Mathematicians Of The Day

4th February



On this day in 1884, the minutes of the Committee on the Course and Statutes of Columbia College record that Winifred Edgerton Merrill was to be allowed to use their telescope:
... access to the Observatory and the use of its instruments ... with the understanding that she will render, from time to time, such assistance in the practical work of the Observatory as may be in her power.
Later Merrill told her son:-
... that a condition of her admission was to dust the astronomical instruments and so comport herself as not to disturb the men students.

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Quotation of the day

From Giambattista della Porta
Having observed the forces of all things natural and celestial and having examined by painstaking investigation the sympathy among those things, brings into the open powers hidden and stored away in nature; thus, magic links lower things (as if they were magical enticements) to the gifts of higher things...so that astonishing miracles thereby occur.