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

1 vote

When did the distinction between "pure" and "applied" mathematics become common?

The ancient Greeks were quite strict in their separation of pure mathematics (mathematics) and applied mathematics (logistics). Euclid in his elements covered the basics of pure mathematics: line segm …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Compare with Weber and Hilbert class field

Hilbert and Weber were more or less working simultaneously and independently on questions that led them to introduce "class fields". Weber was interested in extending Dirichlet's theorem on primes in …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
4 votes

Comparative analysis of history of mathematics

Maarten Bullynck has studied relations between Lambert's philosophical ideas and his mathematics. See http://www.kuttaka.org/~JHL/About.html for a start.
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
3 votes

Did Hermite really prove "Hermite's Theorem" on number field discriminants?

Indeed Hermite did not prove what today usually is called Hermite's theorem. Translated into modern terms, he shows that there are finitely many number fields of given degree and given discriminant. S …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Explanation of several unpublished remarks of Gauss on representations of a given number as ...

Let me add a few remarks concerning 2. If $p \equiv 3 \bmod 4$, then ${\mathbb F}_p(i) = {\mathbb F}_{p^2}$. The relative norm of $x+iy$ is the product of $x+iy$ and its conjugate $x-iy$, but the latt …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
18 votes

Class field theory - a "dead end"?

Let me address your questions 1. - 4. What were the original goals of class field theory? The question is a little bit anachronistic; class field theory describes the splitting of primes in abelian …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Explanation of two interrelated identities of Gauss about cubic and biquadratic periods

Let $p \equiv 1 \bmod 3$ be a prime number, let $g$ be a be a primitive root modulo $p$, and $\zeta$ a primitive $p$-th root of unity. The three cubic periods are \begin{align*} \eta_0 & = \zeta + …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
1 vote

Reference request for some fragments of Gauss with dubious origin

My guess is that whoever translated the fragments did not distinguish carefully between Gauss's own results and the comments by Schlesinger in https://archive.org/details/fragmentezurtheo00gausuoft As …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
39 votes
Accepted

Euler's Master's Thesis

Martin Mattmüller, in his article Leonhard Euler, seine Heimatstadt und ihre Universität on Euler's hometown Basel, writes that this public talk (not a dissertation or written thesis), which Euler gav …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
18 votes
Accepted

When did people start thinking of elliptic curves as groups?

The first mathematician who talked about groups of points on elliptic curves (in the sense of Galois, i.e., in the modern sense of the word group) was Juel [Ueber die Parameterbestimmung von Punkten …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Other Arabic translations of the Arithmetica

As Sesiano writes in his book, the first three books that once existed in Arabic translation (by Qusta ibn Luqa) are lost. But al-Karaji quoted extensively from Diophantus Book III (and gives almost a …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
6 votes

First formulation of the Dedekind and Hasse-Weil conjectures

Artin (1923) wrote that Dedekind proved the case of this conjecture concerning pure cubic number fields. Dedekind published his article in 1900, but writes that it is a reworking of a draft he had wri …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
17 votes
Accepted

On the history of the Artin Reciprocity Law

As GH has already remarked, the same thing happened a lot later after Taniyama and Shimura asked whether elliptic curves defined over the rationals are modular. To begin with your last question, there …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
10 votes

History of the analytic class number formula

KConrad's answer is correct, and the analytic class number formula is due to Dedekind. Yet the whole story is a little bit more complex and it is fair to say that Dedekind's analytic class number form …
Franz Lemmermeyer's user avatar
30 votes

Did Euler prove theorems by example?

"Proof by example" is a technique used by Euclid, who often proved results that hold e.g. for n integers in a typical case, say for 3 integers, as well as by Diophantus, who had to choose values for h …

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