MacTutor
Mathematicians Of The Day
11th January
On this day in 1787, William Herschel discovered the first two moons of Uranus: Titania and Oberon. In fact he discovered Oberon before spotting Titania. It is now known that Uranus has 27 satellites, most of which are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1545: Guidobaldo del Monte Ⓟ
- 1707: Vincenzo Riccati Ⓟ
- 1734: Achille-Pierre Dionis du Séjour Ⓟ
- 1825: William Spottiswoode Ⓟ
- 1826: Giuseppe Battaglini Ⓟ
- 1837: Hugh MacColl Ⓟ
- 1845: Victor Bäcklund Ⓟ
- 1938: Fischer Sheffey Black Ⓟ
Died:
- 1757: Louis Castel
- 1903: Henry Watson Ⓟ
- 1929: Micaiah Hill Ⓟ
- 1941: Emanuel Lasker Ⓟ
- 1946: J Watt Butters Ⓟ
- 1947: Edward Ross
- 1949: Torsten Carleman Ⓟ
- 2002: Shanti Swarup Gupta Ⓟ
- 2014: Zoltán Dienes Ⓟ
- 2019: Michael Atiyah Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Michael Atiyah
The most useful piece of advice I would give to a mathematics student is always to suspect an impressive sounding Theorem if it does not have a special case which is both simple and non-trivial.
