Mathematicians Of The Day

4th August



On this day in 1539, Girolamo Cardan wrote to Niccolò Tartaglia in an attempt to understand why his calculations involving the square roots of negative numbers sometimes gave the correct answer. He said that his calculation was as subtle as it is useless.

On this day in 2014 Google released a Venn doodle.

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From William Rowan Hamilton
Time is said to have only one dimension, and space to have three dimensions. ... The mathematical quaternion partakes of both these elements; in technical language it may be said to be "time plus space", or "space plus time": and in this sense it has, or at least involves a reference to, four dimensions.

And how the One of Time, of Space the Three,
Might in the Chain of Symbols girdled be.
Quoted in R P Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton