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History and philosophy of mathematics, biographies of mathematicians, mathematics education, recreational mathematics, communication of mathematics.

60 votes

whence commutative diagrams?

I can muddy the waters...! According to editor E. Scholz of Hausdorff’s Collected Works (2008, p. 884): In a note of 3/20/1933 (Nachlass, fasc. 449) and in a further undated note (fasc. 571), Hausdor …
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
41 votes
Accepted

The letter $\wp$; Name & origin?

Apparently first introduced by Weierstrass in Winter 1862/63 lectures published by H. A. Schwarz (1881, 1885, 1892, 1893), §9: Mit der Sigma-Function $\mathfrak Su$ ist die Pe-Function $\wp u=\wp(u\m …
Leland's user avatar
  • 103
24 votes
Accepted

Origin of the term "sinc" function

While irruption of cardinal in this context must somehow relate to Whittaker’s — also unexplained — use of the word (to name the functions subject to his sampling theorem), it seems far less clear tha …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
26 votes

What is the oldest open math problem outside of number theory?

Stability of the Solar System ? (Question often attributed to Newton in Opticks, 1717 or 1730.) To further specify as requested by Timothy Chow, make it a few ($3\leqslant N\leqslant 8$) planets under …
LSpice's user avatar
  • 12.9k
13 votes

The orders of the exceptional Weyl groups

My guess: these orders were first computed by Coxeter in his thesis The polytopes with regular-prismatic vertex figures, Philos. Transactions (A) 229, 329–425 (1930). ZBL56.1119.03, $E_l$ as $(\math …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
14 votes

Whence “uniform distribution”?

It’s far from true. For one thing, Crofton in his famous paper (1869, p. 198) speaks of points “distributed with uniform density over the plane” (my bold). Moreover he refers to prior discussion in Th …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
34 votes
Accepted

Serre’s comment on Hurwitz: connecting FLT to points of finite order on elliptic curves

On page 322 of Serre, Jean-Pierre, The works of Wiles (and Taylor,(\dots)). I., Séminaire Bourbaki. Volume 1994/95. Exposés 790-804. Paris: Société Mathématique de France, Astérisque. 237, 319-332, Ex …
Joe Silverman's user avatar
11 votes

Pseudonyms of famous mathematicians

Thomas Young (of diffraction, elasticity, and Rosetta Stone fame) published mathematics as Emeritus Hydrophilus Apsophus Dytiscus Hemerobius A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. S. B. L. Norbert Wiener publis …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
12 votes

Autobiographies of mathematicians

19th century as requested: Charles Babbage, Passages from the life of a philosopher, 1864. George Biddell Airy, Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy, 1896. French scientists often wrote (and s …
Alexandre Eremenko's user avatar
27 votes
Accepted

Oldest photographed mathematician

Most ancient: Wikipedia has a daguerreotype of Gauss (1777–1855) on his deathbed. Or possibly Farkas Bolyai (1775–1856) in what look like similar circumstances. Less ancient, but allegedly photographe …
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

Why are distributions "tempered"?

Can someone explain, why in English the name "tempered" wins? Presumably because that’s how the inventor himself translated it (French past participle to English past participle), on e.g. p. 188 of …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
23 votes

First use of term "Hilbert's Nullstellensatz"

I think it is indeed van der Waerden, but in the earlier paper [1926], where he sounds just like one does when introducing terminology: translated from p. 143, the proposition in question is an almos …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
17 votes
Accepted

Why are faithful actions called faithful and who first called them faithful?

The German word is treu, and I would look to papers by Hermann Weyl for its introduction. E.g. Quantenmechanik und Gruppentheorie (1927, p. 16): Da das Gruppenschema aus der Darstellung abstrahiert w …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
9 votes
Accepted

Élie Cartan's paper "Les groupes réels simples, finis et continus" of 1914

The paper and its progeny are discussed at length in Helgason (1978, p. 537): In his paper [2] Cartan classifies the simple Lie algebras over R. His method, which required formidable computations, us …
Francois Ziegler's user avatar
5 votes

Mathematicians with both “very abstract” and “very applied” achievements

Mikhail L. Zeitlin, or Gel’fand-Zeitlin basis fame (1950), later switched to “game theory, the theory of automata, computer science, physiology, and mathematical methods of biology”.
Francois Ziegler's user avatar

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