Math Makers PDF
Math Makers PDF
Math Makers PDF
Alfred S. Posamentier
and Christian Spreitzer
Guilford, Connecticut
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
vii
viii M AT H M A K E R S
xi
xii Introduction
In the biographies of these innovators, you will find the answers to not
just these questions but also many more. Furthermore, the life stories of
these men and women who invented and developed mathematics will both
motivate you and inspire within you a greater appreciation for this most
important subject.
Selecting which mathematicians to profile was no mean feat. We aimed
for as broad a representation as possible, looking to feature specifically
those who paved the path to our current technological age. This, of course,
includes the all-too-often-neglected women who have contributed signifi-
cantly to this process. Although each of these figures had markedly different
life experiences, you will find a common characteristic among them: they
were often considered unable to blend into the social fabric of the culture
of their times. The brilliance and unusualness of these fifty mathematicians
are revealed not only by the fruits of their mathematical wonder and labor
but also by the very lifestyles they led.
Some of their lives were rather sad, such as that of French mathematician
Évariste Galois, the developer of what is today known as Galois theory. In
1832, on the eve of a duel he believed himself sure to lose, the twenty-year-
old Galois wrote down everything he knew about abstract algebra. Sadly,
the duel eventually cost him his life. What he wrote that night became the
foundation of Galois theory, which, as you will later see, connects two other
theories in such a way as to make them both more understandable and
simpler. One wonders what other gems Galois could have offered, were he
given the chance.
But Galois was not the only mathematician whose contributions might
have been lost entirely. In eighteenth-century European society, women were
not allowed to participate in advanced academic studies. One of the famous
mathematicians profiled here, Sophie Germain, was a child prodigy. In order
Introduction xiii
to secure access to the world of academia, Germain wrote under the name of
a former (male) student. After recognizing her genius and inquiring further,
famous mathematicians of the day—such as Joseph Louis Lagrange and Carl
Friedrich Gauss—discovered that she was a woman. Fortunately—and to our
shared benefit—they accepted her as an equal. Germain then went on to pro-
vide significant advances in both mathematical studies and physics.
Another unusual, and rather melancholy, biography is that of the Indi-
an mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He grew up in very poor circum-
stances but was eventually accepted by famous British mathematicians. Yet
he suffered poor health, which severely limited his life span. His biography
was deemed worthy of a full-length feature film; 2014 saw the release of The
Man Who Knew Infinity,2 which was based off of the biography penned by
Robert Kanigel.3
Perhaps one of the most unconventional lives detailed here was that
of the Hungarian-American mathematician Paul Erdős, who essentially
lived out of a suitcase. Erdős had no residence and lived with about five
hundred mathematicians and universities for weeks at a time, and he pub-
lished over 1,500 mathematical papers of high significance. Today, there
still exists a pride among mathematicians who had the privilege of coau-
thoring a research article with him. The Erdős Number Project oversees
the breakdown of who collaborated with this prolific mathematician and
assigns Erdős numbers to them. Direct coauthors of his are designated as
an “Erdős number 1”; coauthors of these mathematicians are then each
considered an “Erdős number 2,” and so on.
In the pages that follow, we survey not only modern mathematicians
who advanced our shared knowledge but also those pioneering ancients
who provided the foundation upon which the rest stood. For instance, Ar-
chimedes of Syracuse is mostly remembered as an ingenious inventor of
mechanical devices; but he is also considered the greatest mathematician of
classical antiquity. His mathematical achievements go well beyond the work
of other ancient Greek mathematicians. Amazingly, he anticipated modern
calculus when he used minute measurements to prove geometrical theo-
rems. Such astounding accomplishments are pervasive in the biographies
of these historical figures.
Beyond these awe-inspiring accomplishments, there are also many
curiosities—some quite entertaining—that are part of the history of
mathematics. For example, in 1637, in the margin of an algebra book, the
famous French mathematician Pierre de Fermat wrote that no three positive
xiv Introduction
Thales of Miletus:
Greek (ca. 624–546 BCE)
1
2 M AT H M A K E R S
who was born in 624 BCE in the ancient Greek city of Miletus (today Milet,
Turkey). Although he had influence in the very early study of geometry,
he is probably best known today for what we refer to as Thales’s theorem,
which simply says that if a triangle is inscribed in a circle with one side
being the diameter of the circle, then the triangle is a right triangle. In addi-
tion to establishing this theorem, Thales led a very productive life not only
as a mathematician but also as a philosopher and an astronomer, a combi-
nation that was common in his day.
The Greek society in which Thales was reared was less advanced than
the societies of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, both of which cul-
tures were leaders in mathematics and astronomy at the time. Despite this,
it is believed that Thales was the Greeks’ first true scientist. In his youth,
Thales spent his time as a merchant, supporting his family’s business.1 His
travels brought him to Egypt, which is where he most likely became en-
chanted with science and mathematics. He gradually reduced his thinking
about spiritual influences on life and replaced it with scientific explana-
tions. This change of interests significantly reduced his earnings but did
not seem to stop him. Furthermore, Thales occasionally used scientific
knowledge to his advantage in the business world. It is said that during a
particular winter he realized that the coming season would have a bumper
crop of olives, and, as a result, he secured all the olive presses in the re-
gion so that his potential competition was at a strong disadvantage. This is
merely one example how, with a scientific understanding, he did earn quite
a sum of money.
Let’s look at some of the achievements in mathematics that are attrib-
utable to Thales. As we mentioned earlier, today he is best known for his
accomplishments in geometry, since it is believed that he was the first to use
deductive logic in establishing some geometric truths. In other words, he
formalized the study of geometry from the typical practical aspects to the
more formal deductive logic. One might say that Thales opened the doors
for the study of geometry in ancient Greece, which peaked about three hun-
dred years later. Thales died in the year 546 BCE, after having spent the last
part of his life teaching at the Milesian school, which he founded.
Thales is largely remembered today for the theorem that bears his
name. Although there are numerous ways to prove the theorem, we shall
present one here that uses simple elementary geometry. In figure 1.2, we are
Thales of Miletus: Greek (ca. 624–546 BCE) 3
Figure 1.2.
given a triangle ABC inscribed in circle O, with side AB the diameter of the
circle. Thales proved that angle ACB must be a right angle.
Since triangle AOC is an isosceles triangle, the base angles, that is, those
marked with α are equal. Similarly, triangle COB is also an isosceles triangle,
so that the two angles marked with β are also equal. Since the sum of the
angles of a triangle is equal to 180°, we have the following: α + (α + β) + β =
180°. Then, 2α + 2β = 180°, or α + β = 90°, which is what we wanted to prove.
Clearly, the converse is also true; namely, that the center of a circumcircle of a
right triangle is on the hypotenuse of the right triangle.
Another theorem that is attributed to Thales is shown in figure 1.3,
where parallel lines AB and CD are cut by two transversal lines PCA and
PDB. Thales proved that the following proportions are true:
PC PD CD
= = .
PA PB AB
4 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 1.3.
These demonstrations give us a good insight into the new kind of think-
ing that Thales introduced to the world; in this sense, he was a trendsetter!
Chapter 2
Pythagoras:
Greek (575–500 BCE)
The one mathematician whom most people remember from their early
school days is Pythagoras, whose name is attached to a theorem. As we
embark on our exploration of the Pythagorean theorem, we are faced with
some questions. Chief among them is, Why is the relationship that histori-
cally bears his name—the Pythagorean theorem—so important? There are
many potential reasons: it is easy to remember; it can be easily visualized;
it has fascinating applications in many fields of mathematics; and it is the
basis for much of mathematics that has been studied over the past millen-
nia. Yet, it may be best to begin at its roots—with the mathematician whom
we credit as being the first to prove this theorem—and examine the man
himself, his life, and his society.
When we hear the name Pythagoras, the first thing that pops into our
minds is the Pythagoreans theorem.1 When asked to recall mathematics
instruction somewhat beyond arithmetic, it is common to remember that
a2 + b2 = c2. Those with a sharper memory may recall that this could be stat-
ed geometrically: the sum of the areas of the squares drawn on the legs of
a right triangle is equal to the area of the square drawn on the hypotenuse.
We can see this clearly in figure 2.1, where the area of the shaded square is
equal to the sum of the areas of the two unshaded squares.
5
6 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 2.1.
1. you can find the area of the large square by squaring the length of
2
a side (a + b) to get ( a + b) = a 2 + 2ab+ b2 , or
2. you could represent the area of the large square as the sum of the
areas of the four congruent right triangles, 4 ⎛⎜ 1 ab⎞⎟ , plus the smaller
inside square, c2. This is: ⎝2 ⎠
⎛1 ⎞
4 ⎜ ab⎟ + c 2 = 2ab+ c 2 .
⎝2 ⎠
12 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 2.4.
Figure 2.5.
Because you have two representations of the large square, you can sim-
ply equate them. Therefore, a 2 + 2ab+ b2 = 2ab+ c 2 . Then, by subtracting 2ab
from both sides of the equation, you end up with the simple equivalent of
a2 + b2 = c2. This is the Pythagorean theorem as applied to the sides of any of
the four congruent right triangles.
Today, there are more than 400 proofs of the Pythagorean theorem.
In 1940, the American mathematician Elisha S. Loomis (1852–1940) pub-
lished a book containing a collection of 370 proofs of the Pythagorean the-
orem done by many of the most famous mathematicians in history.7 Loomis
Pythagoras: Greek (575–500 BCE) 13
also notes that none of the proofs uses trigonometry. Students of mathe-
matics know that all of trigonometry depends on the Pythagorean theorem;
therefore, proving the theorem with trigonometry would be circular rea-
soning. Loomis’s book also includes proofs provided by students and pro-
fessors throughout the United States, as well as one presented by a United
States president, James A. Garfield,which was published in 1876 in the New
England Journal of Education under the title “Pons Asinorum.” 8 Garfield’s
proof is a very interesting example of in how many ways this most popular
theorem can be proved; therefore, we present it here.
In 1876, while still a member of the House of Representatives, the
soon-to-be twentieth president of the United States, James A. Garfield, pro-
duced the following proof. Garfield was previously a professor of classics
and, to this day, he has the distinction of being the only sitting member of
the House of Representatives to have been elected president of the United
States. Let’s take a look at the proof he discovered.
In figure 2.6, ΔABC ≅ ΔEAD , and all three triangles in the diagram are
right triangles.
Recall that the area of the trapezoid DCBE is half the product of the
altitude (a + b) and the sum of the bases (a + b), which we can write as
1
(a + b)2 . We can also obtain the area of the trapezoid DCBE by finding the
2
sum of the areas of each of the three right triangles:
1 1 1 ⎛1 ⎞ 1
ab+ ab+ c 2 = 2 ⎜ ab⎟ + c 2 .
2 2 2 ⎝2 ⎠ 2
We can then equate the two expressions, since each represents the area
of the entire trapezoid:
⎛1 ⎞ 1 1
2 ⎜ ab⎟ + c 2 = (a + b)2 .
⎝2 ⎠ 2 2
Figure 2.6.
Figure 2.7.
Chapter 3
Eudoxus of Cnidus:
Greek (390-337 BCE)
For many years it was believed that both Isaac Newton (1642–1726) and
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) invented calculus. Newton’s work
was called fluxions, and Leibniz’s notation is what is used today in the study
of differential and integral calculus. However, research in modern times
has shown that the actual “inventor” of what we today call calculus was, in
fact, Eudoxus of Cnidus, who was born in Cnidus, Asia Minor, and around
390 BCE. His work, which is today considered the forerunner of calculus
was called Method of Exhaustion. Eudoxus is often seen as the greatest of
the classical Greek mathematicians, with the possible exception of Archi-
medes. Unfortunately, all of his written work seems to have been lost over
the years; however, his work is cited by many mathematicians who followed
him, including Euclid.
Most of what we know about Eudoxus’s life comes from the third-cen-
tury historian Diogenes Laertius, who wrote a compilation of biograph-
ical snippets—along with some gossip—which included Eudoxus among
the many other famous philosophers and mathematicians.1 From Laertius,
we know that at age twenty-three, while in Athens, Greece, Eudoxus was
to have attended lectures at Plato’s Academy. Soon thereafter, he left for
Egypt, where he spent sixteen months studying with priests and making
astronomical observations from an observatory. In order to support him-
self, he did some teaching and returned to Asia Minor; later, he returned to
Athens, where he worked at the Platonic Academy as a teacher. Eventually,
15
16 M AT H M A K E R S
Magnitudes are in the same ratio, that is, the first to the second and the
third to the fourth when, if any equal multiples are taken of the first
and the third, and any equal multiples of the second and fourth, the
latter equal multiples exceed, or are equal to, or are less than the latter
equal multiples, respectively, taken in corresponding order.
Eudoxus of Cnidus: Greek (390-337 BCE) 17
numbers into two classes, or sets, with all the numbers of one (greater) class
being strictly greater than all the numbers of the other (lesser) class. For
example, 2 divides into the lesser class all the negative numbers and the
numbers the squares of which are less than 2; divided into the greater class,
then, are the positive numbers the squares of which are greater than 2.
Beyond rendering irrational numbers measureable, as indicated earlier,
Eudoxus is also credited with having developed the method of exhaustion.
Exhaustion is a process for finding the area of the shape by inscribing with-
in it a series of polygons—with ever-increasing number of sides—whose
areas eventually converge to the area of the original figure. When con-
structed directly, the difference in area between the nth polygon and the
original shape being measured will become smaller as n becomes larger. As
this difference becomes arbitrarily small, the area of the original shape is
eventually “exhausted” by the lower-bound areas, successively established
by the sequence members. Again, the method of exhaustion preceded in-
tegral calculus. It did not use limits, nor did it use infinitesimal quantity. It
was merely a logical procedure based on the idea that a given quantity can
be made smaller than another given quantity by continuously halving it a
finite number of times. One example of this would be to show that the area
of a circle is proportional to the square of its radius.
Although the true study of calculus originated through the writings of
Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, we must credit Eudoxus for
having established with the method of exhaustion a forerunner of today’s
calculus. Understanding Eudoxus’s contributions to the mathematics we
know and use today grants us a true appreciation not only for his individu-
al forethought and inventiveness but also for how all learning is cumulative.
The vast and astounding achievements we take for granted today would be
impossible or nonexistent without the work and brilliance of those who
preceded us and provided a foundation upon which we and our more re-
cent forebears could build.
Chapter 4
Euclid:
Greek (ca. 300 BCE)
19
20 M AT H M A K E R S
more the organization of the material. Euclid begins with definitions and five
postulates (axioms), followed by theorems and their proofs. All theorems are
derived from the five axioms stated at the beginning. Throughout the book he
kept a very high level of rigor, dramatically raising the standard for any math-
ematical work to be written in the future. The clarity with which the theorems
are stated and proved is unprecedented. The Elements basically defined the
style of modern mathematical literature (see fig. 4.2).
The traditional geometry course that today is offered in most American
high schools is based on the work of Euclid. It is, therefore, called Euclidean
geometry, which refers to geometry on a plane (as opposed to, for example,
geometry on the surface of a sphere). Perhaps the most significant principle
that commands the geometry throughout the rest of Elements is Euclid’s
fifth postulate. It reads as follows:
measures is less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended
indefinitely, will meet on that same side of the given line, where those
two angles have a sum less than two right angles.
This was vastly simplified in 1846 by the Scottish mathematician John Play-
fair (1748–1819), who stated an equivalent postulate, known today as Play-
fair’s axiom. It reads as follows:
In a plane, given a line and a point not on it, at most, one line parallel
to the given line can be drawn through the point.
Elements of Euclid. This book, published in 1756, offered the first English
version of this classic work by Euclid; furthermore, it was also the basis for
the study of geometry in England. In figure 4.3, we show the seventh edition
from 1787.
Through this we can appreciate the notion that Euclid’s influence tran-
scended the study of geometry. Yet the study of geometry took its own
path through Simson’s English version, which was then adopted and mod-
ified by the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–1833).
In 1794, Legendre wrote a textbook titled Eléments de géométrie, which in
turn became the model for the American high-school geometry courses as
we know them today. It came to prominence in a rather circuitous route:
first from Euclid, then to Simson, then to Legendre. Then, Legendre’s book
was translated from French by David Brewster in 1828 and titled Elements
of Geometry and Trigonometry; from there it was adapted in 1862 by the
American mathematician Charles Davies (1798–1876) as a school course,
although, in the early days this was also a college-level course. Simson was
so popular as a geometer that there were even theorems named for him
about which he knew nothing. For example, the famous geometry theorem
carrying his name—the Simson line—was first developed by the Scottish
mathematician William Wallace in 1799, well after Simson’s death. It states
that from any point on the circumscribed circle of a triangle, the feet of the
perpendiculars drawn to each of the three sides are collinear. This can be
seen in figure 4.4.
The Elements had great influence beyond the realm of mathematics,
reaching across the ages to influence American history as well. For example,
in his 1860 autobiography, President Abraham Lincoln stated about himself
(in the third person), “After he was twenty-three and had separated from
his father, he studied English grammar—imperfectly, of course, but so as
to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered
the six books of Euclid, since he was a member of Congress.”2 Although the
first six books have to do largely with geometry, they provided for Lincoln
an ability to improve his mental faculties, especially his powers of logic and
language. He even referred to Euclid in the famous fourth debate he had in
1858 with Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) in Charleston, South
Carolina. Referencing Euclid, he said:
It was also known at the time that when Lincoln traveled by horseback, he
always carried a copy of Euclid’s Elements in his saddlebags. Although Lin-
coln had no formal education, we can see that his devotion to learning was
truly remarkable, and the influence of Euclid was of particular note.
Euclid: Greek (ca. 300 BCE) 25
Archimedes:
Greek (ca. 287–ca. 212 BCE)
There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, but there are two awards in math-
ematics with a comparably high prestige, at least within the community.
One is the Abel Prize, established in 2002 by the Norwegian government;
the other is the Fields Medal, which was first awarded in 1936. Unlike the
Nobel Prizes and the Abel Prize, which are awarded annually, the Fields
Medals are awarded only every four years—and there is an age limit for
its recipients. They must be under forty years of age. Although it might be
strange to impose an age limit on such a prestigious award, there is a rea-
son for doing so: the award is also intended to encourage future research.
Officially known as the international medal for outstanding discoveries in
mathematics, the colloquial name “Fields Medal” is in honor of the Canadi-
an mathematician John Charles Fields (1863–1932). He began developing
the award in the late 1920s and even chose the design of the medals. Unfor-
tunately, he died from a stroke two years before the first medals were award-
ed. In his personal will, he left a $47,000 grant to establish a fund for the
award. The Fields Medal is made of gold, and its front side shows the head
of Archimedes1 (ca. 287–ca. 212 BCE) and the inscription “Transire suum
pectus mundoque potiri” (see fig. 5.1). This is a quotation attributed to Ar-
chimedes; it can be translated as “Rise above oneself and grasp the world.”
Although this quote is emblazoned on the Fields Medal that bears his
likeness, Archimedes is probably most famous for having proclaimed “Eu-
reka! Eureka!” This particular phrase translates to “I’ve found it! I’ve found
26
Archimedes: Greek (ca. 287–ca. 212 BCE) 27
Figure 5.1. The Fields Medal. (Image from Stefan Zachow of the
International Mathematical Union, retouched by King of Hearts.)
it!” This is what he exclaimed after having stepped into a bath and suddenly
noticing that the amount by which the water level rose was a measure of the
volume of the part of his body he had submerged (i.e., displacement). The
background story adjoining this anecdote is that the local tyrant, Hiero II
of Syracuse (ca. 308–215 BCE) contracted Archimedes to find a method by
which the purity of a golden crown could be assessed without destroying
it. Hiero’s request stemmed from his suspicion that his goldsmiths had re-
placed with silver some of the gold he had given them for the creation of
the crown. Archimedes was able to solve the problem because gold weighs
more than silver. Therefore, a crown mixed with silver would have to be
bulkier than a purely golden crown of the same weight. Consequently, the
adulterated crown would also displace more water. Although this story is
compelling, the oldest source for it is a book on architecture by the Ro-
man writer Vitruvius,2 which appeared approximately two hundred years
after the alleged episode; it is very likely that the story has been substan-
tially modified and embellished, even though there may be some truth in
it. Further undermining this tale’s veracity, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
pointed out that Archimedes could have achieved a much more accurate
measurement by using a different method that relied on his own law of
buoyancy, which is now known as Archimedes’s principle. Archimedes is
28 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 5.3. Engraving from the book Les vrais pourtraits et vies
des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens (1586).
Figure 5.5.
Figure 5.6.
Archimedes: Greek (ca. 287–ca. 212 BCE) 33
The octagon can be obtained from the square by erecting isosceles tri-
angles on the sides of the square, with the square’s vertices touching the
circle. Repeating this procedure with the octagon would produce a 16-gon.
With each doubling of the number of sides, the area of the inscribed poly-
gon increases, but it will always be less than the area of the circumscribed
circle. However, we can approximate the area of the circle by the area of an
inscribed n-gon with arbitrary precision, if we only take n large enough.
Similarly, we could use circumscribed n-gons whose sides are tangent to
the circle. An n-gon can be decomposed into n isosceles triangles (see,
base ⋅ height 1
e.g., fig. 5.6); its area is, therefore, Arean = n ⋅ = cn hn , where c is the
2 2 n
perimeter of the n-gon and hn is its apothem (the length of the segment
from the center of the n-gon to the midpoint of one of its sides). Denoting
the area of the circle and the right triangle shown in figure 5.5 by AreaCircle
and AreaTriangle, respectively, we want to show that AreaCircle = AreaTriangle. To
this end, Archimedes used a double reductio ad absurdum: First, we assume
that AreaCircle > AreaTriangle. If we take n sufficiently large, then the area of the
inscribed n-gon will lie between the area of the circle and the area of the
triangle, that is, AreaCircle > Arean > AreaTriangle (recall that we can make the
approximation of the circle by a polygon as close as we wish, but Arean will
always be smaller than AreaCircle). Since the legs of the right triangle have
length r (radius of the circle) and c (circumference of the circle), we have
1
AreaTriangle = 2 rc . On the other hand, the perimeter of the inscribed n-gon
must be smaller than the circumference of the circle, and its apothem must
1 1
be smaller than the radius of the circle, implying that Arean = 2 cn hn < 2 rc =
AreaTriangle, which is a contradiction to Arean > AreaTriangle. Consequently, the
assumption that AreaCircle > AreaTriangle must have been wrong. If we now as-
sume that AreaCircle < AreaTriangle, we may construct an n-gon circumscribed
about the circle, such that AreaCircle < Arean < AreaTriangle. Since we have cn >
c and rn > r for any n-gon circumscribed about the circle, we obtain Arean
= 1 cn hn > 1 rc = AreaTriangle, in contradiction to Arean < AreaTriangle. This implies
2 2
that the assumption AreaCircle < AreaTriangle must have been wrong as well. We
thus have shown that neither AreaCircle > AreaTriangle nor AreaCircle < AreaTriangle
can be true, from which we can conclude that AreaCircle = AreaTriangle.
Using the technique of inscribing and circumscribing regular polygons
in and about a circle, Archimedes was also able to determine the value of
π with remarkable accuracy. The number π is defined as the ratio between
34 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 5.7. The Fields Medal (reverse). (Image from Stefan Zachow of
the International Mathematical Union, retouched by King of Hearts.)
Figure 5.8.
Hence, the volume of one pyramid must be one sixth of the vol-
ume of the cube. If a is the length of a side of the cube, we obtain
1 1 1 ⎛a⎞ 1
Volume = Volume = a = a ⎜ ⎟ = Bh , where B is the area of the base of the
Pyramid Cube
3 2
6 6 3 ⎝2⎠ 3
pyramid and h is the length of its height. We will now argue that the for-
1
mula volume = (base area) (height) is also valid for arbitrary pyramids as well
3
as for cones. Toward this end, we employ a theorem known as Cavalieri’s
principle. It is named after the Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri
(1598–1647), but it is actually just a modern implementation of Archimedes’s
method of exhaustion. If we consider two regions in space included between
36 M AT H M A K E R S
two parallel planes, then Cavalieri’s principle states that if every plane parallel
to these two planes intersects both regions in cross sections of equal area,
then the two regions have equal volumes. Cavalieri’s principle is very intuitive
and can be nicely illustrated with a stack of coins, as shown in figure 5.9. The
volume of the stack does not change if we misalign the coins.
