Mathematicians Of The Day

16th April



On this day in 1673, Leibniz wrote to Oldenburg about series:-
I conjecture that Mr Collins himself does not speak of these summations of infinite series because he brings forward the example of the series 12,13,14,15,16,...\large\frac 1 2\normalsize, \large\frac 1 3\normalsize, \large\frac 1 4\normalsize, \large\frac 1 5\normalsize, \large\frac 1 6\normalsize, ... which if it is continued to infinity cannot be summed because the sum is not finite, like the sum of the triangular numbers, but infinite. But now I am cramped by the space of my paper.
On this day in 2009 Google released a Huygens doodle (two days late).

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From Georges Buffon
... all the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only one variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity ... that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular.
Histoire Naturelle des Minéraux