Timeline for The definition of "proof" throughout the history of mathematics
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 29, 2013 at 9:54 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | Well, at that time, reading Italian was quite natural for educated people. | |
| Jun 10, 2010 at 7:33 | vote | accept | Amichai | ||
| Jun 9, 2010 at 5:04 | comment | added | Victor Protsak | On a plus side (for us and Lagrange, but maybe not most 1800s mathematicians), it was written in Italian. I find it rather remarkable! | |
| Jun 9, 2010 at 4:25 | comment | added | Max Flander | the pages are smaller than a modern page of maths, at a guess i'd say 50 characters per line, 20 lines per page versus maybe 80 characters by 40 lines for a trans ams article -- so a back of envelope calcuation says maybe it's more like 170 pages in modern typesetting? | |
| Jun 7, 2010 at 17:59 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | Anyone who today is willing to read an illegible 550pp manuscript from an otherwise unknown mathematician is allowed to call Ruffini's proof controversial. Who is going to cast the first stone on the mathematical community (= Lagrange and Cauchy; no one else probably could have understood the work anyway) in 1800? | |
| Jun 7, 2010 at 6:01 | comment | added | John Stillwell | By the way, Ruffini's 1799 proof can be downloaded in full off Google books. It is a two volume work Teoria generale delle equazioni totaling 548 pages! A proof that long was unheard-of in those days (and pretty rare today, outside of group theory) which is surely one reason that the book was not studied carefully. | |
| Jun 7, 2010 at 3:22 | history | edited | Pietro Majer | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 272 characters in body
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| Jun 7, 2010 at 2:52 | history | answered | Pietro Majer | CC BY-SA 2.5 |