In fact, we may also melt a coin and make a triangular coin out of it,
or any other shape; as long as the areas of the cross sections of a region stay
the same, its volume is preserved. This implies that if we have two pyramids
with the same base area, B and the same height, H, they must have the
same volume—no matter whether they are oblique or irregular. The same
is true for a cone (a cone can be thought of as the limit of a pyramid whose
base is a regular n-gon, when n approaches infinity). For a cone as well as
for any pyramid, the base area and the height are the only quantities rele-
1
vant for calculating the volume, which is always equal to 3 (base area) (height) .
We may now consider, as Archimedes did, a sphere inscribed in a cylinder.
Archimedes noticed that the volume of the cylinder minus the volume of
the sphere is exactly equal to the volume of a double cone, which is shown
symbolically in figure 5.10.
Figure 5.9.
Figure 5.10.
Archimedes: Greek (ca. 287–ca. 212 BCE) 37
To see that this is true, we just have to convince ourselves that at any
height, the sum of the areas of the cross sections of the sphere and the dou-
ble-cone equals the area of the cross section of the cylinder. In figure 5.11,
we show the vertical projection of a sphere of radius r inscribed in a cylin-
der, together with the double cone. The cross section of the sphere at height
h is a circle with radius AD = r 2 − h2 . The cross section of the double cone
at height h is a circle of radius BD = h. Since the area of a circle of radius R is
equal to πR2, the sum of the cross-sectional areas of sphere and double cone
at height h is π(r2 – h2) + πh2 = πr2, which is exactly the cross-sectional area
of the cylinder. Thus, by Cavalieri’s principle, the volume of the cylinder is
exactly equal to the sum of the volumes of the sphere and the double cone.
1 1 2
Since the volume of the double cone is 2 ⋅ (base area) ⋅ ( height ) = 2 ⋅ π r 2 ⋅ r = π r 3
3 3 3
and the volume of the cylinder is (base area) · (height) = πr2 ·2r = 2πr3,
the volume of the sphere must therefore, be 2π r 3 − 2 π r 3 = 4 π r 3 , which is two-
3 3
thirds of the volume of the cylinder, as Archimedes has shown.
In his lifetime, Archimedes was much more famous for his mechanical
inventions than for his outstanding and far-reaching work in mathematics,
yet he was convinced that pure mathematics was the only worthy pursuit.
His fascination with geometry in particular is beautifully described by the
Roman writer Plutarch (46–120 CE):
Oftentimes, Archimedes’ servants got him against his will to the baths,
Figure 5.11.
38 M AT H M A K E R S
to wash and anoint him, and yet being there, he would ever be draw-
ing out the geometrical figures, even in the very embers of the chim-
ney. And while they were anointing of him with oils and sweet savors,
with his fingers he drew lines upon his naked body, so far was he taken
from himself, and brought into ecstasy or trance, with the delight he
had in the study of geometry.5
Eratosthenes:
Greek (276–194 BCE)
39
40 M AT H M A K E R S
considerably. He was motivated by the notion that he would want his li-
brary to be considered the best in the Greek world. As we can see from his
writings, he believed that all humans were good—a theme that contradicted
Aristotle, who believed that essentially only the Greeks were good.
In 195 BCE, Eratosthenes contracted ophthalmia, an inflammation of
the eye, which resulted in blindness. Afterward, he became very depressed
and tried to commit suicide by starving himself. Death actually came a year
later, in 194 BCE, when he had reached the rather-old age of eighty-two.
Two contributions have preserved Eratosthenes’s name and have al-
lowed him to remain famous today. As we hinted at earlier, Eratosthenes
developed a very clever technique for measuring the circumference of the
earth. Today, such a task is not terribly difficult; thousands of years ago,
though, this was no mean feat. His measuring of the earth was one of the
earliest forms of geometry—in fact, the word geometry is derived from the
Greek for “earth measurement.” In about 230 BCE, he measured the earth’s
circumference, and it was remarkably accurate—less than 2 percent in error.
How did he manage such an accomplishment? To make this measure-
ment, Eratosthenes relied on the relationship of alternate-interior angles
of parallel lines, as well as his resources as the chief librarian of Alexan-
dria. Through the library, Eratosthenes had access to records of calendar
events. Upon examining these records, he discovered that in a town called
Syene (now called Aswan) on the Nile River, the sun was directly overhead
at noon on a certain day of the year. As a result of the sun’s position, the
bottom of a deep well in Syene was entirely lit, and a vertical pole (being
parallel to the rays hitting it) cast no shadow.
At the same time, however, a vertical pole in the city of Alexandria did
cast a shadow. When that day arrived again, Eratosthenes measured the
angle formed by such a pole and the ray of light from the sun that went past
the top of the pole to the far end of the shadow ( 1 in fig. 6.2). He found
1
that angle to be about 7°12’, or of 360°.
50
Assuming the rays of the sun to be parallel, he knew that the angle
at the center of the earth must be congruent to 1, and, hence, must also
1
measure approximately 50 of 360°. Since Syene and Alexandria were nearly
on the same meridian, Syene must be located on the particular radius of the
circle that was parallel to the rays of the sun. Eratosthenes thus deduced that
the distance between Syene and Alexandria was 1 of the circumference of
50
the earth. The distance from Syene to Alexandria was believed to be about
5,000 Greek stadia. (A stadium was a unit of measurement equal to the
length of an Olympic or Egyptian stadium.) Therefore, Eratosthenes con-
cluded that the circumference of the earth was about 250,000 Greek stadia,
or about 24,660 miles. This is very close to modern calculations, which have
determined the circumference of the earth to be 24,901 miles. So how’s that
for some real geometry!
Eratosthenes also made a contribution to our understanding of num-
bers. More specifically, he developed a method that we can use to generate
prime numbers—that is, numbers that have exactly two divisors: the num-
ber 1 and the number itself. This method uses what we call today the sieve
of Eratosthenes, which begins with a table of consecutive numbers (going
on as far as you wish) and requires scratching out certain multiples of num-
bers until all that remain are the prime numbers within the numerical range
of the table. Let’s consider beginning with the numbers from 1 to 100, as
shown in figure 6.3. The procedure that Eratosthenes suggested is to begin
with the number 2 and scratch out every multiple of 2 throughout the table.
Then, go to the next number that is still not scratched out—the number 3—
and once again scratch out all the multiples of that number. Continuing this
procedure, we come to the next remaining number, which is 5, and, once
again, we scratch out all multiples of 5 in the table. The next number we
consider is the number 7, and again we scratch out all of the multiples of 7
that remain on the chart (i.e., the number 49). Using his procedure, we are
left with only prime numbers. Therefore, in figure 6.3, we see all the prime
Figure 6.2. Not to scale.
Eratosthenes: Greek (276–194 BCE) 43
Figure 6.3. The sieve of Eratosthenes. In this figure, the numbers 2, 3, 5, and 7
were the only numbers required to eliminate all nonprime numbers
between 2 and 100 (that is why they appear in a smaller white box).
numbers up to 100 are those that have not been eliminated. Note: Even
though the number 1 was originally on our table, it is by definition not a
prime number. This is because a prime number has exactly two factors (or
divisors): itself and the number 1. Because the number one has only one
factor or divisor (the number 1 itself), the number 1 is not a prime number.
Here we have two contributions that Eratosthenes has made to our
understanding of mathematics, one in geometry, and the other in number
theory. Considering the era in which these discoveries were made, and the
fact that they still hold up today, we can say they were quite astonishing.
Chapter 7
Claudius Ptolemy:
Greco-Roman (100–170)
Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BCE, and in the year 100 CE, Clau-
dius Ptolemy was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Ptolemy would soon become
famous as a mathematician, an astronomer, and a geographer. He is known
today for his famous work the Almagest, which is an ancient treatise on
astronomy that consists of thirteen books. Although, again, we are lacking
details about this brilliant mathematician from ancient times, we can de-
duce some information about his life. Because the Almagest was written in
Greek, we believe that he descended from a Greek family living in Egypt.
We know today that he made all of his astronomical observations from Al-
exandria between the years 127 and 141 CE.
Ptolemy’s theory of planetary motion held that the universe was geo-
centric, that is, the earth was the center of the universe. This thinking re-
mained intact until the Renaissance, when Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–
1543) a Polish astronomer, put forth a heliocentric theory, placing the sun
at the center of the universe and indicating that the earth was one of the
planets orbiting it. Yet it was the German mathematician and astronomer
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) who, with his three famous laws of elliptical
planetary motion, defined the path of these planetary rotations about the
sun (see chap. 13).
To do his mathematical calculations of planetary motion, Ptolemy
created a table of chords, which was an early form of trigonometric func-
tions, largely equivalent to the sine function. It is perhaps because of his
44
Claudius Ptolemy: Greco-Roman (100–170) 45
Figure 7.2.
Claudius Ptolemy: Greco-Roman (100–170) 47
take on one shape. We notice that all triangles are rigid figures; once they
are properly defined, they are in a fixed position. In contrast, a quadrilat-
eral is not necessarily in a fixed position, since its shape is not necessarily
determined by the lengths of its sides. However, a cyclic quadrilateral is a
rigid figure, which means that it allows us to establish Ptolemy’s theorem.
(If the quadrilateral is not cyclic, then the following relationship—some-
times known as the Ptolemy inequality—is as follows: AC · BD < AB · CD
+ AD · BC.)
If we apply Ptolemy’s theorem to a rectangle, which is always a cyclic
quadrilateral because it can be easily inscribed in a circle, the result is the
Pythagorean theorem (a2 + b2 = c2). In other words, if we apply Ptolomy’s
theorem to rectangle ABCD shown in figure 7.3. we obtain dd = ll + ww, or
d2 = l2 + w2, which is the Pythagorean theorem as applied to triangle ABC.
Another curiosity regarding Ptolemy’s theorem can be found by ap-
plying it to a regular pentagon inscribed in the circle. Consider the regular
pentagon ABCDE shown in figure 7.4. Let’s apply Ptolemy’s theorem to the
quadrilateral ABCD, noting that all of the sides (s) of the pentagon are the
same length and the diagonals (d) have the same length. Applying Ptolemy’s
theorem to quadrilateral ABCD, we find: dd = sd + ss, or d2 = sd + s2. We
2
now divide through by s2 to get d = d +1 .
s2 s
Figure 7.3.
48 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 7.4.
d 1+ 5
If we let s = g , then we have g2 – g –1 = 0. Therefore, g = 2 ≈ 1.618034 ,
which is the golden ratio. Interested readers may want to discover the true
wonders of the golden ratio, so we recommend The Glorious Golden Ratio,
by A. S. Posamentier and I. Lehmann.
For its time, another great work by Ptolemy was his eight-book work
on geography, which was severely limited in its accuracy because there was
little knowledge about the world beyond the Roman Empire and specu-
lation was rampant. In the fifteenth century, a depiction of Ptolemy’s un-
derstanding of the world map was created, based on his description of the
world map and his work in the Almagest. That map is presented here in
figure 7.5.
Unfortunately, as mentioned above, we know very little about the de-
tails of Ptolemy’s life, which we believe ended in the year 170 CE in Alexan-
dria, Egypt. Given the disparity between his brilliant geometrical theorems
and his remarkable errors and inaccuracy in astronomy and geography, he
was undoubtedly an intriguing figure. Here we acknowledge both aspects of
his achievements and yet honor him for his famous theorem in geometry,
which proves useful to this day.
Claudius Ptolemy: Greco-Roman (100–170) 49
Diophantus of Alexandria:
Hellenistic Greek (ca. 201–285)
In the study of elementary algebra when one saw an equation that looked
like this: x + y = 7, the usual reaction was there needs to be a second equa-
tion with either x and/or y. Otherwise, the feeling was that a solution could
not be found. However, there are, in fact, several solutions to this equation.
If we limit our solutions to integral values, one possible solution would be
x = 2 and y = 5, since 2 + 5 = 7. This type of thinking was first introduced
by the Hellenistic Greek mathematician Diophantus, who lived in Alex-
andria, Egypt, during the middle of the third century of the Common Era
and is purported to have lived about eighty-four years. Unfortunately, as
with other luminaries from ancient times, very little is known about his life;
what has made him well known today is that he is often referred to as the
“father of algebra.” Although some fragments of his work have been found,
his fame today is for a series of books titled Arithmetica, which presented
algebra for the first time as we know it today, and was a forerunner to the
study of number theory.
In Arithmetica, Diophantus begins by introducing some concepts of
numbers and explains a new notation using a symbol for a variable, some-
thing that probably did not catch on for another thousand years, and that
today we see as ordinary algebra. He introduced positive and negative num-
bers, and he was the first to consider fractions as actual numbers. He be-
gins in his first book of Arithmetica with some simple problems and then
progresses into those that have multiple solutions—albeit in integer form.
50
Diophantus of Alexandria: Hellenistic Greek (ca. 201–285) 51
1 1 1,
+ =
8 8 4
1 1 1 , and
+ =
6 12 4
1 1 1.
+ =
5 20 4
Brahmagupta:
Indian (598–668)
It is well known that our current system of numbers stems originally from
India; yet it reached Western Europe via the Arabs, with whom Fibonacci
worked in the early part of the thirteenth century (see chap. 10). Hence, we
call our number system the Hindu-Arabic numerals. The mathematician
perhaps most responsible for spreading this Indian-numeral system is the
mathematician Brahmagupta, who was born in India in the year 598 CE
in the town of Bhillamala (today, Bhinmal), which was the capital of Gur-
jaradesa, the second-largest kingdom of Western India. Brahmagupta was
largely interested in astronomy, but also showed a great deal of creativity
in mathematics, and it is for this reason that here we will highlight some of
his findings. However, before we move on to his mathematical accomplish-
ments, we should mention some of his astronomical discoveries, which in-
clude establishing that the earth is closer to the moon than it is to the sun,
and calculating the earth’s circumference to be about 22,500 miles. (The
actual circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles.) He also found that the
length of a year was 365 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes, and 19 seconds, which
is close to the actual year length that we know today: 365 days, 5 hours, 48
minutes, and 45 seconds.
In the year 628 CE, Brahmagupta wrote a book called Brāhmas-
phuṭasiddhānta (Brahma’s Correct System of Astronomy), which was based
on previous works but also contained many of his new ideas, some of which
we will present later. One striking feature of his book is that it was the first
56
Brahmagupta: Indian (598–668) 57
with a variation of the formula that we are accustomed to using for solving
2
the quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0, namely, x = −b± b − 4ac .
2a
Brahmagupta also provided formulas for finding the sum of the squares
of the first n natural numbers, n(n +1)(2n +1) , and the cubes of the first n nat-
⎛
2
⎞ 6
ural numbers, ⎜⎝ n(n2+1) ⎟⎠ . He also developed a way of generating Pythagorean
mx
triples by letting a = mx, b = m + d, and c = m(1 + x) – d, where d = x + 2 ;
with this we can then show by means of a simple algebraic application,
a2 + b2 = c2.
Perhaps the relationship that Brahmagupta is best known for is the for-
mula he developed for finding the area of a cyclic quadrilateral, or a quad-
rilateral for which all four vertices lie on the same circle. Referring to the
quadrilateral ABCD in figure 9.2, where the lengths of the sides are marked
as a, b, c, and d, Brahmagupta showed that the area of the cyclic quadrilat-
eral ABCD can be found by the formula (s − a)(s − b)(s − c)(s − d) , where s is the
semiperimeter, that is, s = a + b+ c + d .
2
This is an interesting extension of the famous formula that the Roman
mathematician Hero of Alexandria (10–70 CE) developed for finding the
area of a triangle, given only the lengths of the sides, a, b, and c: Area =
s(s − a)(s − b)(s − c) , where, once again, s is the semiperimeter. In effect, Brah-
magupta considered Hero’s formula as treating the triangle as if it were a
quadrilateral with the side d = 0.
An interesting extension of Brahmagupta’s formula to the gen-
eral quadrilateral is that the area of any (convex) quadrilateral =
(s − a) (s − b) (s − c) (s − d ) − abcd ⋅ cos ( α γ ) , where, once again, a, b, c, and d are the
2 +
2
Figure 9.2.
Brahmagupta: Indian (598–668) 59
when α + γ = 180°—a fact that holds true only for cyclic quadrilaterals.
Brahmagupta also found that for a cyclic quadrilateral of consecutive
sides of lengths a, b, c, and d, where m and n are the lengths of the diagonals,
the following relationship holds true:
(ab+ cd)(ac + bd)
m2 =
ad + bc
(ac + bd)(ad + bc)
n2 =
ab+ cd .
Another interesting relationship regarding cyclic quadrilaterals and at-
tributed to Brahmagupta is that in a cyclic quadrilateral with perpendicular
diagonals, the line through the point of intersection of the diagonals and
perpendicular to a side of the quadrilateral bisects the opposite side.
The proof of this is rather simple and gives a further insight into cy-
clic quadrilaterals. Consider figure 9.3, where diagonals AC and BD of
cyclic quadrilateral ABCD are perpendicular at G, and GE AED. We
Figure 9.3.
60 M AT H M A K E R S
With the dawn of the thirteenth century, both the field of mathematics and
the European world began to acquire their modern image. This was large-
ly due to the Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, best known
as Fibonacci. Fibonacci forever changed Western methods of calculation,
which facilitated the exchange of currency and trade. Furthermore, he pre-
sented mathematicians with challenges that remain unsolved to this day;
they are published in countless books and provide material for a journal
published quarterly since 1963 by the Fibonacci Association.
Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, or Leonardo of Pisa, is today known as Fi-
bonacci. The name Fibonacci possibly derived from the Latin filius Bonac-
ci, meaning a son of Bonacci, but, more likely, it might have been derived
from de filiis Bonacci, referring to the family of Bonacci. He was born to
the wealthy Italian merchant Guglielmo Bonacci and his wife in the port
city of Pisa, Italy, around 1170 shortly after the start of construction of the
famous bell tower known today as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. These were
turbulent times in Europe. The Crusades were in full swing, and the Holy
Roman Empire was in conflict with the papacy. The cities of Pisa, Genoa,
Venice, and Amalfi, although frequently at war with each other, were mar-
itime republics with specified trade routes to the Mediterranean countries
and beyond. Pisa had played a powerful role in commerce since Roman
times, and, even earlier, it served as a port of call for Greek traders. Early
61
62 M AT H M A K E R S
on, Pisa had established outposts for its commerce among its colonies and
along trading routes.
In 1192, Guglielmo Bonacci became a public clerk in the customs
house for the Republic of Pisa, which was stationed in the Pisan colony
of Bugia (today Bejaia, Algeria) on the Barbary Coast of Africa. Shortly
after his arrival, he brought his son, Leonardo, to join him so that the boy
could learn the skill of calculating and become a merchant. The ability to
perform calculations was significant, since each republic had its own units
of money and traders had to calculate monies due them. This entailed de-
termining currency equivalents on a daily basis. It was in Bugia that Fibo-
nacci first became acquainted with the “nine Indian figures,” as he called
the Hindu numerals, and “the sign 0 which the Arabs call zephyr.” He de-
clares his fascination for the methods of calculation using these numerals
in the only source we have about his life story, the prologue to his most
famous book, Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculation), which he wrote in
1202 and revised in 1228 (see fig. 10.2). This was the first time Hindu-Ar-
abic numerals appeared in Europe. During his time away from Pisa, he
received instruction from a Muslim teacher who introduced him to a book
on algebra titled al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wal-muqābala (The
Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing) by the
Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, “Fibonacci”: Italian (1170–1250) 63
Bear in mind that during these times, the printing press had not yet
been invented, so books had to be handwritten by scribes; if a copy was
to be made, that, too, had to be handwritten. Fibonacci had written other
works, such as Practica Geometriae (1220), a book on the practice of ge-
ometry. It covers geometry and trigonometry with a rigor comparable to
that of Euclid with ideas presented in proof form as well as in numerical
form, using these “new,” very convenient, numerals. Here, Fibonacci uses
algebraic methods to solve geometric problems, as well as the reverse. In
1225, he wrote Flos (on flowers or blossoms) and Liber quadratorum (The
Book of Squares), the latter of which truly distinguished Fibonacci as a tal-
ented mathematician, and ranking him very high among number theorists.
Fibonacci likely wrote additional works; however, there is no trace of them
today. His book on commercial arithmetic, Di minor guisa, is lost, as is his
Commentary on Book X of Euclid’s Elements, which contained a numerical
treatment of irrational numbers, as compared to Euclid’s geometrical treat-
ment of them.
The confluence of politics and scholarship brought Fibonacci into con-
tact with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) in the third
decade of the century. Frederick had spent the years up to 1227 consolidat-
ing his power in Italy; he had been crowned king of Sicily in 1198, then king
of Germany in 1212, and then, by the pope in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome,
Holy Roman Emperor in 1220. In its maritime conflicts with Genoa and
its land-based conflicts with Lucca and Florence, Frederick supported Pisa,
which then had a population of about ten thousand. As a strong patron of
science and the arts, Frederick became aware of Fibonacci’s work through
the scholars at his court who had corresponded with Fibonacci since his re-
turn to Pisa around 1200. These scholars included Michael Scotus, who was
the court astrologer, and the person to whom Fibonacci dedicated his book
Liber Abaci; Theodorus Physicus, the court philosopher; and Dominicus
Hispanus, who, when Frederick’s court met in Pisa around 1225, suggested
to Frederick that he meet Fibonacci. The meeting took place as expected
within the year.
Johannes of Palermo, another member of Frederick II’s court, presented
a number of problems as challenges to the great mathematician Fibonacci.
He solved three of these problems, the solutions for which he provided in
Flos, which he sent to Frederick II. One of the problems he was able to
solve, which was taken from the Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam’s
(1048–1131) book on algebra, was to solve the equation: x3 + 2x2 + 10x = 20.
Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, “Fibonacci”: Italian (1170–1250) 65
Fibonacci knew that this was not solvable with the numerical system then in
place—the Roman numerals. He provided an approximate answer, pointing
out that the answer was neither an integer, nor a fraction, nor the square root
of a fraction. Without any explanation, he gave his approximate solution in
the form of a sexagesimal number (i.e., a number from a base-60 numerical
system): 1.22.7.42.33.4.40, which is equal to 1+ 22 + 7 2 + 423 + 334 + 4 5 + 406 .
60 60 60 60 60 60
However, with today’s computer-algebra system, we can identify the proper
solution—which is by no means trivial! It is
x = – 3 2 3930 − 352 + 3 2 3930 + 352 – 2 ≈ 1.3688081075,
9 27 9 27 3
which compares to Fibonacci’s value of 1.3924… .
Another of the problems with which he was challenged and was able
to solve is one we can explore here, since it doesn’t require anything more
than some knowledge of basic algebra. Remember that although these
methods may seem elementary to us, they were hardly known at the time
of Fibonacci, and so this was considered a real challenge. The problem was
to find the perfect square that remains a perfect square when increased or
decreased by 5. 41
Fibonacci found the number 12 as his solution to the problem. To
check this, we must both add 5 to and subtract 5 from the number, then see
if the result is still a perfect square:
2 2
⎛ 41 ⎞ 1681 720 2401 ⎛ 49 ⎞
⎜ ⎟ +5 = + = =⎜ ⎟
12
⎝ ⎠ 144 144 144 ⎝ 12 ⎠
2 2
⎛ 41 ⎞ 1681 720 961 ⎛ 31 ⎞
⎜ ⎟ −5 = − = =⎜ ⎟
⎝ 12 ⎠ 144 144 144 ⎝ 12 ⎠
Since both results from the addition and subtraction are perfect squares,
41
we have shown that 12 meets the criteria set out in the problem. Luckily, the
problem asked for 5 to be added and subtracted from the perfect square;
had he been asked to add or subtract 1, 2, 3, or 4 instead of 5, the problem
could not have been solved.
The third problem, whose solution Fibonacci also presented in Flos,
was to solve the following: Three men are to share an amount of money
1
in the following parts: 1 , 1 , and . Each person takes some money from
2 3 6
this total amount until there is nothing left. The first man then returns 1
1 1 2
of what he took; the second, 3 of what he took; and the third, 6 of what
he took. When the total of what was returned is divided equally among
the three, each has his correct share, namely, 1 , 1 , and 1 . What was the
2 3 6
66 M AT H M A K E R S
original amount of money, and how much did each person get from that
original sum?
Although none of Fibonacci’s competitors could solve any of these
three problems, to the final question he determined that 47 was the small-
est amount possible for the original sum of money, but he claimed that the
problem was indeterminate.
