathematicians (re)discovered them. When Gauss's personal notebooks were later examined, it ...
8
votes
2answers
536 views
Who are some forgotten mathematicians? [closed]
In Thomas' Calculus, he presents ''Nicole Oresme's Theorem'':
$$
\sum_{n=1}^\infty {n\over 2^{n-1}}=4.
$$
My first reaction was "who is this person?''.
As it turns out, he was a Frenchman from the ...
9
votes
1answer
225 views
Mathematicians who started out studying something else
I did not know much about modern mathematicians's biographies. One of my friend has just told me Edward Witten was a history student when he was undergradute.
Are there any different modern ...
11
votes
2answers
803 views
Contemporary mathematician one should know about
While reading The Princeton companion to Mathematics Timothy Gowers choose not to list alive mathematicians in the last part but I think it's important to know about them. Recently I've read about ...
1
vote
2answers
1k views
What did Simon Norton do after 1985?
Simon Norton is a mathematician that worked on finite simple groups and co-authored the Atlas of Finite Groups. With John Conway they proved there is a connection with the Monster group and the ...
6
votes
1answer
329 views
What is the primary source of Hilbert's famous “man in the street” statement?
I read somewhere a long time ago that Hilbert once said words (no doubt in German) to the effect that any mathematician worth his salt ought to be able to explain his results to any man in the street. ...
8
votes
3answers
809 views
Provenance of Hilbert quote on table, chair, beer mug
All over the web one can find statements to the effect that:
"One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs"
There are many ...
11
votes
2answers
453 views
Looking for an André Weil excerpt
I just wasted the last hour on google looking in vain for an excerpt of Weil's writings describing the process of discovering mathematics. I believe he once beautifully described the feeling of loss ...
12
votes
1answer
460 views
How to become eloquent mathematician?
I have noticed that among mathematicians there is a great diversity in style of expression. Some of these are exceptionally neat and elegant. What I mean by that is that proof, or argument takes few ...
2
votes
1answer
418 views
Who was the mathematician who thought “god” was out to get him?
Wasn't there a mathematician who was convinced that "god" was out to get him? When he was travelling by sea he would write a friend a letter claiming that he had finally proved a difficult theorem ...
5
votes
1answer
443 views
Why is Harish-Chandra's last name never used?
This is only barely a math question but I don't know where else to ask. I've always wondered about Harish-Chandra's name. The Wikipedia article seems to mention "Mehrotra" as a last name but only in ...
30
votes
2answers
833 views
What is your method?
Many young, and not so young, mathematicians struggle with how to spend their time. Perhaps this is due to the 90%-10% rule for mathematical insight: 90 pages of work yield only 10 pages of useful ...
12
votes
14answers
1k views
Mathematical concepts named after mathematicians that have become acceptable to spell in lowercase form (e.g. abelian)?
I would like to collect a list of mathematical concepts that have been named after mathematicians, which are now used in lowercase form (such as "abelian"). This question is partly motivated by my ...
