Mathematicians Of The Day

21st September



On this day in 1908 Hermann Minkowski began his famous lecture at the University of Cologne with these words:-
The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

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Quotation of the day

From Girolamo Cardano
Quinquies exscriptus, maneat tot millibus annis.

I wrote it out five times, may it last the same number of millennia.
The final line of Ars magna.