In 1240, Fibonacci was honored with a lifetime salary by the Republic
of Pisa for his service to the people, whom he advised on matters of ac-
counting, often pro bono. We do not know exactly when Fibonacci died,
but it is believed that he died in Pisa at some point between 1240 and 1250.
Although Fibonacci was considered one of the greatest mathematicians
of his time, his fame today is largely based on the book, Liber Abaci. To ap-
preciate his work, let us consider his most well-known text as an example.
This extensive volume is full of very interesting problems. Liber Abaci was
based on the knowledge of arithmetic and algebra that Fibonacci had accu-
mulated during his travels; furthermore, it was widely copied and imitated,
and, as we noted above, it introduced to Europe both the Hindu-Arabic
place-valued decimal system and Arabic numerals. The book was increas-
ingly widely used for the better part of the next two centuries—a bestseller!
Fibonacci begins his famous book Liber Abaci with the following:
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
With these nine figures, and with the sign 0, which the Arabs call
zephyr, any number whatsoever is written, as demonstrated below.
A number is a sum of units, and through the addition of them the
number increases by steps without end. First one composes those
numbers, which are from one to ten. Second, from the tens are made
those numbers, which are from ten up to one hundred. Third, from
the hundreds are made those numbers, which are from one hundred
up to one thousand. . . . and thus, by an unending sequence of steps,
any number whatsoever is constructed by joining the preceding num-
bers. The first place in the writing of the numbers is at the right. The
second follows the first to the left.
Fibonacci used the term “Indian figures” to refer to the Hindu numer-
als. Despite their relative facility, these numerals were not widely accepted
Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, “Fibonacci”: Italian (1170–1250) 67
by merchants, who were suspicious of any who knew how to use them.
These merchants were simply afraid of being cheated. We can safely say that
it took the same three hundred years for these numerals to catch on as it did
for the leaning tower of Pisa to be completed.
Interestingly, Liber Abaci also contains simultaneous linear equations.
Many of the problems that Fibonacci considers, however, were similar
to those appearing in Arab sources. This does not detract from the val-
ue of the book, since it is the collection of the solutions to these problems
that establishes Liber Abaci as a major contribution to our development
of mathematics. As a matter of fact, a number of mathematical terms that
are common today were first introduced in Fibonacci’s most famous text.
Within it, he referred to “factus ex multiplicatione”; this is our first record of
these words, from which we now speak of the “factors of a multiplication.”
Incidentally, two other words whose introduction into the current mathe-
matics vocabulary seems to stem from this famous book are “numerator”
and “denominator.”
The second section of Liber Abaci includes a large collection of prob-
lems aimed at merchants. They relate to the price of goods, how to convert
between the various currencies in use in Mediterranean countries, calculate
profit on transactions, and problems that had probably originated in China.
Fibonacci was aware of a merchant’s desire to circumvent the church’s
ban on charging interest on loans. Therefore, he devised a way to hide the
interest in a higher initial sum than the actual loan, and then base the cal-
culations on compound interest.
The third section of the book contains many problems such as:
There are also problems involving perfect numbers (those numbers for
which the sum of their proper factors is equal to the number itself), there
68 M AT H M A K E R S
are also problems where Fibonacci employs to the Chinese remainder the-
orem, which states that if one knows the remainders of the division of a
number by various integers than one could also determine the remainder
of a division by the product of these integers, assuming that the devices are
relatively prime. Once again, this well preceded a formal study of number
theory. He also introduces problems involving the sums of arithmetic and
geometric series. Fibonacci treats numbers such as 15 in the fourth sec-
tion, both with rational approximations and with geometric constructions.
This treatment of an irrational number was not really studied until centu-
ries later, so we might say that Fibonacci was well ahead of his time!
Some of the classical problems, which are considered recreational
mathematics today, first appeared in the Western world in Liber Abaci. This
book is of particular interest to us because it was the first publication in
Western culture to use the Hindu numerals to replace the clumsy Roman
numerals; because Fibonacci was the first to use a horizontal fraction bar;
and because it casually includes a recreational mathematics problem that
has made Fibonacci famous for posterity. This is the problem of the regen-
eration of rabbits (see fig. 10.3).
To see how this problem’s situation would look on a monthly basis,
consider the chart in figure 10.4. If we assume that a pair of baby (B) rabbits
matures in one month to become offspring-producing adults (A), then we
can set up the following chart:
This problem generated the sequence of numbers
1
1
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
2 + 3 = 5
3 + 5 = 8
5 + 8 = 13
8 + 13 = 21
13 + 21 = 34
21 + 34 = 55
34 + 55 = 89
55 + 89 = 144
89 + 144 = 233
144 + 233 = 377
233 + 377 = 610
377 + 610 = 987
610 + 987 = 159
Figure 10.4.
70 M AT H M A K E R S
By adding these equations, you will notice that there will be many
terms on the right side of the equations that will disappear (because their
72 M AT H M A K E R S
F1 = 1
F2 = 1
F3 = 2
F4 = 3
F5 = 5
F6 = 8
F7 = 13
F8 = 21
F9 = 34
F10 = 55
F11 = 89
F12 = 144
F13 = 233
F14 = 377
F15 = 610
F16 = 987
F17 = 1597
F18 = 2584
F19 = 4181
F20 = 6765
F21 = 10946
F22 = 17711
F23 = 28657
F24 = 46368
F25 = 75025
F26 = 121393
F27 = 196418
F28 = 317811
F29 = 514229
F30 = 832040
Figure 10.6.
Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, “Fibonacci”: Italian (1170–1250) 73
sum is zero—since you will be adding and subtracting the same number).
What will remain on the right side will be Fn+2 − F2 = Fn+2 −1..
On the left side we have the sum of the first n Fibonacci numbers:
F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 +!+ Fn , which is what we are looking for. Therefore, we get
the following: F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 +!+ Fn = Fn+2 −1 , which says that the sum of
the first n Fibonacci numbers is equal to the Fibonacci number two fur-
ther along the sequence minus 1. This can also be written symbolically as
n
∑ F = F −1 .
i n+2
Just for entertainment, and to entice you a bit to perhaps enjoy the Fi-
i=1
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2, 10, 1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2, 10, 1, 0, . . .
We see that the remainders repeat in cycles of length 10. Since it is the
remainder upon dividing a number by 11 that determines its divisibility by
11, all we have to do is check that in adding any 10 consecutive numbers in
the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2, 10, 1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2, 10, 1, 0, . . . we get
a sum divisible by 11. We can check this as follows. Since the cycle of this
sequence is of length exactly 10, adding any 10 consecutive numbers in this
sequence will always come out to adding the 10 numbers—1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2,
10, 1, 0—in a cycle.
Imagine these 10 numbers arranged in a clockwise order around a cir-
cle (fig. 10.7), with the sequence above obtained by traveling around the
circle over and over. Then you can see that any numbers missed at the be-
ginning of a cycle—if the sum is started somewhere in the interior of the
cycle—are regained from the next cycle; for example, the sum 5 + 8 + 2 + 10
74 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 10.7.
Gerolamo Cardano:
Italian (1501–1576)
“You know what the fellow said—in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias,
they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Mi-
chelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they
had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—
and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” These lines were spoken by
Orson Welles, playing Harry Lime, the villain in the 1949 British film noir
The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed (1906–1976). The English novelist
Graham Greene (1904–1991) wrote the screenplay, but he credited these
lines to Orson Welles, who probably added them when some extra dialogue
was needed while the film was being shot.1 Although not historically accu-
rate and dramatically exaggerated, the drawn comparison contains a grain
of truth that cannot be denied. Without the patronage of tyrants who had
plenty of money at their disposal, the Italian Renaissance would not have
brought about so many masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and paint-
ing. Democratic structures, on the other hand, seem to be less generous
when it comes to financing arts and culture. The House of Borgia was an
Italo-Spanish noble family, which became very powerful in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The Borgias were involved in many ecclesiastical
and political affairs and wholly without scruple in the choice of means to
increase their power and influence. Like other wealthy dynasties such as the
Medici, they dominated local governments and, over several generations,
extended their political influence over wider parts of Italy and Europe. In
75
76 M AT H M A K E R S
the second half of the fifteenth century, they even gained control over the
papacy, and the Borgia produced two popes: Alfonso de Borgia, who ruled
as Pope Callixtus III during 1455–1458, and Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, as
Pope Alexander VI, during 1492–1503. Alexander VI was one of the most
memorable of the corrupt and secular popes of the Renaissance; the Bor-
gias were suspected of many crimes during his reign—including murder.
In the course of his pontificate, Alexander appointed forty-seven cardinals
to further his political policies. He had several illegitimate children, and in
1493 he made his teenaged son Cesare a cardinal. The name Borgia became
a byword for libertinism and nepotism. Incidentally, in the same year, 1493,
Pope Alexander followed a request by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
of Spain and issued a papal bull granting Spain the exclusive right to claim
the New World lands discovered by Christopher Columbus. However, in
spite of their cold-blooded greed for power, the Borgias as well as the Medici
were also great patrons of the arts who contributed significantly to the Re-
naissance. In particular, they brought the spirit of Renaissance art and phi-
losophy into the Vatican. Alexander had the University of Rome rebuilt and
hired the greatest professors to teach there. He restored and embellished
the Vatican palaces and persuaded Michelangelo to draw plans for the re-
building of St. Peter’s Basilica. In 1502, his son Cesare, by now commander
of the papal armies, hired Leonardo da Vinci as his chief military engineer
and architect. The Italian Renaissance began during the fourteenth century,
and it was the earliest manifestation of the general European Renaissance, a
period of great cultural change and achievement that marked the transition
between medieval and modern Europe. While the most famous figures of
the Italian Renaissance are artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelange-
lo, or Raphael, great advances also occurred in mathematics, contributing
substantially to the transition from natural philosophy to modern science
and the scientific revolution in which Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) would
play a central role.
Perhaps the most influential mathematician of the Italian Renaissance
was Gerolamo Cardano, and his biography fits quite perfectly to Orson
Welles’s description of Italy during the reign of the Borgias.2 Cardano was
born in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy, on September 24, 1501, as the illegitimate
child of Fazio Cardano, a mathematically gifted jurist and a close personal
friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Shortly before his birth, his mother, Chiara
Micheria, had to move from Milan to Pavia to escape the Plague; her three
other children died from the disease. In addition to his law practice, Fazio
Cardano lectured on geometry at the University of Pavia and at the Piatti
Foundation in Milan. Chiara lived apart from Fazio for many years, but,
later in life, they married. Gerolamo was often sick and unhappy as a child.
He received his education from his overbearing father and became his as-
sistant. Fazio Cardano wanted his son to study law, but Gerolamo was more
attracted to science and philosophy. His father’s lessons on geometry had
awakened his interest in the subject. After an argument with his father, he
entered the University of Pavia in 1520 to study medicine. In 1524, the uni-
versity had to close because of the Italian Wars (1521–1526), and Cardano
moved to the University of Padua to complete his studies. He graduated
with a doctorate in medicine in 1525. Cardano was a brilliant student but
his eccentric and confrontational style did not earn him many friends. His
father had died shortly after Gerolamo’s move to Pavia, and the small be-
quest was soon eaten up. To improve his finances, Cardano had turned to
78 M AT H M A K E R S
and palate with a saber and left him for dead. Niccolò was lucky to survive,
but his speech was permanently impaired due to the injury, and so he got
the nickname “Tartaglia” (“stammerer”).
As an adult, he grew a beard to cover his scars. He worked as an en-
gineer and bookkeeper in the Republic of Venice, and he was also a very
ambitious, self-taught mathematician. At that time, Italian scholars had
to prove their academic competence in public competition against other
scholars, setting each other mathematical challenges. In 1535, Tartaglia won
a famous public competition by demonstrating that he was able to solve a
special type of cubic equations (equations with terms including x3 as the
highest power), something that had been considered impossible. He had
discovered a method to solve equations of the form x3 + bx + c = 0 as well
as x3 + ax2 + c = 0, but not the general case of a cubic equation x3 + ax2 + bx
+ c = 0. Tartaglia’s findings caught the attention of Cardano and, after hav-
ing failed to find the solution by himself, he persistently tried to persuade
Tartaglia to reveal his method. Tartaglia finally agreed to tell Cardano his
80 M AT H M A K E R S
solution, but Cardano had to promise that he would keep it secret. Tartaglia
divulged his formula in the form of a poem, to make it more difficult to
read for other mathematicians, in case the paper fell into the wrong hands:
but he had sworn that he would not reveal Tartaglia’s method. However, in
1543, Cardano traveled to Bologna, where he was shown the notebooks
of the deceased mathematician Scipione del Ferro (1465–1526). Cardano
discovered that del Ferro had solved cubic equations long before Tarta-
glia (yet for less general cases) and thus felt no longer bound to keep the
solution secret. In 1545, Cardano published his book Artis Magnæ, Sive de
Regulis Algebraicis Liber Unus (Book Number One about the Great Art, or
The Rules of Algebra; see fig. 11.3), or Ars Magna, as it is more commonly
known, which is considered one of the greatest scientific treatises of the
early Renaissance.
The book included the methods to solve cubic equations, and Cardano
explained the history of their discovery as follows: “In our own days Scipio-
ne del Ferro of Bologna has solved the case of the cube and first power equal
to a constant, a very elegant and admirable accomplishment. . . . In emula-
tion of him, my friend Niccolò Tartaglia of Brescia, not wanting to be out-
done, solved the same case when he got into a contest with his [Scipione’s]
pupil, Antonio Maria Fior, and, moved by many entreaties, gave it to me.”5
The solution to the general quartic equation was also contained in the book,
with credit to Cardano’s student, Ludovico Ferrari. In spite of the proper
credits, Tartaglia felt betrayed by Cardano, who had broken his word by
publishing Tartaglia’s solution. In the following year, Tartaglia published
a book in which he laid out his side of the story and personally attacked
Cardano. The dispute lasted for many years, and it culminated in a public
contest between Tartaglia and Ferrari in Milan. Tartaglia soon realized that
Ferrari understood cubic and quartic equations better than he did, then left
Milan before the contest was over. Thus, Ferrari won by default and Tarta-
glia’s reputation diminished dramatically. As a result of the lost contest, he
became effectively unemployable as a mathematician and had to resume
his previous job in Venice, where he died in poverty. However, finding the
solution to cubic equations was not Tartaglia’s only contribution to mathe-
matics. He is also remembered for the first translation of Euclid’s Elements
into a modern language (Italian), and he was the first to apply mathematics
to the study of ballistic curves (paths of cannonballs).
Cardano’s Ars Magna established him as one of the leading mathemati-
cians of his time, and the solution methods for cubic and quartic equations
are clearly the most important results in this work. Today, most mathema-
ticians would acknowledge del Ferro, Tartaglia, and Cardano for the solu-
tion of cubic equations, since they all made decisive contributions. Let us
82 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 11.3. The title page of the Ars Magna (The Great Art),
first published in 1545.
Gerolamo Cardano: Italian (1501–1576) 83
𝑎𝑎 ' 𝑎𝑎 * 𝑎𝑎
!𝑦𝑦 − & + 𝑎𝑎 ∙ !𝑦𝑦 − & + 𝑏𝑏 ∙ !𝑦𝑦 − & + 𝑐𝑐 = 0
3 3 3
3 3
⎛ p⎞ 2 ⎛ p⎞
⎝ 3⎠
( )
z 6 + ⎜ ⎟ = qz 3 , which we can write as z 3 − qz 3 + ⎜ ⎟ = 0 ,
⎝ 3⎠
a quadratic equation for z3 with roots
2 3
q ⎛q⎞ ⎛ p⎞
± ⎜ ⎟ −⎜ ⎟ .
2 ⎝2⎠ ⎝ 3 ⎠
Since z3 + w3 = q, one root represents z3, and the other one, w3. Recalling
that y = z + w, we finally get
2 3 2 3
q ⎛q⎞ ⎛ p⎞ q ⎛q⎞ ⎛ p⎞
y= 3 + ⎜ ⎟ −⎜ ⎟ + 3 − ⎜ ⎟ −⎜ ⎟
2 ⎝2⎠ ⎝ 3 ⎠ 2 ⎝2⎠ ⎝ 3 ⎠
84 M AT H M A K E R S
John Napier:
Scottish (1550–1617)
The use of the decimal point in mathematics and the application of loga-
rithms to do calculations are largely due to the influence of Scottish math-
ematician John Napier, who was born on February 1, 1550, at Merchiston
Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland. Napier was part of a noble family, so he was
privately tutored until the age of thirteen, after which he entered St. Salva-
tor’s College at St Andrews. It is not known how long he stayed there, but
it is believed that he traveled through Europe for several years, until 1571,
when he returned to Scotland. In 1572, Napier married sixteen-year-old
Elizabeth Stirling, also a product of nobility. He fathered two children in
this marriage; but, unfortunately, his wife, Elizabeth, died in 1579. Shortly
thereafter, Napier married Agnes Chisholm, with whom he had ten more
children.
Later, in 1608, when his father died, Napier moved with his family into
Merchiston Castle in Edinburgh, where he resided for the rest of his life. In
1614, Napier published a book, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio
(A Description of the Wonderful Table of Logarithms); it contained 147 pag-
es, of which 90 were consumed with tables of numbers related to natural
logarithms. This effort had begun around 1594, when he computed millions
of entries, which took an incredibly long time. We can see from figure 12.2
what the first page of these listings looked like, which allows us to appreci-
ate the intensive labor this must have required. Napier was asked to show
the benefit of the logarithms system. He responded by showing that finding
85
86 M AT H M A K E R S
the geometric mean can be done far more efficiently using logarithms than
simply doing the straight-out arithmetic—particularly when the numbers
are very large. Napier also realized that by using logarithms, calculations
that typically required multiplication or division, could now be reduced to
addition or subtraction of exponents—or, in this case, logarithms.
In addition, his book also treated the topic of spherical trigonometry.
However, his invention of logarithms first became popular when Henry
Briggs visited him in 1615, and helped him revise the logarithm tables. Es-
sentially, Napier’s work with mathematical computation had a great deal
of influence on the scientists of his time, including the famous Danish as-
tronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). Sadly, just as the book was gaining
popularity, Napier died, in Edinburgh on April 4, 1617.
Let us consider some of the advantages that Napier’s work had pro-
vided during the seventeenth century and beyond. This was a time when
John Napier: Scottish (1550–1617) 87
Figure 12.3.
There are ten vertical rods, each of which shows a specific column from
the multiplication table written in a peculiar manner. Notice how the rod
marked at the top with the digit 5 continues downward, with each of the
multiples of 5 (10, 15, 20, etc.) written such that the tens digit is above the
diagonal line and the ones digit is below the line. The same principle can be
observed in the other rods: the fifth entry on the number 7 rod is 35, which
is the same as the product 5 ∙ 7 = 35. (Notice also that we put a 0 above the
slash in entries where the product is less than 10.)
These rods can be rearranged freely, permitting us to construct the
numbers we want to multiply and then to perform the computation using
only addition. How is this possible? Let’s look at an example to learn about
the method Napier devised.
We will choose two numbers at random, in this case, 284 and 572, and
then select the rods whose top digits will allow us to construct one of the
numbers. It doesn’t matter which of these two numbers we choose to rep-
resent first. Thus, in this example we will construct 572, selecting the rods
numbered 2, 5, and 7, and then putting them in the correct order to match
our number: 5, 7, 2 (see fig. 12.4).
John Napier: Scottish (1550–1617) 89
Figure 12.4.
Figure 12.5.
Figure 12.6.
John Napier: Scottish (1550–1617) 91
to the top-most diagonal. Looking at the second diagonal, you can see the
sum: 8 + 0 + 6 = 14, which means the tens digit of our final product will be
4, while the 1 is carried to the head of the third diagonal and added to the
other numbers there, as shown in figure 12.7.
Proceeding along each diagonal, we see the sums are 8, 14, 14, 12, 6,
and 1. Reading these in order from the top down and from left to right,
without the carried digits, we get 1 6 2 4 4 8, which indicates that our final
product is 162,448. You can check this with your calculator to verify that it
is, indeed, correct!
How does this method work? Normally, the multiplication of two
numbers is performed by successive digit multiplications and positional
arithmetic. When you do multiplication according to the method typically
taught in elementary school, you place one number above the other with
a line underneath and multiply pairs of digits. As you do so, you write the
ones digit of each product below the line, carrying the tens digits when
Figure 12.7.
92 M AT H M A K E R S
necessary, and taking the sum of the partial products at the end of the pro-
cess. To illustrate how Napier’s Rods work, we will break down this process
step-by-step. Recall, our problem is 572 ∙ 284.
The first step is to multiply 572 by 4.
The products of these multiplications are 4 ∙ 2 = 8, 4 ∙ 7 = 28, and
4 ∙ 5 = 20. Carrying the 2 from the second multiplication and adding these
together, we get a partial total of 2288 (see the left side of fig. 12.8). Notice
that 2288 is the same result we would obtain from adding the diagonals of
row 4 of figure 12.4 (see the right side of fig. 12.8).
Repeating this process for the second digit, 8, we get 8 ∙ 572 = 4,576,
which again is the same result we get from adding the terms in the diago-
nals of the eighth row of figure 12.4. According to the algorithm we know
from elementary school, we insert a 0 in the ones column, leaving us with
45,760 in the new, final row (see fig. 12.9).
Next, we multiply 2 ∙ 572 and insert two 0s, giving us 114,400, the first
four digits of which we recognize from the second row of Napier’s Rods (see
fig. 12.10).
Figure 12.8.
Figure 12.9.
John Napier: Scottish (1550–1617) 93
Figure 12.10
Figure 12.11
94 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 12.12
Napier’s Rods representation, in the proper column! Also, if you look close-
ly at the dark-outlined rows, you will notice that there is an exact corre-
spondence between these rows and the respective digit products. So, for
instance, the final three rows on the left (moving upward from the bottom)
are 10, 14, and 04, and these same numbers are in the top column in the
figure on the right.
As we have observed, the method of Napier’s Rods is mechanically
identical to our elementary-school algorithm, but it can make keeping track
of the positions of each digit much easier. As an added advantage, it helps us
John Napier: Scottish (1550–1617) 95
Johannes Kepler:
German (1571–1630)
96
Johannes Kepler: German (1571–1630) 97
this scheme, would separate Mars from Earth. Then a regular icosahedron
would separate Earth from Venus, and, finally, a regular octahedron in-
scribed in the last sphere would separate Venus from Mercury. As confus-
ing as this would seem to the modern eye, it gave Kepler some new fame.
After his book was published in Tübingen, a copy was sent to Prague to the
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who was one of the foremost astronomers
of his day, and who was in search for a mathematician to support his re-
search. In 1600, Kepler met Brahe in the town of Benátky nad Jizerou, about
twenty-two miles from Prague, where Brahe’s observatory was being built.
There, he spent time analyzing the data found, and, as time went on, he was
given more access to the findings that were originally kept under guard. At
first, it was a rocky relationship, but eventually they came to agree on salary
and living arrangements.
Kepler took this position and then eventually succeeded Brahe when,
shortly thereafter, Brahe died in 1601. The next eleven years were Kepler’s
most productive. Brahe assumed that the planets were traveling in circular
Johannes Kepler: German (1571–1630) 99
orbits. Working with Brahe’s conclusions, Kepler found that Mars was trav-
eling in an elliptical orbit with the sun at one focus. To come up with this
finding, known as Kepler’s first law of planetary motion, he worked with
numerous astronomical observations. These observations were then ex-
tended to the other planetary motions. Kepler’s second law of planetary
motion was to state that the line segment joining a planet to the sun in its el-
liptical path swept out equal areas in equal time periods. He published this
in 1609 in a book titled Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy). The process
to establish these two laws required many observations and calculations,
which are still available to us today. In 1990, an American science histori-
an, William H. Donahue, translated this book into English and found that
Kepler had made some errors in his calculations; or, as we might say today,
he fudged the data a bit in order to draw the conclusions for which he then
later became very famous. Donahue says that this should not detract from
Kepler’s findings.1 More than likely, this fudging compensated for the prim-
itive tools Kepler was forced to use in the seventeenth century. This was
reported in the New York Times on January 23, 1990.
Building upon Galileo’s telescope, Kepler, who was already fascinated
with optics, presented a new design for a telescope, using two convex lenses,
where the final image is inverted. This was originally referred to as a Ke-
plerian telescope and today is referred to as an astronomical telescope. He
published the results of his work, in 1611, in Dioptrice.
