Mathematicians Of The Day

9th December



On this day in 1911 Henri Poincaré wrote the editor of a mathematical journal to ask if, contrary to custom, an unfinished piece of work could be published. He explained that at his age he might not be able to finish it, but that his work might provide ideas for another. The paper was published and not long afterwards George Birkhoff completed the solution. Poincaré died the following year.

On this day in 2013 Google released a Hopper doodle

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From Nikolai Luzin
It seems the set of natural numbers is not an absolutely objective formation. It seems it is a function of the mind of the mathematician who happens to be speaking of a set of natural numbers at a given moment. It seems there are, among the problems of arithmetic, those that absolutely cannot be solved.
Quoted in M Gessen, Perfect rigour (New York 2009)