Instant Message
Email
Phone
In Person
Mathematics & Computation II
  |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) developed a system of the calculus independently from Newton's, and was unjustly accused of plagiarism by Newton's followers. His notation flourished in Europe and is now generally used, while Newton's was preferred in England. The German stamp shows a page of his manuscripts. Both Newton and Leibniz had "Big Hair."(Detail) |
 |
Like Eve and Snow White, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was the alleged victim of an apple, but with more positive results: the law of gravitation which not only applies to apples falling from trees but also describes the relationship of mutual attraction between planets and celestial bodies in the universe. On the 300th anniversary of the publication of his Principia Mathematica, Great Britain issued this set of commemoratives. Planetary motion according to the inverse square law and optical refraction are shown on two of the stamps. Newton is also considered the inventor of the calculus at the same time as Leibniz developed his version of the calculus; understandably, the German stamp honoring Newton features his Optics instead.(Detail) |
 |
|
 |
Jakob Bernoulli (1654-1705) was a member of the distinguished Swiss family of mathematicians which, together with Euler, brought fame to the city of Basel in the 17th century. He worked closely with Leibniz on the foundations of his calculus, and is here remembered on a Swiss stamp for his Law of Large Numbers, first published in 1713 in his Ars conjectandi, a milestone in probability theory. (Detail) |
 |
 Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a Swiss mathematician, worked in number theory,
differential geometry, calculus, differential equations, and is here commemorated
with his polyhedron formula:
Number of vertices - number of edges + number of faces = 2 The Swiss stamp on the right shows a bewigged Euler and his formula relating the exponential and trigonometric functions in the complex plane. (Detail) |
 |
Christian Goldbach (1690-1764) was a native of Prussia and a minister's son who studied law at university but cultivated wide-ranging interests in many other fields, most importantly in mathematics. He formed acquaintances with many of the leading thinkers of his time, including the Bernouillis, Euler, and Leibnitz, whom he met during his extended travels in Europe, and he maintained an active correspondence that lasted through his lifetime. He served as Secretary of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, and during that time, in 1742, he first communicated to Euler the supposition that any even integer greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers. Additionally, any odd integer is the sum of three primes. Goldbach's conjecture, as it is called, has not been proved absolutely, though it has been found to hold for ever larger numbers. . The most convincing proof so far was provided by the Chinese mathematician Chen Jing-run (1933-1996) in 1965 and is expressed by the inequality at the top of the stamp at left. This stamp was issued in 1999 by China as part of a set of four science and technology motifs and shows the late Chen in profile. For a detailed description of this stamp and extensive background on the Goldbach conjecture, see Mathematische Philatelie under Goldbach-Vermutung. |
 |
Gaspard Monge (1745-1818) was the most influential French mathematician of the late 18th century, but also active in other scientific fields, such as physics and chemistry. He was elected to the Academie des Sciences and contributed many memoirs on diverse subjects such as double refraction, finite difference equations, partial differential equations, meteorology, metallurgy and the composition of nitrous oxide. He was an examiner of naval cadets whose teaching and education he reformed during the French Revolution. The naval colleges were essentially the only schools offering training in the sciences, and to further this type of education Monge was instrumental in the establishment of the the Ecole Polytechnique in 1794, where he was a famous professor. His treatises in descriptive geometry, some of them written for his students and published in the Travaux of the Ecole, contributed to the increased interest in, and flourishing of, that field in the 19th century. Monge participated in Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, where he studied atmospheric effects such as mirages, as well as metallurgy. His important chemical research dealt with the composition of water, which he was able to synthesize at about the same time as Lavoisier. He also achieved the liquifaction of a gas, sulfur dioxide. |
 |
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) worked in analysis, number theory, and celestial mechanics. He succeeded Euler at the Academy of Science in Berlin, but then moved on to the Paris Academy of Science. He was a co-founder of the Ecole Polytechnique, where he taught analysis. His major work is Mecanique analytique, applying analytical methods to the subject of mechanics. (Detail) |
|