Now, looking back to Kepler’s personal life, we find that in 1597, Kepler
married Barbara Müller, a widow from a wealthy background. Shortly after
their marriage, they had two children, both of whom died at birth; the cou-
ple later had additional children. Then, in 1611, Kepler’s seven-year-old son
died, which upset him tremendously, and, making matters worse, shortly
thereafter, his wife died. This was the time when, in Prague, tolerance for
Protestants was not very good. At first, Kepler was given special dispensa-
tion to practice Lutheranism on his own, but eventually he decided rather
than to convert to Catholicism, he would leave Prague with his remaining
children and settle in the town of Linz, Austria. Now with children to care
for and no wife, he was in search of someone to fill that role. During the
next two years he considered eleven different matches. Then, in 1613, he
married his second wife, the twenty-four-year-old Susanna Reuttinger, who
took over the household, splendidly cared for his three children, and bore
him another six children, of which only three survived.
100 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 13.3.
At his wedding to Susanna, Kepler noticed that the volume of the wine
barrels was measured by a rod that was slipped into the barrel diagonally
(see fig. 13.3). This measurement amazed Kepler and he began to consider
it more scientifically.
The volume of the barrel was then calculated as V = 0.6 a3, where a is
the length of the rod inside the barrel. The same method was applied to
barrels of different shapes, and Kepler recognized that the formula cannot
give correct results in all cases, since the precise mathematical relation be-
tween the exact volume of the barrel and the length of a must depend on
its proportions. This problem fascinated him, and he undertook a study
of volumes, which could be seen as solids created through the revolution
of a plane surface. First, let us consider the simplest case of a cylindrical
barrel, for which d1 = d2 = d3. The volume of a cylinder with diameter d 2
2
and height h is V = π d h . By the Pythagorean theorem, we have a = ⎜⎝ 2h ⎟⎠ + d .
2
⎛ ⎞ 2
4
A typical relation between h and d for the wine barrels Kepler studied
would be h = 2d. Using this in the equation for a2, we obtain a = 2 d , or
a a
d=
2
and, moreover, h = 2 2 = 2 a . Expressing d and h in terms of a in the
equation for the volume, we get V = 2 ⋅ π a and 2 ⋅ π = 0.55536 . . . , explaining
3
8 8
the approximation formula V ≈ 0.6a3. Kepler found a much more accurate
formula by approximating the curvature of the barrel by a parabola. This
formula is now generally known as Simpson’s rule2 (however, in Germany
and Austria, it is also called Kepler’s rule):
h⋅π
V=
24 ( 2 2
⋅ ( d1 ) + 4 ( d2 ) + ( d3 )
2
)
To derive this formula, one has to calculate the area of a parabol-
ic segment, a problem solved by Archimedes using methods essentially
Johannes Kepler: German (1571–1630) 101
height, that is, ( 4) ⋅ h3 = h12⋅ π ( d ) . To get an approximate value for the volume
d π 2 2
2
1 ⎛π 2⎞
2 π
⋅ ⎜ ⋅ ( d1 ) + ⋅ ( d2 ) ⎟ =
2 ⎝4 4 ⎠ 8
π
(( d ) + ( d ) )
1
2
2
2
and the mean cross-sectional area of the second frustum is, therefore,
π
8 (
(
2
d 2 ) + ( d3 )
2
)
h
Multiplying these expressions by and adding the volume of the cy-
3
lindrical middle part, we get a good approximation of the total volume of
the wine barrel, if its shape does not deviate too much from a cylinder:
Figure 13.4.
102 M AT H M A K E R S
h ⎛π ⎞
V= ⋅⎜
3 ⎝8 ((d ) + (d ) ) + π8 ((d ) + (d ) )⎟⎠ + h12⋅ π (d ) = h24⋅ π ⋅ ((d ) + 4 (d ) + (d ) )
1
2
2
2
2
2
3
2
2
2
1
2
2
2
3
2
which is in exact agreement with the rule Kepler proposed. Kepler pub-
lished his findings on generating volumes in 1615, in a work that was later
refined by the Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598–1674).
Today we know this procedure as Cavalieri’s principle. In 1619, while in
Linz, Kepler published his second work on cosmology, titled Harmonices
mundi Book V (Harmony of the World, Book V).
Of particular importance in this publication is what we today call Ke-
pler’s third law of planetary motion, which states that, for any two planets,
the ratio of the squares of their periods (i.e., one complete revolution) is
equal to the ratio of the cubes of the mean radii of their orbits. In 1621,
Figure 13.9.
Chapter 14
René Descartes:
French (1596–1650)
106
René Descartes: French (1596–1650) 107
difficult for teenagers to get enough sleep. Besides, getting up out of bed is
quite a challenge when your inner clock commands you to sleep for another
two or three hours.
When the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes
(1596–1650) was about ten years old, he was sent as a boarding student
to the Jesuit College at La Flèche, established in 1604 by King Henri IV of
France. There, he was granted an unusual privilege, which would probably
be a dream come true for any teenager regularly struggling with early-
morning wake-up calls. While the other boys at boarding school had to
get up at five o’clock in the morning, René was officially allowed to stay
in bed until eleven o’clock because of his weak physical condition and his
frequent health problems. Young René enjoyed sleeping late, but even after
he woke up, he often remained in bed for several hours. Alone and without
any distraction, he would meditate on the knowledge and subjects he was
taught at La Flèche, including classical studies, traditional Aristotelian
philosophy, science, and mathematics. He later described his education at
La Flèche as follows:
108 M AT H M A K E R S
I had been assured I could acquire a clear and certain knowledge of all
that is useful in life. I had an extreme desire to learn. But as soon as I
had completed the course of study, at the end of which one is usually
received into the rank of the learned, I entirely changed my opinion.
For, I found myself embarrassed by so many doubts and errors, that I
thought I had gained nothing else from trying to instruct myself, than
to have more and more discovered my ignorance.2
There was only one subject in school that was free of doubt, a quality
Descartes found very appealing:
The long chains of simple and easy reasoning by means of which geom-
eters are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult
René Descartes: French (1596–1650) 109
However, in order to deduce truths from other truths, one first needs
a starting point or a premise on which to base further reasoning. This basis
must be provided by statements that are taken to be true or are accepted
without controversy or question. Statements of this type are called postu-
lates or axioms; they cannot be deduced from more-elementary statements.
The foundations of modern mathematics are based on minimal lists of axi-
oms. For instance, many facts in arithmetic can be derived from more-basic
facts; however, as one traces these basic facts back to even more basic facts
and continues with this process, one will eventually end up at statements
that cannot be reduced any further. It turns out that number theory (the
study of integers) can be built upon the so-called Peano axioms, named af-
ter Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) (see chap. 39). These axioms consist of five
statements formulated in the language of mathematical logic and defining
the set of natural numbers in terms of properties that are independent of
their concrete representation. The Peano axioms can be viewed as the first
principles of number theory. Descartes’s famous “cogito ergo sum” plays a
similar role for modern Western philosophy. In his Principia Philosophiae
(Principles of Philosophy), he characterizes first principles as follows:
First, they must be so clear and so evident that the human mind
cannot doubt of their truth when it attentively considers them; and
second, the knowledge of other things must depend upon these Prin-
ciples in such a way that they may be known without the other things,
but not vice versa.5
If the three given circles have radii r1, r2, and r3, then the radius of the
fourth circle is determined by the equation
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
= + + ±2 + +
r4 r1 r2 r3 r1r2 r2 r3 r3r1
where the ± sign reflects the fact that there are two solutions to the
problem—shown as the two dashed circles in figure 14.5. This statement is
known as Descartes’s theorem.
The introduction of Cartesian coordinates was a milestone in the histo-
ry of mathematics and also a fundamental ingredient in the development of
calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
The convention of using the letters x, y, and z to represent variables and
letters a, b, c, . . . for known quantities is also attributed to Descartes, as is
the use of superscripts for powers or exponents, such as x2.
After his seminal Discourse on the Method, Descartes continued to
produce important works concerning both mathematics and philosophy,
the most comprehensive of which is the Principia Philosophiae, published
in Amsterdam in 1644. By 1649, Descartes had become one of the most
famous philosophers and scientists in Europe, in spite of not holding any
Figure 14.5. The dashed circles are tangent to all three solid circles.
René Descartes: French (1596–1650) 115
academic position. Yet he had always preferred to be left alone and to work
isolated from the world, without distractions. He kept his residence in the
Netherlands a secret and held contact with the scientific community only
through exchanging letters with Marin Mersenne, who was one of the very
few persons who knew Descartes’s address.
In 1649, Queen Christina of Sweden invited Descartes to her court in
Stockholm, to organize a scientific academy and to teach her. Some persua-
sion was necessary until Descartes finally accepted and moved to Sweden
in the middle of the winter. He had kept the habit of lying in bed until elev-
en o’clock throughout his lifetime, but the twenty-two-year-old Christina
of Sweden insisted upon receiving philosophy lessons at five o’clock in the
morning. The fifty-three-year-old Descartes now had to break the rhythm
he was accustomed to and fight against his inner clock, which weakened
him and made him more susceptible to infections. Walking to the queen’s
palace every morning in the cold Swedish winter did the rest, and he soon
caught a cold from which he developed pneumonia. Only ten days after
falling ill, René Descartes died on February 11, 1650, in Stockholm.
Chapter 15
Pierre de Fermat:
French (1607–1665)
116
Pierre de Fermat: French (1607–1665) 117
who had inherited a huge and very well-equipped library from his father,
the Renaissance polymath Jean d’Espagnet. The mathematics section of the
library contained works by Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, and François Viètes
(1540–1603), also known as Franciscus Vieta, who was, in fact, a friend of
Jean d’Espagnet. Fermat eagerly read these books, thoroughly studying the
presented material and adding his own notes in the margins (see fig. 15.2).
Having gained extensive knowledge in mathematics, Fermat began
his own mathematical investigations, concerned with tangents to algebraic
curves and finding minima and maxima of functions. In parallel, he recon-
structed Apollonius’s lost work De Locis Planis, described in some detail
by Pappus of Alexandria. It contained propositions relating to loci that are
either straight lines or circles. Fermat inherited a fortune when his father
died in 1628. He bought the office of a deceased councilor at the parliament
. . . seeing the last method that you use for finding tangents to curved
lines, I can reply to it in no other way than to say that it is very good
and that, if you had explained it in this manner at the outset, I would
have not contradicted it at all.3
honor. It states that light travels between two given points along the path of
shortest time. Fermat was able to deduce Snell’s law of refraction from his
principle of least time.
Surprisingly, Fermat was not really interested in physics, but, when
reading Descartes’s treatise on optics, “La Dioptrique,” he discovered that
Descartes’s heuristic derivation of the law of refraction was based on circu-
lar reasoning. Descartes became angry about Fermat’s critique of his work,
and this was the beginning of their disputes. Fermat’s mathematical cor-
respondence was interrupted between 1644 and 1653; perhaps his duties
at the parliament did not allow him to continue with his mathematical re-
search during this period of time. However, in 1654, Fermat received a letter
from Blaise Pascal, who wanted to discuss his calculations of probabilities.
Their resulting correspondence laid the foundation of probability theory
(see chap. 16). Yet, Fermat’s main mathematical interest, if not obsession,
was number theory. Unfortunately, none of the mathematicians he was in
contact with shared his enthusiasm for this topic, as it was not considered
very important at that time. He tried to persuade Pascal, as well as Huygens,
to join him in his research in number theory, but he wasn’t successful. Fer-
mat, indeed, made some important contributions to number theory, but he
was not interested in publishing his work. Concerning his discussions with
Pascal on the calculation of probabilities, Fermat wrote to Carcavi:
And Perhaps posterity will thank me for having shown it that the
ancients did not know everything, and this account will pass into the
mind of those who come after me as a “passing of the torch” to the
next generation.7
In 1653, Fermat was struck down by the plague and survived, but
this episode probably had some long-term effects on his health. In a 1660
letter to Pascal, who lived in Clermont-Ferrand, about 236 miles from
Toulouse, Fermat suggested they meet halfway between the two towns,
since “my health is not any better than yours.”8 In 1664, he felt that his
life would soon come to an end and wrote his last will and testament. He
kept working as a judge at the parliament as long as he could, and he died
in Castres, France, at the age of fifty-seven, on January 12, 1665—just one
week after his last official act.
The most famous theorem of Fermat, for which he is remembered today,
has a fascinating history and is in many ways characteristic of both his style as
a mathematician and his work’s significance for later developments in math-
ematics. It is known as Fermat’s last theorem, and it can be stated as follows:
Blaise Pascal:
French (1623–1662)
One of the greatest mathematicians of all time was Blaise Pascal, who was
born in Clermont, Auvergne, France, on June 19, 1623. His father, Étienne
Pascal, was a politician and a man of culture and intellectual distinction.
Blaise Pascal’s mother died when he was four years old; thus, he was reared
by his father, along with his two sisters. Encouraged by his father, his early
years found him deeply engaged in religious thinking. This often distracted
him from other intellectual endeavors. When Pascal was seven years old,
Étienne moved to Paris with his three children. This was about the time
when he was heavily involved in teaching his children at home. Pascal was
not physically well conditioned, yet this was compensated for with an ex-
ceptionally brilliant mind. Étienne was impressed at how quickly his young
son would pick up new ideas of what was then considered the classical
education. He kept mathematics at a distance from him, so as not to put
too much strain on the young child. Frankly, this built up Pascal’s curiosity
about mathematics even more. Once the father realized his son’s incredi-
ble mathematics talents, he gave him a copy of Euclid’s Elements, perhaps
one of the first compilations of geometry and other aspects of mathematics
in a logical development. One of Pascal’s sisters claimed that her younger
brother had discovered Euclid’s first thirty-two propositions in the same or-
der that Euclid did, without referring to the book. It was the thirty-second
proposition, that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of
two right angles, that further demonstrated Pascal’s unique talent.
124
Blaise Pascal: French (1623–1662) 125
Figure 16.1. Blaise Pascal. (Lithograph after E. Edelinck after F. Quesnel Jr.)
Figure 16.2.
Pascal had to pay a price for his brilliance. From the age of seventeen
until the end of his life at age thirty-nine, he lived in physical pain, with
sleepless nights and unpleasant days. Yet, he kept on working. At age nine-
teen, Pascal invented the first calculator machine (see fig. 16.3), in order to
assist his father’s computational work as a tax collector for the city of Rouen.
This calculator was able to do addition and subtraction and was referred to
as Pascal’s calculator or Pascaline. There are currently four versions of this
machine exhibited in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. At the time of
its development, the machine was considered a luxury item and this moti-
vated Pascal to continue to improve its functioning over the next 10 years.
The society in which he lived was tormented by religious upheaval,
which to some extent affected Pascal as well, since his dear sister Jacqueline,
who had supported him, entered a monastery in Pert-Royal. At age twen-
ty-three, he suffered a temporary paralysis, but his intellectuality continued
unabated. He continued to lead a rather turbulent life tortured by his fam-
ily’s involvement in various religious followings. In 1654, at age thirty-one,
Pascal engaged in probably the most important contribution he had made
to mathematics. That is, he embarked on a mathematical correspondence
with Pierre de Fermat, which eventually became the basis for the theory of
probability. During the year 1654, Pascal and Fermat challenged each other
with mathematical problems that began to generate the development of the
future field of probability, as we know it today. One of the early problems
that was posed involved a game in which two players would gain points,
Blaise Pascal: French (1623–1662) 127
with a specified number of points to win the game. The question was as
follows: If the game is stopped before the end, how should the money be
divided between the two players, considering the number of points each
player has at the time of stop of the game? Here is a translation of one of
these correspondences, from Fermat to Pascal in 1654:
125
have 1296 of the entire sum of our wagers. This, however, is not
true by my theory. For in this case, the three first throws, having
gained nothing for the player who holds the die, the total sum
thus remaining at stake, he who holds the die and who agrees to
1
not play his fourth throw should take as his reward. And if he
6
has played four throws without finding the desired point, and,
if they agree that he shall not play the fifth time, he will, never-
1
theless, have of the total for his share. Since the whole sum
6
stays in play it not only follows from the theory, but it is indeed
common sense that each throw should be of equal value. I urge
you therefore (to write me) that I may know whether we agree in
the theory, as I believe (we do), or whether we differ only in its
application. I am, most heartily, etc.
Fermat
Since he began to lose a lot of money, he decided to seek help from his
brilliant friend, Pascal. This further strengthened the correspondence be-
tween Pascal and Fermat, which ultimately led to a solution to the problem.
Let’s take a look at the two games and see why the first game was prof-
itable and the second game was not. Clearly, we know that when we roll the
die there are six possible ways that it can land, which allows us to conclude
1
that the probability of getting a six is 6 , and the probability of not getting
5
a six is 6 . Therefore, considering de Méré’s first game, we calculate that the
probability of getting no six in four rolls of the die is
4
5 5 5 5 ⎛5⎞
⋅ ⋅ ⋅ = ⎜ ⎟ = 0.4822531…
6 6 6 6 ⎝6⎠
It follows that the probability of getting at least one six on these four
rolls is 1 – 0.4822531 . . . = 0.5177469 . . . . We can interpret this for 100
games with approximately 52 successful rolls. Were he to play 1,000 games,
he would win an average of 518 games. Winning more than half the games
gave him an edge.
Now considering the second game, we recall that there were 36 possible
outcomes when tossing two dice, of which only one was a double six. This
1
gives us a probability of getting the double six as 36 ; the probability of not
1 35
getting a double six is 1− 36 = 36 . Therefore, the probability of not getting a
24
⎛ 35 ⎞
double six on 24 rolls of the pair of dice is ⎜⎝ 36 ⎟ = 0.5085961 . . . . As before, we can
⎠
conclude that the probability of getting at least one double six on the 24 rolls
of the pair of dice is 1 – 0.5085961 . . . = 0.4914039 . . . . This indicates that de
Méré would win only approximately 49 out of 100 games, which gives his
opponent an edge, winning 51 out of 100 games. Problems of this sort were
solved in the exchange between Pascal and Fermat, which led to what we
know today as probability theory.
Throughout this time, Pascal made considerable use of the triangular
arrangement of numbers that also bears his name today. In figure 16.4, we
see this arrangement, where, beginning at the top, we have a 1, followed by
a second row of two 1s; then, each succeeding row begins and ends with a 1,
with each other number between the 1s being the sum of the two numbers
diagonally above it on either side. This pattern then continues downward.
Today, this arrangement of numbers is known as the Pascal triangle. Many
number arrangements can be found on the Pascal triangle. For example,
the sum of the numbers in each row is a power of 2, as shown in the right
margin of figure 16.4.
130 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 16.6.
Chapter 17
Isaac Newton:
English (1642–1727)
134
Isaac Newton: English (1642–1727) 135
with his reputation for brilliance expanding, he was elected as fellow of the
Royal Society.
It is also well known that about the same time as Newton’s work on
calculus became popular, the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz (1646–1716) developed differential and infinitesimal calculus using
completely different symbols. Leibniz’s symbols are largely still in use today,
as opposed to Newton’s symbols, which are no longer used. It should be
noted that Newton and Leibniz were in bitter disagreement regarding who
should be credited with the development of calculus; this disagreement
grew to the point where, beginning in 1699, members of the Royal Society
started to accuse Leibniz of plagiarism. There is evidence to show that New-
ton generated this ill feeling, which continued until Leibniz’s death in 1716.
Newton was probably best known for his discoveries in the field of
physics, where he made great advances in the field of optics; in particu-
lar, he discovered the spectrum of light by splitting white light through
a prism. He was also well known for his significant improvements in the
Isaac Newton: English (1642–1727) 137
Newton did so much in mathematics and physics that our short chapter
could hardly touch on even a small fraction of his works. He was the first to
employ coordinate geometry to solve Diophantine equations (which we en-
countered in chap. 8). Newton said that he preferred the geometrical meth-
ods to algebraic ones, as he felt that they were clearer and more rigorous.
Further pursuits of these extensions take us to a more advanced level, which
is beyond the scope of this book.
It is curious that Newton’s psychological difficulties kept much of his
work on pure mathematics shared with only his colleagues and other select
correspondents, until 1704, when he published his book Opticks. At that
time, he published works on the quadrature of curves and also on the clas-
sification of cubic curves. This was actually the first time that Newton pub-
lished his ideas on the method of fluxions, the precursor of today’s calculus.
Although he hinted at it in his Principia, it was actually Leibniz’s paper in
1684 that would put calculus in the public forum. As we mentioned earli-
er, there were many bilateral accusations of plagiarism, even though it is
clear that both mathematicians came upon their discoveries independently.
It should also be said that this experience once again demonstrated New-
ton’s psychological imbalance. Newton’s further mathematical publications
evolve from his Cambridge lectures, which he delivered from 1673 to 1683,
and which were first published as late as 1707.
By the 1690s, Newton began to delve into religious thinking, and
he wrote about his interpretations of the Bible both literally and sym-
bolically. There has been much controversy about Newton’s belief of the
doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, but there was no con-
clusive evidence to close the case. Despite these doubts, he was a de-
vout Protestant and opposed any Catholic infiltration. In his various
Isaac Newton: English (1642–1727) 141
of the coins produced during the great recoinage in 1696 were counterfeit.
It should be noted that, at that time, counterfeiting was considered high
treason and punishable by death. Newton proved quite adept at catching
and prosecuting counterfeiters. This was the beginning of the end of his
scientific career. During this time, he also had some psychological break-
downs, under the influence of which, through written correspondence, he
alienated colleagues and broke off relationships with such luminaries as
John Locke. Postmortem investigations indicate that mercury poisoning
might explain Newton’s eccentricities in later life. In time, he recovered his
senses and continued his Mint activities, which brought him a rather hand-
some salary and made him a relatively rich man.
In April 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne during a visit to
Trinity College at Cambridge. It is still speculated today that Newton re-
ceived a knighthood as a political gesture rather than as an acknowledg-
ment of his scientific brilliance or his service as master of the Mint.
In the waning years of his life, Newton lived in Cranbury Park near
Winchester, England, with his niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt, and her
husband, John Conduitt. By this time, he was considered one of the most
famous scientists of his day and was quite wealthy and generous to charities.
A lifelong bachelor, Newton died in London on March 20, 1727; he was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
Chapter 18
On February 15, 1946, the front page of the New York Times featured the
announcement of “an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for
the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome
for solution,” which was one of the earliest electronic general-purpose com-
puters. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was
built during wartime at the University of Pennsylvania, and it is now con-
sidered a milestone in the history of computers. It was of monstrous size, as
it weighed more than 25 tons and occupied an area of more than 150 square
meters (see fig. 18.1).
Among other basic electronic components, such as relays, resistors, or
capacitors, it contained 20,000 vacuum tubes,1 connected through miles
of wiring and approximately 5,000,000 hand-soldered joints.2 The “moth-
er of all electronic computers” consumed 150,000 watts of electricity; in
comparison, a modern desktop computer needs only about 200 watts. The
immense power requirement led to the rumor that whenever ENIAC was
switched on, lights in Philadelphia dimmed.
ENIAC was just a large collection of electronic adding machines and
other arithmetic units; it lacked stored programs or an operating system
that are found in modern computers. Digits were stored using ten-posi-
tion ring counters, for the ten digits of our decimal system, and each dig-
it required thirty-six vacuum tubes. Programming the machine to solve a
particular problem was done by manipulating its switches and cables, and
143
144 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 18.1. Betty Jennings (left) and Fran Bilas (right), operating ENIAC’s main
control panel. (US Army photo, ARL Technical Library, 1945–1947.)
Figure 18.2.
Figure 18.4.
1 1 1 1 1 ⎛2 2⎞ ⎛2 2⎞ ⎛2 2⎞ ⎛2 2⎞ ⎛2 2⎞ 2 2 5
+ + + + = ⎜ − ⎟+⎜ − ⎟+⎜ − ⎟+⎜ − ⎟+⎜ − ⎟ = − =
1 3 6 10 15 ⎝ 1 2 ⎠ ⎝ 2 3 ⎠ ⎝ 3 4 ⎠ ⎝ 4 5 ⎠ ⎝ 5 6 ⎠ 1 6 3
Leibniz described this procedure as follows: “If one wants to add, for
example, the first five fractions (reciprocals of triangular numbers) from
1
to 1 inclusive, one takes the number of fractions, that is, 5, added to
1 15
1 to get 6, and creates the fraction 5 , which when doubled is 10 , or 5 ,
6 6 3
which gives us the sum:
1 1 1 1 1
+ + + +
1 3 6 10 15
which is, the same as if one had added these fractions together.”4 If we de-
note the triangular numbers by T1, T2, T3, . . ., we have thus obtained a sim-
ple formula for the sum of their reciprocals:
1 1 1 1 ⎛ 1 ⎞
+ + + . . . + = 2 ⋅ ⎜1− ⎟
T1 T2 T3 Tn ⎝ n + 1⎠
This term will approach 2 as n gets larger and larger, and, thus, the sum of
the infinite series
1 1 1
+ + +. . .
