Mathematicians Of The Day
20th February
On this day in 1648, a letter from Pierre de Fermat through Frenicle de Bessy to Kenelm Digby reached John Wallis saying that Fermat had solved equations of the type for all non-square values up to 150. Thus begins the saga of the mis-naming of Pell's equation.
Click on Ⓟ for a poster.
Born:
- 1844: Ludwig Boltzmann Ⓟ
- 1860: Matyáš Lerch Ⓟ
- 1865: Charles Cailler Ⓟ
- 1921: Boris Trakhtenbrot Ⓟ
- 1929: Madan Lal Puri Ⓟ
- 1931: John Milnor Ⓟ
Died:
- 1762: Tobias Mayer Ⓟ
- 1778: Laura Bassi Ⓟ
- 1955: Arthur Lee Dixon Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Ludwig Boltzmann
To go straight to the deepest depth, I went for Hegel; what unclear thoughtless flow of words I was to find there! My unlucky star led me from Hegel to Schopenhauer ... Even in Kant there were many things that I could grasp so little that given his general acuity of mind I almost suspected that he was pulling the reader's leg or was even an imposter.