T1 T2 T3
for other mathematicians and physicists. Although he did not obtain any
new mathematical results with his variant of calculus, his superior sys-
tem of notation proved to be highly influential for further developments
in mathematics. Leibniz would have liked to have remained in Paris and
tried to become an honorary member of the French Academy of Sciences,
but no invitation came. His patron, von Boyneburg, had died; without a
professional perspective in Paris, in October 1676, he therefore accepted
a position as a librarian and court councilor at the House of Hanover. The
House of Hanover is a German royal dynasty, formally named the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover line. It provided monarchs to Great Britain
and Ireland and ruled the United Kingdom of Great Britain throughout
the nineteenth century. Around 1679, Leibniz developed binary arithme-
tic, which was published in his 1703 article “Explication de l’arithmétique
binaire” (Explanation of Binary Arithmetic). In the introduction, he writes:
43 ÷ 2 = 21 R: 1
21 ÷ 2 = 10 R: 1
152 M AT H M A K E R S
10 ÷ 2 = 5 R: 0
5 ÷ 2 = 2 R: 1
2 ÷ 2 = 1 R: 0
1 ÷ 2 = 0 R: 1
The sequence of remainders, reading from bottom to top, gives us the bina-
ry representation of 43 as 101011. Why does this work?
Dividing the expression 1·20 + 1·21 + 0·22 + 1·23 + 0·24 + 1·25 =43 by 2
reduces by 1 the exponents of all powers of 2, yielding 1·20 + 0·21 + 1·22 +
0·23 + 1·24 with a remainder of 1. Again, dividing by 2, we arrive at 0·20 +
1·21 + 0·22 + 1·23 with a remainder of 1; and, continuing this process, we
obtain all digits of the binary representation of 43, the last one being the
one with the highest place value, and, therefore, the final remainder after
successive divisions by 2.
After providing conversion tables for the numbers from 0 to 32, Leib-
niz explains addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for binary
numbers. These operations are actually much like the normal decimal oper-
ations with which we are familiar, except that they carry a value of 2 instead
of a value of 10. For example, adding the decimal numbers 5 and 8 gives a
last digit of 3, and we carry 1 to the next digit to obtain 13. In the same fash-
ion, adding the binary numbers 1 and 1, we get 0 as the last digit and carry 1
to the next digit, giving the binary number 102 (here we place the subscript
2 to distinguish binary numbers from decimal numbers). To add the binary
numbers 1102 and 1112, we start from the last digit: Adding 0 and 1, we get
1 (with no carry). Thus, the last digit of the answer will be 1. We then move
one digit to the left: Adding 1 and 1 gives us 0 and a carry of 1. The next dig-
it of the answer will be 0, and we have to a carry a 1. Moving on to the next
digit, we add 1 and 1 and the carry from the last digit, which gives us 1 and a
carry of 1. Hence, we get the answer 11012. Figure 18.5 shows additional ex-
amples from Leibniz’s original work “Explication de l’arithmétique binaire”
(he wrote in French because the article was published by the French Acad-
emy of Sciences). You may want to try binary subtraction, multiplication,
and division as well.
Is his article, Leibniz then argues that binary arithmetic is actually sim-
pler than decimal arithmetic, since one doesn’t have to memorize any ad-
dition or multiplication tables; it suffices to know how to add and multiply
zeros and ones. As he goes on, he writes:
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz: German (1646–1716) 153
Figure 18.7.
I cannot tell you how extraordinarily distracted and spread out I am.
I am trying to find various things in the archives; I look at old papers
and hunt up unpublished documents. From these I hope to shed some
light on the history of the [House of] Brunswick. I receive and answer
a huge number of letters. At the same time, I have so many mathe-
matical results, philosophical thoughts, and other literary innovations
156 M AT H M A K E R S
that should not be allowed to vanish, and that I often do not know
where to begin.8
Giovanni Ceva:
Italian (1647–1734)
157
158 M AT H M A K E R S
AM AR (I)
ΔAMR ~ ΔCMB; therefore, = .
MC CB
BN CB (II)
ΔBNC ~ ΔANS; therefore, = .
NA SA
Figure 19.2.
160 M AT H M A K E R S
CL LP (III)
ΔCLP ~ ΔSAP; therefore, = .
SA AP
BL LP (IV)
ΔBLP~ΔRAP; therefore, = .
RA AP
If three points, X, Y, and Z, are located on the sides (or their exten-
sions, as shown in fig. 19.4b) of triangle ABC such that AZ · BX · CY =
AY · BZ · CX, then the three points X, Y, and Z are collinear. (See figs.
19.4a and 19.4.b.)
Figure 19.3.
162 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 19.5.
Chapter 20
Robert Simson:
Scottish (1687–1768)
The United States education system is one of the few in the world where
students study one year of geometry while still in high school. Naturally,
the curriculum for this course is ultimately based on the famous work by
Euclid, Elements. Yet the path the high-school geometry curriculum took is
rather interesting. We could begin with the Scottish mathematician Robert
Simson, who set out to prepare a perfect text, in English, of Euclid’s first six
books together with the eleventh and twelfth books, and first published it
as a complete book in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1756. We show the title page of
the 1787 edition in figure 20.1.
In 1794, the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–
1833) published a geometry book titled Éléments de géométrie, which
remained popular for about one hundred years. This book made its way
across the Atlantic Ocean through the work of the American mathemati-
cian Charles Davies, whose adaptation, Elements of Geometry was first pub-
lished in 1828. This title then became the model for teaching geometry in
the United States (see fig. 20.2). Naturally, there have been many modifica-
tions over the years until we get to today’s American high-school geometry
course.1
That this path began with Robert Simson is only one aspect of this im-
portant mathematician’s biography. The eldest son of John Simson, he was
born on October 14, 1687, in West Kilbride, Ayrshire, Scotland.
165
166 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 20.1.
His brilliance in classics and botany enabled him to enter the Univer-
sity of Glasgow at the age of fourteen, in 1702. At the urging of his father,
Simson was being guided to prepare for a life in the church; however, he
found the religious thinking unsatisfying, because of its speculation and lack
of precision. A book on Asian philology was his next attraction, but there,
even though statements could be shown to be either true or false, he was not
totally satisfied. It was not until he delved into mathematics that he found a
subject of particular interest. In particular, it was geometry that was his great
awakening, specifically when he read Euclid’s Elements. Unfortunately, the
challenges in the field of mathematics in Glasgow were not sufficient, so he
decided to go to London upon completion of his studies at the University
of Glasgow in 1710, despite having been offered the chair of mathematics at
the University of Glasgow. In London, he met the leading mathematicians
Robert Simson: Scottish (1687–1768) 167
Figure 20.2.
of his time, and a year later he returned to Glasgow to assume the position
that he had been originally offered. There, he once again pursued his favorite
aspect of mathematics: geometry. After writing about Euclid’s work in Lat-
in, he eventually published what was probably the first English version of
this monumental work by Euclid. As we mentioned earlier, Simson’s book,
which had more than seventy editions throughout the world, still remains as
the primary model for studying Euclid’s Elements through today’s American
high-school geometry course. Throughout his career, Simson was aware of
developments in algebra and infinitesimal calculus, but he usually preferred
to present his mathematical ideas in terms of geometry.
Robert Simson never married and lived a very simple lifestyle, giving
up a more elegant home for a small, modest apartment, and he ate most
of his meals at a small pub near the university. In 1746, he was given an
168 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 20.4.
circle. From point P, three perpendiculars are drawn to the three sides of the
triangle (thin, solid lines). The feet of the perpendiculars are noted as the
points X, Y, and Z. According to Simson’s theorem (or should we have said
“Wallace’s theorem”?), these three points, X, Y, and Z, will always be collinear.
Justifying why this amazing relationship actually holds true is a fine
exercise in understanding the power of geometric relationships. We begin
by referring to figure 20.4, where we notice that angle PYA is supplementary
to angle PZA (since both are right angles). We recall that when the oppo-
site angles of a quadrilateral are supplementary, the quadrilateral is cyclic
(i.e., inscribable in a circle). Therefore, quadrilateral PZAY is cyclic. We now
draw PA, PB, and PC (dashed lines). Considering the circumscribed circle
about quadrilateral PZAY (not shown), we have two angles PYZ = PAZ
= PAB, intercepting the same arc, namely, the arc PZ of the circle, which
makes these two angles ( PAZ = PAB) equal.
In a similar way, we notice the two right angles, PYC and PXC,
are supplementary, and this establishes that we have a cyclic quadrilateral
PXCY. Therefore, as before PYX = PCB, since they are both measured
by the arc PX.
170 M AT H M A K E R S
Now from the cyclic quadrilateral PACB we have PAZ (or PAB) =
PCB . From the three angle equalities that we have just established, we can
tie them together and obtain PYX = PCB = PAZ = PYZ, or, simply
written, we have PYX = PYZ, which then implies the points X, Y, and
Z are collinear. Thus, we have proved Simson’s theorem. It should be noted
that the converse of this is also true.
Besides collinearity, the lengths of the perpendiculars also form a rela-
tionship that merits noting. In figure 20.5, point P is on the circumcircle of
triangle ABC, where perpendiculars PX, PY, and PZ are drawn to sides AC,
AB, and BC, respectively. The interesting relationship that evolves is that
PA·PZ =PB·PX. In order to justify this surprising relationship, we will iden-
tify two cyclic quadrilaterals, namely, quadrilateral PYZB and quadrilateral
PXAY. The quadrilateral PYZB is cyclic because PYB and PZB, which are
right angles, are both subtended by the side PB, and we should know that
when a side of a quadrilateral subtends equal angles at two opposite verti-
ces, then the quadrilateral is cyclic. Therefore, PBY = PZY. We can make
a similar argument for the quadrilateral PXAY to be cyclic, since PXA =
PYA = 90°. Once again, we can conclude that PXY = PAY. Since we
Figure 20.5.
Robert Simson: Scottish (1687–1768) 171
have the points X, Y, and Z along the Simson line, we can establish that
PA PB
PAB ~ PXZ. It then follows that = , which then gives us PA · PZ =
PX PZ
PB · PX. This is what we set out to show in the first place.
In figure 20.6, we will show another interesting feature about the Sim-
son line—applying it to triangle ABC. This curious relationship shows that
if the altitude AD of triangle ABC meets the circumscribed circle at point
P, then the Simson line (XDZ) of point P with respect to triangle ABC is
parallel to the tangent, AG, to the circle at point A.
In order to show that this relationship is true, we begin by considering
that the line segments PX and PZ are perpendicular, respectively, to sides
AC and AB of triangle ABC. As shown in figure 20.6, we now draw the seg-
ment PB. Focusing on quadrilateral PDBZ, we notice that PDB = PZB
= 90°, thereby allowing us to establish it as a cyclic quadrilateral. This then
enables us to establish that DZB = DPB, since they both have a measure
one-half of arc DB.
When we consider the circumcircle of triangle ABC, we notice two
angles of equal measure, because each has a measure one half of arc AB;
that is,
Figure 20.6.
172 M AT H M A K E R S
1
∠GAB =
2
(arcAB) = ∠APB (or DPB)
or simply put, GAB = DPB. This, then, allows us to establish that DZB
= GAB, which are alternate-interior angles of the two parallel lines, AG
and XDZ, formed by the transversal ABZ. Therefore, the Simson line is par-
allel to the tangent at point A. Even though it is believed today that Simson
was not responsible for developing this theorem and its various relation-
ships, since both it and the line bear his name, it is presented here to give a
complete picture of why Robert Simson is still known very well today.
Robert Simson died in 1768, and he is buried in Blackfriars burial
ground, where, sometime later, a fifty-foot monument was erected in his
honor at the West Kilbride cemetery. It bears the following inscription:
“The Restorer of Grecian Geometry, and by his Works the Great Promoter
of its Study in the Schools.”2 This certainly summarizes his contributions
for the future!
Chapter 21
Christian Goldbach:
German (1690–1764)
In almost every field of endeavor, there are brilliant people who have re-
mained famous to this day, largely because of one sterling success in their
career. For example, the French composer Georges Bizet (1838–1875) is
famous today for his opera Carmen. The American author J. D. Salinger
(1919–2010) is largely remembered for his novel The Catcher in the Rye.
Then there is the composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921), whose
opera Hänsel und Gretel keeps his name current today. And so it is with
Christian Goldbach, who is largely quoted today for the conjecture that
bears his name and continued to challenge mathematicians for centuries.
Christian Goldbach (see fig. 21.1) was born on March 18, 1690, in the
city of Königsberg, which was part of Brandenburg-Prussia (today it is Ka-
liningrad, Russia).1 His father was a pastor in the Protestant church there,
and Christian studied at the Royal Albertus University in the same city. He
studied law and medicine as well as delving a bit into some mathematics.
From 1710 until 1724, he traveled throughout Europe, visiting the German
states, Holland, Italy, England, and France. During his visits, he sought to
meet the leading scientists. For example, in 1711, he met the German math-
ematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz with whom he car-
ried on a correspondence—written in Latin—for the next two years.
In 1712, he met a few mathematicians in London, including Nicolaus
(I) Bernoulli and Abraham de Moivre, and he was also referred to Jacob
Bernoulli. These encounters began to motivate him toward the field of
173
174 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 21.2.
The Bernoullis:
Swiss (1700–1782)
177
178 M AT H M A K E R S
⎝2⎠
It can also be expressed in terms of a hyperbolic cosine function via the
⎛x⎞
equation y = acosh ⎜⎝ a ⎟⎠ . By 1695, he further enhanced the design of bridges by
applying calculus to his analyses.
As the two Bernoulli brothers further grappled with applications of
calculus, which was an area that was not clearly understood by many math-
ematicians at the time, a rivalry between them evolved. They began to crit-
icize each other in print, and at the same time challenge each other with
mathematical problems, which has moved the understanding of mathemat-
ics further along. By 1697, their relationship completely dissolved and they
separated and were no longer in communication.
180 M AT H M A K E R S
Bernoulli’s work was notable for three reasons. First, he performed his
research with only a superficial understanding of those who had come be-
fore him—he was able to read a copy of Christiaan Huygens’ Reasoning
in Games of Chance—but it’s clear from his work that he had not read the
letters of Pascal and Fermat, Pascal’s Treatise, and several other texts that
would have informed his research. Second, he progressed much further
in the study of probability than those who came before him, despite not
having access to their writings. Third, and finally, he undertook to explain
not only games of chance, where the outcomes are assumed to be fair and
the sole output of cards, dice, or coins; he also sought to explain human
problems such as decision making. Jacob Bernoulli’s works were published
posthumously in a two-volume set titled Opera Jacobi Bernoulli, in 1744
(see fig. 22.4).
We now turn to Johann Bernoulli (see fig. 22.5), one of Jacob Bernoul-
li’s younger brothers, who was born in Basel, Switzerland, on August 6,
1667, twelve years after Jacob’s birth, and was the tenth child of Nicolaus
and Margaretha Bernoulli. His father, Nicolaus Bernoulli, was a pharmacist
and wanted his son Johann eventually to take over his business and there-
fore guided Johann’s university studies in that direction.
Not interested in studying business, Johann elected to study medicine,
in an attempt to somewhat satisfy his parents. But this subject also did not
interest him. His older brother Jacob enticed him to consider mathematics,
which ended up being the right fit for him. The brothers engaged them-
selves initially in the new subject of calculus (see fig. 22.6), which, as men-
tioned earlier, was developed by Leibniz.
Despite his overriding interest in mathematics, he did complete his
studies in medicine at the University of Basel, where he received his doc-
torate in 1694. Much to his father’s disappointment, he subsequently im-
mersed himself in mathematics, publishing two books on differential and
integral calculus. Soon thereafter, in 1694, he married Dorothea Falkner,
with whom he had three boys, one of whom was Daniel, whose career we
shall consider later. This was also a time when he began his position as pro-
fessor of mathematics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Johann seems to have been rather happy at Groningen, as evidenced by a
184 M AT H M A K E R S
note he wrote on July 25, 1696, in which he stated “Patria est, ubi bene est”
(“Where there is bread, there is my homeland”) (see fig. 22.7).
Throughout his life, he has had some very famous students, such as
Leonhard Euler and the French mathematician Guillaume-François-An-
toine, marquis de l’Hôpital (1661–1704), who is still known today for the
mathematical procedure known as l’Hôpital’s rule, which is used in dif-
ferential calculus. Curiously, l’Hôpital offered to pay Johann, if he would
provide him with some mathematical discoveries. Interestingly, Johann
Bernoulli later signed a contract with l’Hôpital, which allowed l’Hôpital to
use Johann’s work without proper attribution, and thus he published Anal-
yse des infiniment petits pour l’intelligence des lignes courbes in 1696, which
mainly consisted of the work of Johann Bernoulli, including what we know
today as l’Hôpital’s rule (see fig. 22.8).
The study of calculus became ever more popular and was further pop-
ularized when Johann posed the brachistochrone problem, which engaged
a variety of mathematicians at the time. The problem involved taking a wire
attached at two points at different heights, and placing a bead on the wire.
Then letting the bead slide along the wire (assuming no friction), from the
higher-height endpoint. The challenge was to determine what the shape of
the curve should be in order for the bead to land at the lowest point in the
The Bernoullis: Swiss (1700–1782) 185
least amount of time. Using calculus, it was determined by him that the
curve is an inverted cycloid. The cycloid curve can also be generated by
the path that a point on a circle travels while the circle is rolling along a
straight-line path, as shown in figure 22.9.
In 1705, Johann’s family urged him to return to Basel. During the jour-
ney back, he learned of Jacob’s death from tuberculosis. Initially, Johann
had returned to Basel so as to assume the professorial chair for Greek at the
University of Basel. After the death of his brother, though, he was able to
get the now-vacant position of professor of mathematics at the university of
Basel, which previously had been held by his brother. It must be said that,
despite the loss of Jacob, Johann was delighted to change his plans when the
mathematics position became available.
In 1713, Johann got actively involved in supporting Leibniz in the
discussions about who should be credited with discovering calculus. He
showed that Leibniz’s work was able to solve problems that Newton’s flux-
ions could not accomplish. As a further effort to support Leibniz’s position
regarding the development of calculus, he published a text on integral cal-
culus in 1742 and soon thereafter a text on differential calculus.
Apparently, Johann Bernoulli had a rather-jealous personality, which
caused his previously mentioned competition and subsequent fallout with
186 M AT H M A K E R S
his brother. A similar problem disrupted his relationship with his son Daniel
Bernoulli, who was also a very gifted mathematician. In 1734, Daniel wrote
an important work, Hydrodynamica, which he published in 1738. This was
about the same time that his father, Johann Bernoulli, published his work
Hydraulica. Once again, a dispute evolved about the ownership of the mate-
rial. It is believed that Johann plagiarized from his son Daniel’s work.3 This
further destroyed their relationship. Johann Bernoulli died on January 1,
1748, in Basel, Switzerland, while still at odds with his son Daniel.
Johann Bernoulli’s son Daniel was born on February 8, 1700, in Gron-
ingen, Netherlands. Despite his father’s urging that Daniel study business,
Daniel insisted on studying mathematics. He later delved into some busi-
ness study but ended up studying medicine at his father’s suggestion, with
the understanding that his father would teach him mathematics at home.
The Bernoullis: Swiss (1700–1782) 187
Leonhard Euler:
Swiss (1707–1783)
One often wonders from where our many mathematical symbols stem. The
answer is quite simple. Perhaps one of the most prolific mathematicians of
all time, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, introduced a significant
number of the symbols that we frequently use in mathematics today. Al-
though the Greek letter π was first used by the Welsh mathematician Wil-
liam Jones (1675–1749), it was Euler who through his many publications
popularized the symbol to represent the ratio of a circle’s circumference to
its diameter. He also used the Greek letter Σ to represent a summation, and
the letter i to represent the imaginary number −1 . He was the first to use
the letter e to represent the natural logarithm, which is approximately equal
to 2.71828 . . ., and that allowed him to set up the famous Euler identity
eiπ + 1 = 0, which uses all of these symbols. Euler also introduced the con-
cept of the function and was the first to write it as f(x). We can thank Euler
for the modern notation of the trigonometric functions. Even the way we
today label geometric figures such as a triangle—whose vertices are marked
with the letters A, B, and C, and whose notation for the sides opposite these
vertices use the lowercase letters a, b, and c—stems from Euler’s writings.
Euler provided us with our mathematical language, but it resulted from the
many volumes that he wrote during his seventy-six-year life span. We must
also acknowledge the multitude of innovations that Euler introduced in
mathematics. But first, let’s get a brief view into his life’s history.
189
190 M AT H M A K E R S
Leonhard Euler was born on April 15, 1707, in Basel, Switzerland. His
father was a pastor and his mother was the daughter of a pastor, and he was
one of four children. When Leonhard was a small child, his family moved
to the town of Riehen, Switzerland, where he lived until age thirteen, at
which time he moved back to Basel to live with his maternal grandmother.
There, in 1720, the thirteen-year-old Leonhard enrolled as a student at the
University of Basel; in 1723, at age seventeen, he received a master’s de-
gree in philosophy, comparing the ideas of Newton and Descartes. It was
during that time that his father’s friend, the famous Swiss mathematician
Johann Bernoulli, gave him private lessons in mathematics and discov-
ered his unique talents in this field. As a result, Bernoulli convinced Leon-
hard’s father that his son should pursue a study of mathematics rather than
fulfilling his father’s wish of also becoming a pastor. Euler completed his
dissertation on the propagation of sound in 1726 but was unsuccessful in
Leonhard Euler: Swiss (1707–1783) 191
In the eighteenth century and earlier, when walking was the dominant
form of local transportation, people would often count particular kinds of
objects they passed. One such was bridges. Through the eighteenth century,
the small Prussian city of Königsberg (today called Kaliningrad, Russia), lo-
cated where the Pregel River forms two branches around an island portion
of the city, provided a recreational dilemma: Could a person walk over each
of the seven bridges exactly once in a continuous walk through the city?
The residents of the city had this as a recreational challenge, particularly on
Sunday afternoons. Since there were no successful attempts, the challenge
continued for many years.
This problem provides a wonderful window into the field today known
as networks, which is also referred to as graph theory, an extended field of
geometry. This problem gives us a nice introduction into the subject. Let us
begin by presenting the problem. In figure 23.2 we can see the map of the
city with the seven bridges.
In figure 23.3, we indicate the island with A, the left bank of the river
with B, the right bank with C, and the area between the two arms of the
upper course with D. The seven bridges are called Holz, Schmiede, Ho-
nig, Hohe, Köttel, Grüne, and Krämer (see fig. 23.3). If we start at Holz
and walk to Schmiede and then through Honig, through Hohe, through
Köttel, through Grüne we will never cross Krämer. On the other hand, if we
start at Krämer and walk to Honig, through Hohe, through Köttel, through
Schmiede, and then through Holz, we will never travel through Grüne.
In 1735, Euler proved mathematically that this walk could not be per-
formed. The famous Königsberg Bridges Problem, as it has become known,
is a lovely application of a topological problem with networks. It is very nice
to observe how mathematics—used properly—can put a practical problem
to rest.
Before we embark on the problem, we ought to become familiar with
some basic concepts involved. Toward that end, try to trace with a pencil
each of the configurations shown in figure 23.4 without missing any part
and without going over any part twice. Make sure to keep count of the num-
ber of arcs or line segments, which have an endpoint at each of the points
A, B, C, D, and E.
Configurations, or networks, such as the five figures shown in figure
23.4, are made up of line segments and/or continuous arcs. The number of
arcs or line segments that have an endpoint at a particular vertex is called
the degree of the vertex.
You should notice two direct outcomes after trying to trace the net-
works as described above: The networks can be traced (or traversed) if they
have (1) all even degree vertices or (2) exactly two odd-degree vertices. The
following two statements summarize this finding:
Network figure 23.4a has five vertices. Vertices B, C, E are of even de-
gree, and vertices A and D are of odd degree. Since figure 23.4a has
exactly two odd-degree vertices as well as three even-degree vertices, it
is traversable. If we start at A then go down to D, across to E, back up to
A, across to B, and down to D, we have chosen a desired route.
Network figure 23.4b has five vertices. Vertex C is the only even-de-
gree vertex. Vertices A, B, E, and D are all of odd degree. Consequent-
ly, since the network has more than two odd-degree vertices, it is not
traversable.
Network figure 23.4c is traversable because it has two even-degree ver-
tices and exactly two odd-degree vertices.
Network figure 23.4d has five even-degree vertices and, therefore, can
be traversed.
Network figure 23.4e has four odd-degree vertices and cannot be
traversed.
The Königsberg Bridge Problem is the same problem as the one posed
in figure 23.4e. Let’s take a look at both figure 23.4e and figure 23.3 and note
the similarity. There are seven bridges in figure 23.3, and there are seven
lines in figure 23.4e. In figure 23.4e, each vertex is of odd degree. In figure
23.3, if we start at D, we have three choices: we could go to Hohe, Honig,
or Holz. If we start at D in figure 23.4e, we have three line paths to choose
from. In both figures, if we are at C, we have either three bridges or three
lines we could go on. A similar situation exists for locations A and B in fig-
ure 23.3 and vertices A and B in figure 23.4e. We can see that this network
cannot be traversed.
By reducing the bridges and islands to a network problem, we can eas-
ily solve it. This is a clever tactic to solve problems in mathematics. You
might want to try to find a group of local bridges in your region to create
a similar challenge, and then see if the walk is traversable. This problem
and its network application is an excellent introduction into the field of
196 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 23.5.
Chapter 24
197
198 M AT H M A K E R S
It took much skill and sagacity to reduce, as the author has done, to
almost uniform methods these discoveries scattered among the works
of modern mathematicians and often presented by methods very dif-
ferent from each other. Order, clarity and precision reign in all parts
of this work. . . . We regard it as the most complete and best made
treatise.1
One form of her fame came from a cubic curve known in Italian as ver-
siera, which, over the years, has become confused with the word for “witch,”
namely, versicra. Ultimately, this resulted in its English name, the Witch of
Agnesi.
The bell-shaped curve, which we refer to as the Witch of Agnesi, can
be constructed as follows: Start with a circle of diameter a, centered at the
a
point (0, ) on the y-axis, as shown in figure 24.3. Then select a point A
2
Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Italian (1718–1799) 199
Figure 24.2.
on the line y = a, and draw the line segment AO, with its intersection with
circle O at point B. Let point P be the point where the vertical line through
A intersects the horizontal line through B. The curve , called “Witch of Ag-
nesi,” is then traced by point P as A moves along the line y = a.
3
The curve has the equation yx2 = a2(a – y), or y = 2 a 2 .
x +a
Figure 24.4 shows the curve in its original rendering.
This entire work so impressed Pope Benedict XIV that, in 1750, he ap-
pointed Agnesi to the position of professor of mathematics at the University
of Bologna. Soon thereafter, she increasingly gravitated to religious studies
and never actually visited Bologna again. After her father died in 1752, Ma-
ria Gaetana Agnesi completely dedicated herself to religious studies and
charitable work. She died on January 9, 1799, in one of the charity poor-
houses that she directed.
200 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 24.3.
201
202 M AT H M A K E R S
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past
and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment
would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of
all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast
enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a sin-
gle formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and
those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncer-
tain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.2
Pierre Simon Laplace: French (1749–1827) 203
indicated that Jupiter’s orbit was slowly shrinking, while Saturn’s orbit was
expanding. Explaining this apparent instability was a big open problem of
astronomy; even Leonhard Euler and Joseph-Louis Lagrange had unsuc-
cessfully tried to solve it. Laplace carried out a more refined mathematical
analysis of the problem, incorporating effects that Euler and Lagrange had
omitted, and his calculations turned out to be in perfect agreement with
the observational data. His analysis revealed that the special ratio between
the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn is responsible for the anomalies
in their motions. (Two periods of Saturn’s orbit around the sun are almost
exactly equal to one period of Jupiter’s orbit.) Having solved this longstand-
ing problem, Laplace aimed at a theoretical description of the whole solar
system. His scientific goal was to: “bring theory to coincide so closely with
observation that empirical equations should no longer find a place in astro-
nomical tables.”5
In his major work, Celestial Mechanics, published in five volumes be-
tween 1799 and 1825, Laplace brought the methods of calculus into classical
mechanics, which previously had mainly been studied geometrically. The
powerful machinery of calculus enabled Laplace to tackle problems New-
ton and other predecessors had considered too complicated for a mathe-
matical analysis. Laplace developed a complete mathematical framework
for calculating the motions of the planets and their satellites, including the
tidal motion and the effects of tidal forces on the shape of planets. In par-
ticular, he was able to show stability of the solar system6 without having to
postulate any divine intervention, as Newton did. There is a famous anec-
dote regarding a conversation between Laplace and Napoleon Bonaparte:
When Laplace presented his work to Napoleon, he was congratulated but
asked why he had nowhere mentioned God in his book. Laplace’s blunt and
now-famous answer was: “I had no need of that hypothesis.”7
Because Laplace was rather opportunistic with his political opinions,
he escaped imprisonment during the French Revolution and was even ap-
pointed as minister of the interior by Napoleon, as a placeholder for Na-
poleon’s brother. That is probably the main reason why Laplace’s political
career lasted only six weeks; however, Napoleon later wrote in his memoirs:
Laplace did not consider any question from the right angle: he sought
subtleties everywhere, conceived only problems, and finally carried
the spirit of “infinitesimals” into the administration.8
Pierre Simon Laplace: French (1749–1827) 207
Lorenzo Mascheroni:
Italian (1750–1800)
209
210 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 26.1.
The brilliant discovery that all geometric constructions that are pos-
sible to create with a straight edge and a pair of compasses can be creat-
ed with the compasses alone is actually named after Mascheroni. He came
upon a proof of this theorem that is different from Georg Mohr’s proof; and,
since we refer to this technique as Mascheroni constructions, we will focus
on Mascheroni’s life here.
Lorenzo Mascheroni was born in Bergamo, Lombardi, Italy, in 1750,
to a wealthy family that motivated him to become a priest, and he was or-
dained in 1767. Soon thereafter, he taught rhetoric, and, later on, in 1778,
he taught mathematics and physics at the seminary in Bergamo. This led
him to become a professor of mathematics at the University of Pavia, where
in 1789 he became the rector of the university, a position he held for the
next four years.
Lorenzo Mascheroni: Italian (1750–1800) 211
Figure 26.3.
Lorenzo Mascheroni: Italian (1750–1800) 213
Figure 26.4.
We will begin by drawing a line segment AG, which will be three times
the length of AB using the method above (see fig. 26.6).
To make matters a little clearer, we will just copy the line segment ABG,
1
where AB = AG as shown in figure 26.6, and begin our construction that
3
would be one-third the length of AB. We begin by drawing the circle (A, AB).
Next, we draw arc (G, GA) to intersect the circle (A, AB) at points C and D, as
shown in figure 26.7. The intersection-point P of arcs (C, CA) and (D, DA) is
a trisection point of the segment AB, or in other words, AP = 1 AB . To find the
3
other trisection point of AB, we merely use the process mentioned above for
duplicating a line segment, in this case duplicating AP.
To better explain why this procedure works, we refer to figure 26.8,
where we are adding some lines merely to explain the justification for this
construction. We must first show that the point P actually lies on line ABG.
The points A, P, and G lie on the perpendicular bisector of line segment
CD, and, therefore, they are collinear. The two isosceles triangles CGA and
PAC are similar, since they share a common base angle, namely, angle CAP.
AP AC AP AB
Therefore, AC = AG . However, since AC = AB, we have AB = AG . Since we
AB 1 AP 1 1
know that = , we have = , or AP = AB .
AG 3 AB 3 3
There is an alternate method for doing this construction, that is, for
locating the point P: We use the first Mascheroni construction to find the
point E diametrically opposite point D. Or to put it another way, DAE is
the diameter of circle (A, AB). Since in figure 26.8, the quadrilateral ECPA
is a parallelogram, EC = AP. Therefore, we can find the point P by locating
the intersection of arc (A, EC) and arc (C, CA). We show this in figure 26.9.
In order to justify Lorenzo Mascheroni’s statement that all construc-
tions possible with the usual geometric construction tools—the unmarked
straightedge and a pair of compasses—can be done by using only compass-
es, as we have shown in the earlier constructions, we need not necessarily
show that every imaginable construction can be done this way. Rather, we
need to show only that the five following constructions are possible with
compasses alone; with these five at our disposal, we are able to do all the
geometric constructions that are typically created with the usual tools: a
straightedge and compasses. The following five fundamental constructions
220 M AT H M A K E R S
are those upon which all other constructions are dependent. That is, any
construction using both straightedge and compasses is merely a finite num-
ber of successions of these constructions:
Although we cannot actually draw a line through the two given points,
we can place as many points as we wish on the line and—perhaps working
for an infinitely long time—all the points between these two points will
eventually appear on that line. That would essentially satisfy the first condi-
tion listed above. The second and third constructions listed above, clearly,
need no further discussion, since they are done by compasses alone. To
locate the point of intersection of a straight line given by two points, say, A
and B, and a given circle, (O, r), we will need to consider two cases: one for
which the center of the circle is not on the given line, and one for which the
center of the circle does lie on the given line.
First, we consider the case for which the center of the circle does not
lie on the given line. Here we have circle (O, r) and the straight line AB, as
shown in figure 26.10 (a dashed line is there merely to help us see the line
AB, which was determined by only two points, A and B).
We need to find point Q, which is the point of intersection of the arcs
(B, BO) and (A, AO). We then draw the circle (Q, r). The points of intersec-
tion of the circles (Q, r) and (O, r) are the required points of intersection of
line AB and the circle (O, r).
This can be justified in the following way. Point Q was chosen so as to
make AB the perpendicular bisector OQ. By drawing circle (Q, r) congru-
ent to an intersecting circle (O, r), the common chord PR is also the perpen-
dicular bisector of OQ.
The second case to consider is when the center of the given circle lies
on the given line. Here, we will consider the circle (O, r) and the straight-
line AB, which is shown in figure 26.11.
Lorenzo Mascheroni: Italian (1750–1800) 221
Figure 26.10
Figure 26.11
In figure 26.11, we draw circle (A, x), where radius length x is large
enough to intersect circle (O, r) in two points, S and T. The midpoints of
the major and minor arcs of ST, are P and R. This becomes a bit more com-
plicated and will be shown in the following manner.
In the interest of completing the above argument, we will now focus
our attention on bisecting a given arc ST. To begin our construction (see fig.
26.12) we will let OS = OT = r, where O is the center of the circle of which
ST is an arc. We will let the distance between S and T be equal to d, and then
draw the circle (O, d). We then draw the circles (S, SO) and (T, TO), which
will intersect the circle (O, d) at points M and N, respectively. Next, we draw
arcs (M, MT) and (N, NS); each will meet at point K. By drawing arcs (M,
OK) and (N, OK), we find that their points of intersection, C and D, are the
desired midpoints of the arcs ST.
In order to demonstrate why this construction does what is purported
to have been done, namely to find the midpoints of arc ST, we will draw
some auxiliary lines to help explain the construction as shown in figure
26.13.
Let’s first look at quadrilaterals SONT and TOMS. These quadrilaterals
are parallelograms since both pairs of opposite sides are congruent. This
allows us to conclude that the points M, O, and N are collinear. Since CN
= CM, and KN = KM, we then can conclude that KC and MN are perpen-
dicular at O. We can also conclude that CO ⊥ ST. Therefore, CO bisects the
segment ST, and consequently the arc ST. Our remaining task is merely to
show that the point C lies on circle (O, r), or to show that CO = r.
In order to do this, we will rely on a useful theorem in geometry that
states that the sum of the squares of the measures of the sides of a paral-
lelogram equals the sum of the squares of the measures of the diagonals.2
Applying this to parallelogram SONT, we get the following: (SN)2 + (TO)2 =
2(SO)2 + 2(ST)2 or (SN)2 + r2 = 2r2 + 2d2 or, which gives us
Figure 26.12
Figure 26.13
IM and IG are congruent. The inscribed angle IBM has one half the measure
of its intercepted arc IM; similarly,
1
∠IBG = arc IG .
2
Therefore, we can conclude that IBM = IBG. This also allows us to estab-
lish that the point M is on line BG. Furthermore, we know that lines AB and
BG are each perpendicular bisectors of EF. Again, this allows us to establish
that point M must lie on AB. We now need to show that M also lies on line
CD. We can easily show that triangle BGH and triangle BHM are similar.
Consequently, it follows that
BG BH
= ,
BH BM
but since BH = BE, we get the following proportion:
BG BE .
=
BE BM
We can then establish a similarity between triangles GEB and EMB,
since they both share a common angle MBE and the sides including
this angle are in proportion. Since we can show that triangle GEB is
isosceles, we also then know that triangle EMB must also be isosceles.
Therefore EM = MB. Line CM is thus the perpendicular bisector of line
segment EB. We may, therefore, conclude that point M must lie on line
CD. Thus, we have demonstrated that the point M is at the intersection
of the lines AB and CD.
Although this previous discussion was rather complicated, it used
nothing more than elementary geometry, and, as a result, showed that
the five possible constructions that can be created with an unmarked
straightedge and a pair of compasses can also be made with just a pair of
compasses alone. As we mentioned earlier, these Mascheroni construc-
tions can also be attributed to the Danish mathematician Mohr—repre-
senting a misattribution. This does, on occasion, occur in mathematics,
especially when, as is typical in the Western world, we look at the his-
tory of mathematics through European eyes. Another example of this is
the famous Pythagorean theorem. We attribute this finding to the Greek
226 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 26.14
228 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 26.15
Chapter 27
Joseph-Louis Lagrange:
French/Italian (1736–1813)
229
230 M AT H M A K E R S
Giuseppe Francesco Lodovico Lagrangia and his wife, Teresa. Only two of
their children survived to adulthood. Lagrange’s father was treasurer of the
Office of Public Works and Fortifications in Turin.1 Although his position
would have been paid well enough to allow his family some degree of
wealth, he unfortunately lost most of his money and most of his property
with financial speculation. He wanted his eldest son to become a lawyer,
and Lagrange accepted this wish without any hesitation. He studied at the
University of Turin, where classical Latin would become his favorite sub-
ject. Initially he didn’t show any interest in mathematics and found the sub-
ject rather boring. However, his mind suddenly changed when he acciden-
tally came across a paper on the use of algebra in optics, written by the
English astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley (1656–1742). Hal-
ley is famous for computing the periodicity of a comet he had observed in
1682. The comet was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758.
With his interest in mathematics aroused by Halley’s memoir, Lagrange
wanted to learn more and began to read mathematical texts on his own,
including works by Maria Gaetana Agnesi and Leonhard Euler. His
Joseph-Louis Lagrange: French/Italian (1736–1813) 231
enthusiasm grew, and he threw himself into mathematics. After only one
year of intense studying, he was an essentially self-taught but accomplished
mathematician. In 1754, Lagrange published his first mathematical work,
an analogy between the binomial theorem and the successive derivatives of
the product of functions. This work, written in the form of a letter to the
mathematician Giulio Fagnano (1682–1766), was not a masterpiece and
showed that Lagrange was working alone, without the advice of a mathe-
matical supervisor. Shortly after the publication of his paper, Lagrange dis-
covered that the results were already contained in a published correspon-
dence between Johann Bernoulli and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Lagrange
was shocked by this discovery and feared that he would be accused of pla-
giarism. However, the bumpy start of his career as a mathematician actually
increased his motivation, as he then wanted to prove as soon as possible
that he was able to achieve his own significant results in mathematics. He
began working on the tautochrone curve, “the curve for which the time
taken by an object sliding without friction in uniform gravity to its lowest
point is independent of its starting point.”2 The tautochrone problem had
been solved by Christiaan Huygens 1659. Using geometry, he identified the
curve to be an inverted cycloid, the curve traced by a point on the rim of a
circular wheel as the wheel rolls along a straight line without slipping. La-
grange was able to provide a purely analytic solution to the tautochrone
problem, which made his name known in the mathematical community.
Moreover, he found a general method to find curves minimizing or maxi-
mizing certain quantities depending on the whole curve. For example, for
each curve connecting a point A with a lower point B, one can calculate the
time it would take an object sliding down from A to B along this curve in
uniform gravity. Considering this time as a function of the curve, Lagrange’s
analytic method allows one to derive a set of equations that must be satis-
fied by the “shortest time” curve between A and B. Beyond the fact that
Lagrange was able to solve the tautochrone problem without any geometri-
cal arguments, his method also provided a much more general framework
to formulate and investigate similar problems. He sent his results to Euler,
who was very impressed. Euler had been working on similar problems, us-
ing related ideas, but Lagrange’s approach considerably simplified and gen-
eralized Euler’s earlier analysis. This general framework is now called calcu-
lus of variations, and the equations defining the maximizing or minimizing
curve are called the Euler-Lagrange equations. In 1755, Lagrange, who was
still a teenager, was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal
232 M AT H M A K E R S
papers covering the stability of the solar system, mechanics, dynamics, fluid
mechanics, and probability. In a long series of papers extending over more
than a decade, he basically created the theory of partial differential equa-
tions. The prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences was awarded to La-
grange on an almost-regular basis: He won the prize in 1766, for work on
the libration of the moon; he shared the 1772 prize with Euler, for their
work on the three-body problem;3 he won the prize in 1774, again for his
work on the motion of the moon; and he won the 1780 prize, this time for
his work on the planets’ perturbations of the orbits of comets.4 While appli-
cations in classical mechanics and astronomy still played a major role in his
research at the Berlin Academy, he also worked on number theory, proving
in 1770 that every positive integer is the sum of four squares. The years in
Berlin were the most productive in Lagrange’s life: He was exempt from
teaching and could devote all of his time to mathematics. It took some time
until Italy realized Lagrange’s mathematical genius and acknowledged that
his leaving Turin for Berlin was a tremendous loss for his hometown. Upon
Lagrange’s visit in Paris in 1763, d’Alembert wrote “. . . in him Turin possess-
es a treasure whose worth it perhaps does not know.” Occasionally, efforts
were made to get Lagrange back to Italy, but Lagrange turned down gener-
ous offers; he sought neither wealth nor power, and wanted only to have
peace to do mathematics, without any other obligations. Around 1780, La-
grange started to write his magnum opus, the previously mentioned Mé-
canique analytique: a single, comprehensive treatise containing his and his
contemporaries’ contributions to mechanics. Newton’s presentation of me-
chanics in his famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (com-
monly known as the Principia) was based on geometrical methods, and
Lagrange’s intent was to transfer Newtonian mechanics and the art of solv-
ing problems in mechanics from a predominantly geometrical reasoning to
a purely analytic and algebraic approach. His method was based on a set of
general equations from which all the equations necessary for the solution of
a particular problem can be derived. He wrote:
Lagrange not only summarized all of the work done in the field of me-
chanics since the time of Newton but also dramatically simplified the ap-
plication of Newton’s theory via the use of differential equations, essentially
condensing Newtonian mechanics into a single formula and eliminating
any necessity for geometrical reasoning. However, Lagrange’s monumental
work Mécanique analytique was not published until 1788. At that time, he
had already left Germany. In 1783, after years of illness, his wife, Vittoria,
died; Lagrange became very depressed. Three years later, he also lost his
patron, Frederick II. As a result of these losses, Berlin had become a less
welcoming place for him, and he lacked any reason to stay. Many states in
Europe saw their chance to hire him; the best offer came from France and
included a clause that exempted Lagrange from any teaching obligations.
In 1787, at age fifty-one, Lagrange left Berlin and was appointed to a paid
position at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, where his Mécanique
analytique was published in two volumes, in 1788 and 1789. However, nei-
ther the new environment nor the publication of his great work could cheer
up Lagrange; he was still very melancholic, and the printed copy of his Mé-
canique lay on his desk, unopened, for more than two years.
When Lagrange came to Paris, the French Revolution was just about to
start. In 1790, Lagrange was made a member of the committee of the Acade-
my of Sciences, to standardize weights and measures. The existing system of
measures had become impractical for trade and needed to be replaced. As
the revolution developed, politics changed rapidly and the situation of any-
one considered part of the establishment became potentially dangerous. In
dealing with these circumstances, Lagrange gradually overcame his depres-
sion. Although he had already prepared his escape from France, it turned
out that he would never face real danger. All foreigners born in enemy
countries, including members of the Academy of Sciences, were subject to
arrest once the Reign of Terror began in 1793. Fortunately, the famed chem-
ist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) intervened on behalf of Lagrange, and he
was granted an exception. In the political turmoil, no one could feel safe, as
one could be declared an enemy of the regime overnight. The weights and
measures commission was allowed to continue, but soon several prominent
figures—such as Lavoisier himself, mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace,
and physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806)—were thrown
off the commission, while Lagrange became its chairperson.5 In a trial that
lasted less than a day, a revolutionary tribunal condemned to death Lavois-
ier and twenty-seven others. On the death of Lavoisier, who was guillotined
on the afternoon of the day of his trial, Lagrange said:
It took only a moment to cause this head to fall and a hundred years
will not suffice to produce its like.
Sophie Germain:
French (1776–1831)
236
Sophie Germain: French (1776–1831) 237
entire adult life. Because one of her sisters and her mother shared the name
Marie as the first part of their first names, she dropped it and became known
as Sophie Germain. Germain was forced to stay home as a result of the un-
rest and street riots after the fall of the Bastille in 1789. Although we cannot
be sure, it is commonly understood that she first encountered mathematics
while reading some books in her father’s library, particularly those on the
history of the subject. From there, Germain taught herself both Latin and
Greek so that she could read the works of Isaac Newton and Leonhard Eu-
ler. In this effort, she faced opposition from her family members, who held
that the study of mathematics was inappropriate for women. Despite that
familial opposition, she secretly continued pursuing her genuine interest
in mathematics. Eventually, her mother became sympathetic and chose to
support Germain’s enthusiasm for mathematics.
238 M AT H M A K E R S
In 1794, the École Polytechnique was established, but it would not ad-
mit women; however, lecture notes were available to anyone who requested
them. Sophie, then aged eighteen years, acquired these notes and read them
intensively. She then sent her observations of them (under a pseudonym,
M. LeBlanc) to the famous Italian mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange,
who was then a member of the faculty. Lagrange was very impressed with
her submissions and requested a meeting with her; at that point, she re-
vealed that she was a woman. This did not disturb Lagrange, and he contin-
ued to mentor her at her home.
Germain’s interest specifically in number theory began in 1798, when
she read the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre Essai sur la
théorie des nombres. Germain began corresponding with Legendre provid-
ing some brilliant ideas, which, ultimately, led him to include some of her
work in his subsequent publication, Théorie des Nombres, with a citation to
her for the ingenious aspect of her contribution.
Her interest in number theory was further motivated when she read the
German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss’s monumental work Disquisi-
tiones Arithmeticae; once again using her earlier pseudonym of M. LeBlanc,
she wrote to Gauss on November 21, 1804. In this correspondence, she pre-
sented some ideas on solving Fermat’s Last Theorem. Gauss responded to
her but did not comment on her work.
At this point, it would be helpful to recall the definition of Fermat’s
Last Theorem, which Fermat wrote in the margin of one of his arithmetic
books in 1637. Writing that the margin space was insufficiently large for
him to produce the proof of this statement, Fermat claimed that for inte-
gers n > 2, the equation an + bn = cn cannot be solved with positive integers
a, b, and c.
Sophie Germain made a few discoveries in the process of trying to
prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. Among them was that if a5 + b5 = c5, then at
least one of the variables, a, b, or c, must be divisible by 5. Furthermore, she
took a special case by letting n be any odd prime number in an + bn + cn. She
then claimed that if there exists another prime number P = 2kn + 1, where
k is any positive integer not divisible by 3 such that an + bn – cn = 0(mod P),
then P divides abc, and n is not an nth power residue (mod P). Finally, she
concluded that Fermat’s Last Theorem holds true for all values of n that do
not divide a, b, or c. This is known as Sophie Germain’s theorem, which was
a major step—especially at the time of its development—toward proving
Fermat’s Last Theorem. She went ahead to show that her idea held for all
Sophie Germain: French (1776–1831) 239
odd primes n < 100. Later investigations into her work showed that it actu-
ally could be taken further, for every exponent n < 197. Germain continued
to pursue a proof of this theorem in unpublished works, further motivating
famous mathematicians such as Legendre and Lagrange.
Germain’s name stays prominent in number theory not only for her
theorem but also because there are some numbers named after her. One
example is the Sophie Germain prime numbers; a prime number p is con-
sidered a Sophie Germain prime only if 2p + 1 is also a prime number. For
example, the number 3 is a Sophie Germain prime, since 3 is a prime num-
ber and 2 · 3 + 1 = 7, which is also a prime. On the other hand, the number
7 is not a Sophie Germain prime; this is because 2 · 7 + 1 = 15, which is not a
prime. Her name is also found in algebra, where we have a Sophie Germain
identity. This holds that for any values of x and y,
( 2
x4 + 4 y4 = ( x + y) + y2 ) (( x − y) + y ) = ( x + 2xy + 2 y ) ( x − 2xy + 2 y )
2 2 2 2 2 2
Figure 28.2.
In 1829, Germain began to suffer from breast cancer; despite the pain,
she continued to pursue her work feverishly, publishing papers until her
death, on June 27, 1831.5 Germain died in the house where she lived her
entire life—the house that today bears her name—at 13 rue de Savoie. She
was further honored posthumously, by Gauss when he indicated that the
University of Göttingen should have bestowed an honorary degree upon
her. However, this was six years after her death. Essentially, Germain’s life
story is that of a woman of means who did not allow her gender to stop her
from pursuing mathematics and scientific research, despite the opposition
from her family and culture on account of her sex.
Sophie Germain: French (1776–1831) 241
Figure 28.3.
Although she was not widely recognized for her brilliance during her
own lifetime, Sophie Germain has had many honors bestowed upon her
since her death in 1831. A street in Paris, Rue Sophie Germain, carries her
name (see fig. 28.3), and a statue of her stands in the courtyard of the Paris
school that also bears her name: École Sophie Germain. As was mentioned
above, the house at 13 rue de Savoie is named for her, and it has been des-
ignated as a historical landmark. Furthermore, the Sophie Germain Hotel
is located at 12 Rue Sophie Germain. On account of not only these physical
landmarks and locations but also the Prix Sophie Germain, a mathematics
prize that is offered annually by the Paris Academy of Sciences, this female
polymath remains in the public eye today.
Chapter 29
242
Carl Friedrich Gauss: German (1777–1855) 243
50 ∙ 101 = 5,050. This is a story that all good math teachers should be shar-
ing with their students at the appropriate time, that is, when introducing
the formula for the sum of an arithmetic sequence.
In 1791, when Gauss was fourteen years old, Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand,
the duke of Braunschweig, discovered Gauss’s brilliance and offered to fi-
nance his study at what is known today as the Braunschweig University of
Technology. Upon graduation there, Gauss was admitted to the University
of Göttingen, still financially supported by the duke. He studied at Göttin-
gen from 1795 until 1798, whereupon he left without a degree. However,
during this period of time, he wrote and published his monumental work,
largely on the theory of numbers, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. Although it
was completed in 1798, due to publishing difficulties in Leipzig, it was not
published until 1801.
244 M AT H M A K E R S
October 11, 1809, and their second child died shortly thereafter. The fol-
lowing year, Gauss married Minna Waldeck, with whom he had three more
children. During this marriage he grew very close to his children. Sadly, his
second wife died in 1831.
Returning to Gauss’ academic career, in 1807 he left Brunswick and
arrived in Göttingen to assume the position of director of the observatory.
The following year there began a series of misfortunes for Gauss. His father
died in that year, and this coupled with the death of his wife two years later,
caused him to become quite depressed. His production continued despite
these unfortunate events. In 1809, he published a two-volume treatise on
the motion of celestial bodies. The first of the two volumes covered differen-
tial equations, conic sections, and elliptical orbits; the second concentrated
on estimating a planet’s orbits.1
In 1818, he accepted the task of developing a geodesic survey of the
state of Hanover so that it could then be linked with the Danish grid. Here,
once again, his incredible ability to do calculations mentally was a great
help. Many of his discoveries seem to have resulted from his ability to do
mental calculations far beyond those that an average person can conceive.
One of his discoveries published in Disquisitiones Arithmeticae is an
example of this. What is now referred to as Gauss’s Eureka theorem (be-
cause he wrote in his diary, “ΕΥΡΗΚΑ! num = Δ + Δ + Δ”)2 is that every
positive integer can be expressed as the sum of triangular numbers. Trian-
gular numbers are 0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, . . ., and they can be expressed as
n ( n +1)
. For example, 18 = 15 + 3, and 28 = 15 + 10 + 3.
2
Another of Gauss’s discoveries was that he proved what is today re-
ferred to as the fundamental theorem of algebra. In simple terms, it states
that every algebraic equation in one variable has a root, or an answer. These
roots can either be real or complex, and so Gauss used the notation of a +
bi, where i = −1 . Furthermore, Gauss was the first to give a comprehensive
explanation of complex numbers and their labeling as points on the plane
with Cartesian coordinates.
For these reasons among many others, Gauss was considered one of the
most brilliant mathematicians of his time. In 1816, the Paris Academy of-
fered a prize for anyone who could prove Fermat’s Last Theorem in the pe-
riod 1816–1818. Gauss was urged to compete, but he wrote to a friend that
“Fermat’s Last Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for
me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, one
246 M AT H M A K E R S
could neither prove nor dispose of.”3 As you might recall, Fermat’s Last The-
orem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equa-
n n n
tion a + b = c for any value of n greater than 2. It took 358 years until
the British mathematician Andrew Wiles published the proof in 1995.)
It was well known that Gauss did not enjoy teaching; however, on oc-
casion, he did announce a lecture or teach private lessons. For instance, see
the announcement from 1831 in figure 29.2, where he stated, “at 10 o’clock
I will explain the use of probability calculus in applied mathematics, espe-
cially astronomy, advanced geodesy and crystallometry. I will teach practi-
cal astronomy in most private sessions. The first lecture will be on October
28th.” Latin was a favorite language for him to use for mathematics and
other scientific communication, as evidenced by this announcement.
Gauss endured some additional depressing times between 1817 and
1832, when his mother, who was always very dear to him, became ill and
lived with him until she died in 1839.4
Figure 29.4. Gauss on this deathbed, 1855. (Painting by Philipp Petri, 1855.)
Chapter 30
Charles Babbage:
English (1791–1871)
In today’s modern world, the calculator and the computer are often taken
for granted. However, we should look back to determine from where the
concept of a calculator—or computer, as it was originally known—ema-
nated. The honor of having first developed a machine that does calculation
belongs to the English mathematician Charles Babbage, who was born in
London on December 26, 1791.
He was the son of Benjamin Babbage, a London banker. Charles Bab-
bage was educated mostly at home, since he was frequently ill. Even in these
early days, he developed a love for mathematics. In 1810, he was accepted
to study mathematics at Trinity College of Cambridge University, where in
a short time he found himself more advanced than his instructors in math-
ematics. This prompted him to join a group of students also disappointed
with the level of instruction. This group, called the Analytical Society, was
devoted to exploring more-advanced issues in mathematics. During this
time, he and his colleagues were disturbed by the inaccuracy of the num-
bers of logarithm tables. He felt better about calculating such values himself,
which was his initial motivation to develop a machine that could do that
task accurately. In 1817, he received his master’s degree from Cambridge
University. Soon thereafter, he worked there as a lecturer of mathematics.
By 1816, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and which eventu-
ally led him to participate in the founding of the Royal Astronomical Soci-
ety in 1820. This was about the time when his interest began to take him in
250
Charles Babbage: English (1791–1871) 251
Norway is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It has extensive nat-
ural resources and, on a per-capita basis, Norway is the world’s largest pro-
ducer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East. In contrast to most other
countries in the world, Norway has no foreign debt; the state revenues gener-
ated from the petroleum industry even allowed the government to establish a
sovereign wealth fund, which, by 2017, has accumulated a value of $185,000
for each citizen.1 Public healthcare and public education are virtually free,
which are probably two reasons why Norway ranked first in the 2017 World
Happiness Report of the United Nations.2 While Norway is obviously a very
good place to live in this day and age, and it attracts immigrants from all over
the world, the situation was very different at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Frequent famines, induced by climatic extremes during the Little Ice
Age, had led to great loss of life. For more than four hundred years, Norway
had been trapped in an unequal union with Denmark and was essentially
controlled by the Danish authorities in Copenhagen.
During these difficult times, Niels Henrik Abel was born in a small vil-
lage on the West Norwegian coast on August 5, 1802. Niels was the second
of seven children of Anne Marie Simonsen and Sören Georg Abel, a pastor.
Political conflicts between Denmark and Britain, which had already pre-
cipitated the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, made the situation for the
Norwegian population even worse in 1807, when Denmark entered into an
alliance with Napoleon and the British fleet reacted by imposing a blockade
256
Niels Henrik Abel: Norwegian (1802–1829) 257
on supply lines between Denmark and Norway. For several years, Norway
was able to neither export nor import goods to and from the continent,
which led to a severe economic crisis that culminated in mass starvation in
1812. Since Abel’s parents could not afford to send their children to school,
he was educated at home by his father, who had a degree in philology and
theology. Records suggest that the difficulties of a childhood in a poor
household were exacerbated by alcohol abuse of both parents.3 However,
fortunately, the general economic situation became slightly better when the
Napoleonic Wars came to an end and Denmark lost its power over Norway.
Norway took a chance and declared independence in 1814. At the age of
thirteen, Abel entered the Cathedral School in Christiana (now Oslo). He
soon wrote home that he “felt right in his element,”4 yet he achieved only
moderately satisfactory marks in his first year at school. In the nineteenth
century, school corporal punishment was an accepted method of behavior
management, and student injuries caused by physical punishment were not
258 M AT H M A K E R S
With the most incredible genius he unites ardor for and interest in
mathematics such that he quite probably, if he lives, shall become one
of the great mathematicians.6
(598–ca. 668 CE). The formulas for cubic and quartic equations were de-
veloped by the Italian mathematicians Scipione del Ferro (1465–1526) and
Lodovico de Ferrari (1522–1565) and were first published in a book by
another Italian mathematician, Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576). How-
ever, the problem of solving quintic equations of the most general form
had occupied mathematicians for hundreds of years, and none of them
had been successful. In 1821, Abel believed that he had solved the prob-
lem in full generality; he sent a paper to Ferdinand Degen (1766–1825) in
Copenhagen, the leading mathematician of the northern countries at that
time. Upon Degen’s request to provide a numerical example of his method,
Abel discovered a mistake. However, Degen noticed the brilliancy in Abel’s
mathematical reasoning and advised him to make use of his abilities in oth-
er areas of mathematics as well.
After one year at the university, Abel’s grades were not very outstand-
ing, except for mathematics, where he excelled. Since there were no ad-
vanced study programs other than theology, medicine, and law, Abel had
to study mathematics entirely on his own by borrowing mathematics books
from the library. He read all of the mathematical texts he could find. There
were only two mathematics professors at the university, and they soon real-
ized that Abel would have to go abroad for any further study. In 1823, they
financed a trip to Copenhagen so that he could visit the mathematicians
there. However, it turned out that he already knew everything they had
shown him. At a ball in Copenhagen, Abel met Christine Kemp (1804–
1862) who became his fiancée one year later and subsequently followed him
to Norway, where she found a job as a governess. Meanwhile, Abel had
published several papers on topics in advanced calculus in a new scientific
journal founded by one of his professors. He took up his work on quintic
equations again, using a different approach, and eventually he solved the
centuries-old problem, yet in a very surprising way. He proved that there
exists no algebraic solution of a general polynomial equation of degree 5 or
higher; that is, he determined that it is impossible to express the solutions
in terms of the coefficients of the equation—as was done with other high-
er-degree equations. Solutions do exist, but they can be calculated only by
approximation methods; it is, in general, not possible to “solve for x,” if the
equation is of fifth or a higher degree. This important result is now known
as the Abel-Ruffini theorem, since Paolo Ruffini (1765–1824) had pub-
lished an incomplete proof in 1799. In order to do his proof, Abel developed
(independent of Évariste Galois [see chap. 32]) the branch of mathematics
260 M AT H M A K E R S
known today as group theory. There is also a type of group named for Abel;
the abelian group is one that aligns with the commutative property; in other
words, the order of operations is irrelevant for the abelian group.
Abel applied for funding to travel to the centers of mathematics in
France and Germany, but he received only a small stipend to learn the lan-
guages, with a promise that he would then receive a travel grant two years
later. To have an impressive piece to his name in anticipation of his visit
with the great mathematicians in Europe, he published at his own expense
his work on equations of fifth-degree. He wrote the text in French to reach
a larger audience, while at the same time shortening the proof as much as
he could, to save printing costs. He sent the work to several mathemati-
cians on the Continent, including Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), but
the extremely condensed style of his writing made the proof very hard to
read, and so his work did not receive the attention he had hoped for. Having
gained a good knowledge of French and German, Abel felt well prepared
for his trip to Europe, and he wrote a personal letter to the king of Norway
to obtain the travel grant earlier. With a scholarship from the Norwegian
government, he was able to start his journey to the Continent in the fall of
1825. Although the plan was to go to Göttingen to visit Gauss and then to
visit the French Academy of Sciences in Paris (the world’s center of mathe-
matics at that time), Abel first went to Berlin. There, he met August Leopold
Crelle (1780–1855), an engineer and mathematician with good contacts to
the government and who had long been planning to found a German math-
ematics journal to challenge the dominance of the well-established French
journals. Crelle encouraged Abel to write an expanded and more accessible
version of his results on quintic equations, a masterpiece of mathematics he
eagerly wanted to publish in his journal. The first issue of Crelle’s Journal für
die reine und angewandte Mathematik (Journal of Pure and Applied Math-
ematics) appeared in February 1826 and contained seven papers by Abel,
who was also a principal contributor to the following issues. The high qual-
ity and importance of Abel’s papers were essential to establish the journal’s
reputation. Today, Crelle’s journal is still one of the most renowned journals
of mathematics. Abel abandoned his plans to visit Gauss, when he was in-
formed that Gauss didn’t approve of his work. (Yet Gauss had actually never
read Abel’s work on the quintic equation, as it was discovered unopened
after Gauss’s death.)
When Abel came to Paris, he completed a large manuscript, which he
considered to be his most impressive work so far, containing a whole new
Niels Henrik Abel: Norwegian (1802–1829) 261
One year later, Abel was posthumously awarded the Grand Prix of the
French Academy of Sciences for his outstanding achievements in mathe-
matics. After intensive searching, Cauchy finally found Abel’s monumental
“Paris memoir,” which was then first published in 1841; it still stands as a
milestone in the development of mathematics. In his short and tragic life,
Niels Henrik Abel made deep and influential mathematical discoveries.
Several mathematical theorems, equations, and objects bear his name; even
a crater on the moon was named after Abel. When the Norwegian mathe-
matician Sophus Lie (1842–1899) learned that Alfred Nobel’s plans for an-
nual prizes would not include a prize in mathematics, he proposed creating
an Abel Prize for outstanding achievements in mathematics, to be awarded
annually, beginning in 1902. However, with Lie’s death in 1899, the motor
behind these plans was gone and, also for financial reasons, the government
decided to erect an Abel monument instead of funding an Abel Prize. In the
late 1960s, oil exploration in the North Sea started and Norway’s Oil Age
began, turning it into one of the wealthiest countries in the world by the
end of the millennium. With money in abundance from the oil industry
and with the 200th anniversary of Abel’s birth approaching, the Norwegian
government finally established the Abel Prize in 2001. The Abel Prize was
awarded with prize money amounting to 6 million Norwegian kroner (ap-
proximately $750,000). Together with the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize is
viewed as the highest honor a mathematician can receive.
Chapter 32
Évariste Galois:
French (1811–1832)
You might expect the life story of Évariste Galois to be a short one, since he
lived only to age twenty. Yet during these two decades years, he experienced
a number of turbulent events. Before we consider his biography, we should
note that his main contribution to mathematics is an entire field of study
that bears his name—something not particularly common in the field of
mathematics. Galois theory is a part of abstract algebra and draws a con-
nection between two major theories: group theory and field theory. To the
nonmathematician, this explanation might seem meaningless. However, we
will try to show some of the new insights that result from this theory. For
example, Galois’s work allows us to determine solutions to higher-degree
equations using only the four arithmetic operations and extractions of rad-
icals (such as square roots, cube roots, etc.). His work also allows us to de-
termine which regular polygons are constructible using only a straightedge
and compasses, as well as why it is not possible to trisect a general angle
using only a straightedge and compasses. These are just a few of the rather
simple topics that might well have been presented in your secondary-school
curriculum and that owe their solution to Galois’s work.
Let us now consider how this mathematical genius navigated his twenty
years. He was born on October 25, 1811, in Bourg-le-Reine, France, where
in 1814 his father, Nicolas-Gabriel Galois, became mayor of the town. Un-
commonly for the times, his mother, Adélaïde-Marie Demante, was a high-
ly educated lawyer and provided her son home schooling until age twelve,
263
264 M AT H M A K E R S
even though at age ten, Évariste had been offered admission to the College
of Reims. In 1823, he entered the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. There he won first
prize in Latin, but much preferred studying mathematics, which he did in-
tensively at age fourteen. He showed his talent by reading rapidly through
Adrien-Marie Legendre’s Éléments de Géométrie, a book that, in a certain
sense, served as the model for the American high-school geometry course.
At age fifteen, he started to take the theory of equations very seriously. Cu-
riously, his teachers were not impressed with him, or, as some might say,
they felt intimidated by him.
In 1828, he applied to the prestigious École Polytechnique but did not
perform well enough on the oral exams to be accepted. Shortly thereafter,
he applied for admission to the École Normale, an inferior institution, and
was accepted; the examiners seemed to be impressed by him. In 1829, he
Évariste Galois: French (1811–1832) 265
published his first paper on the topic of continued fractions. These are frac-
tions of the form
b
a+
d
c+
f
e+
g +! ;
Figure 32.2. The final page of Galois’s mathematical work, written on the eve of his
death, has as its next to the last line, “déchiffrer tout ce gâchis” (“to decipher all this
mess”). (Letter from Évariste Galois to his friend Auguste Chevalier, May 29, 1832.)
Évariste Galois: French (1811–1832) 267
268
James Joseph Sylvester: English (1814–1897) 269
Ada Lovelace:
English (1815–1852)
272
Ada Lovelace: English (1815–1852) 273
In 1843, Lovelace produced what we consider today the first foray into
computer programming. The story begins in 1841, when Babbage was invited
to give a lecture at the University of Turin to describe his Analytical Engine.
Luigi Menabrea, a mathematician who would eventually become prime min-
ister of Italy, took notes on the lecture and transcribed them in French. In
1843, Babbage’s friend Charles Wheatstone asked Lovelace to translate the
French notes into English as she was fluent in French. She not only translated
the work but also added her own notes about the lecture. One such addi-
tion was her description of an algorithm for the Analytical Engine that could
compute the Bernoulli numbers (a sequence of rational numbers that occur
frequently in number theory—see chap. 22). In so doing, she became the
first person to write an algorithm for a machine to produce more than just a
simple calculation. Lovelace earned the honor of first computer programmer
in the history of mathematics with her achievement. In figure 34.2, we show
a diagram contained in Lovelace’s notes—which, by the way, were far more
voluminous than the mere translation requested of her.
Figure 34.2. Lovelace’s diagram of her algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute the Bernoulli numbers,
which she included with her translation. (From Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles
Babbage by Luigi Menabrea, with notes by Ada Lovelace [London: Richard and John E. Taylor, 1843].)
Ada Lovelace: English (1815–1852) 275
Now that we are familiar with her mathematical achievements, let’s ex-
amine the life of Augusta Ada King Noel, Countess of Lovelace. She was
born on December 10, 1815, in London, England, to her parents, Lady By-
ron (Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness
Byron, nicknamed Annabella) and the famous British poet Lord Byron
(George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron). Unfortunately, a month after
Ada’s birth, Lord Byron separated from his wife; several months later, he left
England forever. In the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: Harold the
Wanderer, Lord Byron mentioned his daughter: “Is thy face like thy moth-
er’s my Fair child! ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?”1 Byron died
in 1824 in Missolonghi, Greece.
Lovelace had an unusual early life. Her mother was truly angry at the
departure of her husband, so Ada grew up never having seen even a picture
of her father. That did not happen until she was twenty years old. Lovelace
was largely reared by her maternal grandmother, Judith Milbanke, and she
suffered a number of childhood illnesses. For example, in 1829, she spent
nearly a year in bed, suffering from a paralysis that evolved from a bout
with the measles. Lovelace was interested in not only mathematics but also
all things mechanical and scientific. For example, she was fascinated by the
notion of flying, which prompted her to write a book titled Flyology, even
though she was still just an adolescent. Her work in Flyology illustrated her
understanding of what would be required for humans to fly like birds, con-
sidering, for instance, the size of wings that humans might need to use in
order to fly. Motivated by her interest in science, Lovelace sought out many
of the top scientists in England. Notable among these was Michael Faraday,
who made major advances in electromagnetism.
In 1834, Lovelace began to attend regular court events, where she
charmed people with her intelligence and her dancing talent. On July 8,
1835, she married William, 8th Baron King; as Lady King, Lovelace entered
into a rather wealthy environment. Over the next four years, she gave birth
to three children, Byron, Anne Isabela, and Ralph Gordon. Since she was
a descendent of Baron Lovelace, in 1838, her husband became the Earl of
Lovelace, and she became the Countess of Lovelace. Her mother continued
to stay involved with the family; she hired tutors to support the three chil-
dren and ensured that her daughter remained morally correct.
Perhaps it was Ada Lovelace’s interest in mathematics, which spurred
her later love of gambling. In the late 1840s, betting on horses resulted in
276 M AT H M A K E R S
her loss of over £3,000. In 1851, she tried to develop a mathematical model
to guide her to successful bets, but this was a total financial disaster. De-
spite these struggles, Lovelace is lauded to this day for her insight into the
potential of Babbage’s Analytical Engine to bring further developments in
mathematics beyond merely doing arithmetic calculations. In her notes to
the translation of Babbage’s lecture, she included the following:
Again, it [the Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides
number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations
Ada Lovelace: English (1815–1852) 277
These lines from her notes offer a good indication of how her vision
reached far into the future.
On November 27, 1852, at the age of thirty-six, Lady Ada Lovelace died
from uterine cancer. During her fatal illness, she was comforted and cared
for by her mother, Annabella. One of the many famous people whom Love-
lace met during her life was the famous author Charles Dickens. In August
1852, Dickens visited his bedridden friend and, at her request, read her a
well-known scene from his 1848 novel, Dombey and Son, in which a six-
year-old boy dies. As she wished, Lady Ada Lovelace was buried next to her
father, Lord Byron, inside the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall,
England.
Through the twentieth century, Lovelace has been remembered through
books (The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling), plays
(Childe Byron, by Romulus Linney), and films (Conceiving Ada, directed by
Lynn Hershman Leeson). However, it should be noted that Lovelace’s fame
was brought into the fore in 1953, when her notes were republished in the
book Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines,
by B. V. Bowden. Today, in the United Kingdom, the second Tuesday of
October is designated as Lady Ada Lovelace Day. As recently as 1980, the
278 M AT H M A K E R S
George Boole:
English (1815–1864)
279
280 M AT H M A K E R S
Theories of Logic and Probabilities. This was the basis of what later became
known as Boolean algebra, which was based on simply two quantities: true
or false, or 1 or 0. No other symbols are used in Boolean algebra aside from
1 and 0.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the basics of Boolean algebra. First,
there is the addition using only the two symbols available, 1 and 0:
0+0=0
0+1=1
1+0=1
1+1=1
This is analogous to the “or” function in logic, where the 1 can replace
“true” and the 0 can replace “false.” That is, if either of the two elements
being added is a 1, then the sum is 1.
George Boole: English (1815–1864) 281
Figure 35.2.
0×0=0
0×1=0
1×0=0
1×1=1
Figure 35.3.
George Boole: English (1815–1864) 283
Bernhard Riemann:
German (1826–1866)
284
Bernhard Riemann: German (1826–1866) 285
on it, achieving several important new results and solving open problems
related to the representation of functions by trigonometric series (these
are infinite sums of sine and cosine functions with different wavelengths
and amplitudes). He had also introduced a mathematically rigorous con-
cept for the integral of discontinuous functions, a notion that would later
be called the Riemann integral. Having already earned some reputation as
a mathematician, the only missing step necessary to complete his habil-
itation was to give a public lecture before the habilitation committee. By
the rules of the university, Riemann had to submit titles of three different
lectures belonging to different areas of mathematics, from which the facul-
ty of philosophy was to choose one. Riemann had already worked out the
details of two of the three topics, but not for the third one, titled “Über die
Hypothesen, die der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen” (On the hypotheses that
lie on the foundations of geometry). Although, or perhaps because, it was
the topic least related to Riemann’s prior work and interests, it was chosen
by the faculty, more precisely by Carl Friedrich Gauss, professor at Göttin-
gen and also Riemann’s doctoral thesis supervisor. Riemann’s habilitation
lecture, on which he worked for several months, became a famous classic
286 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 36.3.
36.3 has two right angles at the vertices A and B, already yielding 180 de-
grees together, plus the angle at vertex C.
To see that the angle sum can get arbitrarily close to 540 degrees, keep
points A and C fixed and move point B eastward along the equator, around
the sphere until it almost touches point A. Then we still have right angles at
A and B, but the angle at vertex C will get arbitrarily close to 360 degrees,
and hence the sum of all three angles can be arbitrarily close to 540 degrees.
Thus, we have convinced ourselves that on the surface of a sphere, it is not
true that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, nor is it true that
parallel lines never intersect. Both statements are rather obvious, if we look
at the sphere as a two-dimensional surface in three-dimensional space; they
can also be turned around—that is, if we find that the sum of the angles of a
triangle is not 180 degrees, then the surface on which this triangle is drawn
must be curved. This implies that creatures living in a two-dimensional
space can, at least in principle, find out whether their space is curved. Rie-
mann’s ingenuity was to realize that it is not only possible to determine the
Bernhard Riemann: German (1826–1866) 291
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 inde-
pendent reality.
Georg Cantor:
German (1845–1918)
293
294 M AT H M A K E R S
the theory that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare, which remained the most
popular of the alternative-authorship theories until the early twentieth cen-
tury. Cantor had begun an intense study of Elizabethan literature in order
to distract him from mathematics after he had suffered a severe personal
crisis. His crisis was triggered by the strong criticism and rejection of his
mathematical work by some of the most distinguished mathematicians of
his time. The French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) referred
to Cantor’s ideas as a “grave disease” infecting the discipline of mathematics,
and the German mathematician Leopold Kronecker (1823–1891) attacked
Cantor even personally, calling him a “scientific charlatan” and a “corrupter
of youth.” What was so controversial about Cantor’s work?
Georg Cantor was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 3, 1845,
and moved with his family to Germany at age 11; throughout his school
years he showed outstanding skills in mathematics and in 1860 he grad-
uated from high school with distinction. He then studied mathematics at
the Swiss Federal Polytechnic and at the University of Berlin, receiving his
Georg Cantor: German (1845–1918) 295
“uncountable.”
1. Set A has more elements An B.
than set uncountable set is a set that contains too many elem
2. Set A has fewer elements than
is, therefore, set B. than the set of natural numbers, ℕ.
“larger”
3. Both sets A and B contain the same number of elements.
Suppose somebody claims to have found a procedure to enume
Is there any way to find out which of these statements is true without
numbers smaller than 1 (this is only a subset of all real numbers). All
actually counting the elements of A and B? Yes, there is! We just have to
pair each member of A withwitha acorresponding member
zero and a decimal point, of B, for instance,
followed by sequence of d
by an infinite
drawing a line from one to the other (see fig. 37.3).
infinite
If we manage to do this sequence
for all elementsof zeros whenever
of A and B andwe noencounter
elementsa are
number with a fin
omitted from either set, then
may askfor him
eachtomember of A number
tell you which there must beinexactly
is first his list, which numbe
one “partner” element in B, and thus both sets must contain the same num-
Assume hypothetically
ber of elements. In mathematics, a one-to-one
this is called that correspondence
you write down each number, one after th
Figure 37.2.
Figure 37.3.
between the elements of the two sets. Although this method of comparing
sets is, in fact, very old, since it is actually nothing other than “counting
with fingers,” Cantor was the first to recognize that this strategy can also be
applied to infinite sets.
Cantor’s notion of a one-to-one correspondence enables us to com-
pare two infinite sets, since we don’t have to actually count the number
of elements in each of the sets separately, and then compare the numbers.
We just need to find out whether we can establish a one-to-one correspon-
dence between the elements of the two sets. Above we tried to convince
you that there are many more rational numbers (or fractions) than integers
and more integers than natural numbers. Astonishingly, this is wrong. It is
Georg Cantor: German (1845–1918) 297
Figure 37.4.
298 M AT H M A K E R S
73
For instance, the fraction 111 will be in the table at the intersection of
the 73rd row and the 111th column. Now we want to put all positive frac-
tions in a waiting line. Of course, this waiting line will never end, since
the table never ends either; but that doesn’t matter. We only have to make
sure that every fraction will be included. To achieve this, Cantor proposed
1
a clever “diagonal” counting scheme: We start at 1 = 1 and draw an arrow
to the right, getting to 1 . From here we move on diagonally downward to
2 2
= 2 , then straight downward to 3 = 3 , then diagonally upward, arriving at
1 1
1 (we skipped 2 = 1 because it has already been counted). Now the whole
3 2
procedure is repeated—that is, “one to the right and diagonally downward
until we reach the first column, then straight down and diagonally upward.”
Whenever we encounter a fraction that is equivalent to one that has already
gotten a number, we skip it (these are the bypassed fractions in fig. 37.4).
To see why a diagonal counting scheme is essential, the following illus-
tration might be helpful: Suppose you have a robotic lawnmower and the
infinite table of fractions in figure 37.4 defines the area to be mowed. How
should the lawnmower move in order to reach every piece of this infinite
lawn? Since the infinite lawn has only one corner, it must start there and
work its way in diagonal serpentines away from that corner—following
the infinite waiting line drawn in figure 37.4. By using Cantor’s clever
diagonal scheme, we manage to put all fractions in a waiting line without
omitting any one of them. We have, therefore, established a one-to-one
correspondence between all positive fractions and the natural numbers:
1
The first fraction is 1 , the second fraction is 2 , the third one is 2 = 2 , the
1 1
fourth
So far we have one is 13the
omitted , and sofractions,
= 3 negative on (see fig, 37.4).
but we can Every fraction
now simply slip gets
each anegative
numberfraction
given by its position in the waiting line. So far we have omitted the negative
after the corresponding positive one in the line, and place the zero at the very first position.
fractions, but we can now simply slip each negative fraction after the corre-
Because sponding
we can pairpositive one innumber
each rational the line,
withand place the
a natural zero and
number, at the very firstareposi-
no numbers omitted
tion. Because we can pair each rational number with a natural number, and
from either set, there are
no numbers must be just as
omitted many
from natural
either set,numbers
there mustas there are rational
be just as many numbers.
naturalA set
numbers as there are rational numbers. A set whose members can be put in
whose members can be put in a waiting line without missing any one of its elements is called a
a waiting line without missing any one of its elements is called a countable
set.set.
countable So SoCantor
Cantorproved that ℚ isiscountable,
provedthat countable,a very
a very surprising
surprising result!
result!
Encouraged by this result, we might ask whether it is also possible to
Encouraged by this result, we might ask whether it is also possible to put the real
put the real numbers (that is, the rational and the irrational numbers) into a
numbers one-to-one
(that is, thecorrespondence with thenumbers)
rational and the irrational natural numbers. Cantor
into a one-to-one showed that with
correspondence
this is impossible, since no matter how cleverly we try to arrange the real
the natural numbers. Cantor showed that this is impossible, since no matter how cleverly we try
to arrange the real numbers to put them in a waiting line, there will always be some numbers left
over. To be precise, for any proposed list or counting procedure of all real numbers, we can
Georg Cantor: German (1845–1918) 299
numbers to put them in a waiting line, there will always be some numbers
left over. To be precise, for any proposed list or counting procedure of all
real numbers, we can always construct a number that cannot be included in
this list. Real numbers can have infinite and nonrepeating sequences after
the decimal point. It is this property that makes them “uncountable.” An
uncountable set is a set that contains too many elements to be countable
and is, therefore, “larger” than the set of natural numbers, N =. {1, 2, 3, ...}
Suppose somebody claims to have found a procedure to enumerate
all positive real numbers smaller than 1 (this is only a subset of all real
numbers). All such numbers will start with a zero and a decimal point, fol-
lowed by an infinite sequence of digits, if we append an infinite sequence
of zeros whenever we encounter a number with a finite fractional part. You
may ask him to tell you which number is first in his list, which number is
second, and so on. Assume hypothetically that you write down each num-
ber, one after the other, thereby producing an infinite list of numbers with
infinite fractional parts. We show that we can always write down a number
between 0 and 1 that is not a member of his list, implying that his counting
scheme does not include all real numbers. Our “magic number” must of
course start with a zero and a decimal point. We obtain the first digit after
the decimal point by looking up the first digit after the decimal point of
the first number in his list and then write down the next-largest digit (for
example, if we encounter 0, we write down 1, if we encounter 1, we write
down 2, etc.) or, if the digit is 9, then we write down a 0. This will be the
first digit after the decimal point of our “magic” number. As the next digit,
we take the second digit after the decimal point of the second number in
the list, change it according to our replacement scheme, and so on. By con-
struction, our magic number differs from all numbers in the list, because it
was constructed in a manner that its digit at position n does not coincide
with the corresponding digit of the nth number in the list. It must be dif-
ferent from the first number in the list, because its first digit after the deci-
mal point is different. It must also be different from the second number in
the list, because its second digit after the decimal point is different. It must
be different from the third number in the list, because its third digit after
the decimal point is different, and so on. Therefore, this number cannot
occur in the enumeration! This proof is now known as Cantor’s diagonal
argument, and the construction of a “diagonal sequence” from an infinite
set of sequences became an important technique that is frequently used in
mathematical proofs.
300 M AT H M A K E R S
Because we can pair each rational number with a natural number, and no numbers are omitted
whose members can be put in a waiting line without missing any one of its elements is called a
fully recognized. Cantor was ahead of his time. He had shown that the set
countable set.ofSorational numbers,
Cantor proved that ℚ ,isiscountable,
not larger thansurprising
a very the set of natural numbers, N =, {1, 2, 3, ...}
result!
which is a totally counterintuitive fact. Although this statement seems to
Encouraged by this result, we might ask whether it is also possible to put the real
contradict common sense, its proof is actually rather simple and not very
numbers (thatdifficult to follow.
is, the rational and The same is true
the irrational for the
numbers) intoproof of the set
a one-to-one of real numbers,
correspondence with
R , being essentially larger than N = , showing
{1, 2, 3, that
...} there exist mathematical
the natural numbers.
infinitesCantor showedsizes.
of different that this
Thatisthese
impossible, since no matter
very surprising how cleverly results
and unexpected we try
can be found among the most innocent structures such as the natural, ratio-
to arrange the real numbers to put them in a waiting line, there will always be some numbers left
nal, and real numbers is one facet of the beauty of mathematics.
over. To be precise, Asfor
oneanyofproposed
the mostlistdistinguished foreign scholars,
or counting procedure Cantor was
of all real numbers, invited
we can
in 1911 to attend the 500th anniversary of the founding of the University
always construct a number that cannot be included in this list. Real numbers can have infinite
of St Andrews in Scotland. He was largely motivated to go so that he could
meetsequences
and nonrepeating BertrandafterRussell, who point.
the decimal had recently published
It is this property that his
makes themPrincipia
book
Mathematica, where he frequently cited Cantor’s work. Unfortunately, that
“uncountable.” An uncountable
meeting never cameset is
toapass.
set that
Incontains
1912, hetoowas many elements
awarded antohonorary
be countable and
doctor-
is, therefore, ate fromthan
“larger” the the
University of Stnumbers,
set of natural Andrews, ℕ. but due to illness he was unable to
accept the degree in person. Cantor retired in 1913, living in poverty and in
ill health.
Suppose somebody In 1917
claimsheto was
haveliving
found in a sanatorium
a procedure in Halle,
to enumerate all Germany,
positive realmuch
against his will and continuously asking to be released. Cantor’s last years
numbers smaller than 1 (this is only a subset of all real numbers). All such numbers will start
were plagued with illness and he died at the sanatorium of a heart attack on
with a zero andJanuary 6, 1918.
a decimal point, followed by an infinite sequence of digits, if we append an
infinite sequence of zeros whenever we encounter a number with a finite fractional part. You
may ask him to tell you which number is first in his list, which number is second, and so on.
Assume hypothetically that you write down each number, one after the other, thereby producing
an infinite list of numbers with infinite fractional parts. We show that we can always write down
a number between 0 and 1 that is not a member of his list, implying that his counting scheme
24
Chapter 38
Sofia Kovalevskaya:
Russian (1850–1891)
In every year since 1982, more women than men have earned bachelor’s
degrees in the United States. In every year since 2009, women have also
earned a majority of doctoral degrees. But women did not always have
equal opportunities when it came to higher education. The preference to
males over females in education has been a marked feature since ancient
societies. It wasn’t until the mid to late nineteenth century that women’s
access to universities became widespread in the United States, largely as a
result of the pressure produced by movements for women’s rights. While
men are now earning a minority of college degrees at all college levels, there
is still male privilege to be found in academia; women are more likely to be
found in lower-ranking academic positions. In 2015, women represented
approximately half of assistant professors and associate professors in the
United States but accounted for only a third of the full professors’ ranks. In
mathematics, the gap is even bigger: In 2015, women held only 15 percent
of tenure-track positions in mathematics. Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891)
was a pioneer for women in mathematics, at a time when mathematics
was an almost exclusively male-dominated field around the world, and it
was widely believed that women had a natural disability for this subject.
Furthermore, it was believed that if a woman undertook rigorous “brain
work” such as mathematics, energy could be diverted from her reproductive
system, threatening fertility and general well-being. Kovalevskaya was the
first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics
302
Sofia Kovalevskaya: Russian (1850–1891) 303
the family moved to Palibino, her father’s family estate in the Vitebsk prov-
ince. In the restoration of the estate, there was not enough wallpaper for
Sofia’s nursery and so the walls were papered with pages found in the attic.
These were in fact notes of the Ukrainian mathematician Ostrogradski’s
(1801–1862) lectures on differential and integral analysis, left over from her
father’s student days. Sofia was curious about the mathematical notions and
formulas on the wall in her room and they came to life when she overheard
her uncle, an autodidact who read a lot of mathematics books, mention
some of the terms she had seen on the wall. Sofia later wrote the following
in her autobiography:
“The meaning of these concepts I naturally could not yet grasp, but
they acted on my imagination, instilling in me a reverence for mathematics
as an exalted and mysterious science, which opens up to its initiates a new
world of wonders, inaccessible to ordinary mortals.”
Her uncle fed her interest in mathematics and took the time to discuss
the mathematical topics he was reading about with her. While Sofia was im-
mediately fascinated with the concepts and ideas used in calculus, she was at
first at little bored by her lessons in elementary geometry and algebra, which
were provided by a private tutor. However, her attraction to mathematics in
general began to grow as they moved on to more advanced material. In fact,
it grew so strongly that her father decided to stop her mathematics lessons,
but she continued to study mathematics on her own. At the age of fifteen,
she read a physics book written by her neighbor Professor Tyrtov. When
he visited the family, he realized that she had correctly interpreted some of
the trigonometric formulas in the chapter on optics, without having been
tutored in trigonometry. She had developed completely on her own some
explanations of concepts such as the trigonometric sine function. Recog-
nizing her mathematical talent, Tyrtov took quite some effort in trying to
convince her father to let her study more advanced mathematics. He finally
succeeded, and Sofia received private tutoring in calculus in St. Petersburg,
where her family stayed most of the winter of 1866–1867. There she also
met the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), whom she ad-
mired. At that time, women in Russia, as well as in many other countries,
were not allowed to attend lectures at the university, not even as guests. To
continue her studies, Sofia would have to go abroad. However, traveling
was also not an easy task, because women had no passports and needed
the written permission of their father or husband to cross the border. Sofia
entered into a marriage of convenience with Vladimir Kovalevsky, a young
Sofia Kovalevskaya: Russian (1850–1891) 305
paleontology student, book publisher, and political radical, who was the
first to translate and publish into Russian the works of Charles Darwin. The
couple remained in St. Petersburg for only a few months and then went to
Heidelberg, after a short stay in Vienna. Women could not matriculate at
the University of Heidelberg, but Kovalevskaya persuaded the authorities
to let her study there. In 1869, she was admitted as the university’s first
female student, although not with an official status, and with the condition
that she would have to obtain the permission from each of her lecturers
separately. She studied mathematics with Leo Koenigsberger (1837–1921)
and, at his suggestion, moved to Berlin to continue her studies with Karl
Weierstrass (1815–1897), one of the most famous mathematicians at that
time. In spite of letters of recommendation from her professors in Heidel-
berg, Weierstrass wanted to assess her mathematical abilities personally. He
gave her a difficult problem to solve, and when she presented her solution
one week later, he was so impressed that he would not only accept her as his
student, but also try to support her work. However, his advocacy was not
enough for the university administration to allow her to attend his lectures.
Over the next three years, therefore, Weierstrass taught her the content of
his lectures privately, which actually turned the university’s denial to her
advantage; Kovalevskaya later wrote, “These studies had the deepest possi-
ble influence on my entire career in mathematics. They determined finally
and irrevocably the direction I was to follow in my later scientific work: all
my work has been done precisely in the spirit of Weierstrass.”
By 1874, Kovalevskaya had completed three papers—on partial
differential equations, on the dynamics of Saturn’s rings, and on elliptic
integrals—each of which was considered worthy of a doctorate by
Weierstrass; with his support, she was granted her doctorate, summa cum
laude, from Göttingen University. Kovalevskaya thereby became the first
woman to have been awarded a doctorate at a European university. The
first of the three papers was published in Crelle’s Journal (one of the leading
mathematics journals) in 1875. It contains what is now commonly known
as the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem, which proves the existence of local
solutions of analytic partial differential equations under suitably defined
initial conditions. The French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy
(1789–1857) had proved a special case in 1842, but the full result is due
to Sofia Kovalevskaya. Because the meaning of this theorem cannot be
accurately explained without assuming familiarity with advanced calculus,
we will instead try to convey at least a vague idea of what it says by discussing
306 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 38.2.
Sofia Kovalevskaya: Russian (1850–1891) 307
us, though, how to obtain the solution, but tells us under which conditions
a unique solution exists. This is important, because if we know that there is
a unique solution, we can use it in an abstract sense to investigate its prop-
erties. In fact, for many partial differential equations it is not possible to cal-
culate the solution explicitly, but one can find out a lot about its properties
by assuming that it exists and then drawing conclusions from the equation
it satisfies (for example, that the vibration of the string will decrease with
time). This procedure of drawing conclusions about an object that we can-
not calculate is justified by the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya theorem.
After her doctorate, Kovalevskaya went back to Russia, where she want-
ed to teach mathematics. However, women were not admitted to the re-
quired teacher certification examination, so the best job she was offered was
teaching arithmetic in girls’ elementary schools. With a bit of frustration,
she completely turned away from mathematics, and she and her husband
tried to become a conventional married couple. In 1878, their daughter,
Sofia (called “Fufa”), was born. After almost two years that were devoted to
raising her daughter, Kovalevskaya decided to resume her work in mathe-
matics. Her husband, Vladimir, never got an academic position because of
his radical beliefs, and their attempts to support themselves with real estate
development failed, leading them to severe financial problems. Since Sofia
still couldn’t find an appropriate teaching position, she would now focus
her energy on research. She started her endeavor by translating her six-
year-old doctoral dissertation (which was written in German) into Russian
and in 1880 presented the results at a scientific conference in Russia. In the
same year, she moved with her husband and daughter to Moscow, where
she visited seminars of the Moscow Mathematical Society. Her fascination
for mathematics continued to grow ever stronger, whereupon, in 1881, she
left her husband and went with her daughter to Berlin to continue with her
research. She immersed herself in mathematical work and sent her daugh-
ter with a governess back to Russia, to her good friend Julija Lermontowa.
In the meantime, Vladimir got involved with an oil company, which ruined
him financially. He had always suffered severe mood swings, and in 1883,
he committed suicide.
At that time, it was almost impossible for women to obtain a research
position at a university. However, thanks to the Swedish mathematician
Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1846–1927), who had known Kovalevskaya as a fel-
low student of Weierstrass, Kovalevskaya obtained a position as privat-do-
cent at Stockholm University. In 1884, she was appointed to a five-year
308 M AT H M A K E R S
Giuseppe Peano:
Italian (1858–1932)
If you have ever wondered where the symbols used in set theory came from,
such as a symbol for union ( ) and for intersection ( ), then you need
look no further than the famous Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano,
who was a prolific writer, and by many considered one of the founders of
mathematical logic and set theory. His work involving the understanding
of the characteristics of our natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, . . .) has remained
with us through his Peano axioms, which we will consider after we take a
quick look at his life story.
Giuseppe Peano was born on a farm in Spinetta, Piedmont, Italy, on
August 27, 1858, where his parents, Bartolomeo Peano and Rosa Cavallo,
worked the farm and which provided a three-mile walk for Giuseppe to his
school. His uncle noticed that young Giuseppe was a very talented child
and took him to Turin to begin his secondary schooling in 1870. By 1876,
he enrolled at the University of Turin and graduated at the top of his class
in 1880. He stayed at the university after graduation and eventually got to
a position where he was the faculty member assigned to teaching calculus,
apparently a significant honor at that time. His first written work was a
textbook on calculus, which he published in 1848, which was then followed
by a book on mathematical logic that has made him famous to this day; it
was in this book that he introduced the modern symbols we use in studying
sets, such as symbols for intersection and union, as mentioned above.
In 1887, Peano married Carola Crosio, during a time when he was also
teaching at the Royal Military Academy, where he was later promoted to
309
310 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 39.2. Giuseppe Peano and his wife Carola Crosio in 1887.
Giuseppe Peano: Italian (1858–1932) 311
professor first-class. That was the time, in 1889, when he published his fa-
mous Peano axioms, which allow us to prove many relationships involving
the natural numbers. As we mentioned earlier, Peano was a very prolif-
ic writer. The journal Rivista di Mathematica, which he founded, had its
first publication in 1891. That same year he started a “Formulario Project,”
which was a compilation of all the known theorems and formulas used in
mathematics; however, in this book he introduced his own notation. This
led to some complications in the printing process, since he wanted all for-
mulas to be printed on one line. As a result, he purchased his own printing
press to ensure that this requirement was held firm.
In Paris, at the Second International Congress of Mathematicians in
1900, he met the famous British mathematician and logician Bertrand Rus-
sell (1872–1970), who was so impressed with his Formulario Project and
the innovative logical symbols used therein that he left the conference ear-
lier than planned just so he could read the book sooner. Russell then used
Peano’s logic notation in his later writings.
In 1901, when Peano was at the peak of his career, presenting at confer-
ences and teaching calculus, differential equations, and vector analysis, he
was also overly involved with his Formulario Project, so much so that his
teaching began to weaken, and he was dismissed from the Royal Military
Academy. However, he did retain his position at the University of Turin.
It is not uncommon for brilliant people to do things that are sometimes
extraordinary or unusual. In 1903, Peano began to write in a form of Latin
that he called Latino sine Flexione, which was later referred to as Interlingua
and was based on a synthesis of Latin, German, English, and French
vocabularies—however, with a very simplified type of grammar, removing
all irregular forms. He did give speeches in this form of Latin and it was
seen as a new language, one that served an international purpose.
Continuous work on the Formulario Project led to his publishing the
fifth edition titled Formulario Mathematico in 1908. By this time the collec-
tion contained 4,200 theorems and formulas, along with justifications and
proofs.
By 1910, Peano began to concentrate his efforts on writing mathemat-
ics texts for the secondary schools as well as a dictionary of mathematics.
He also dabbled with international language issues. He continued to pub-
lish and to teach, eventually moving from infinitesimal calculus to comple-
mentary mathematics, which he felt better suited his style of mathematical
thinking. He continued to teach at the University of Turin until he died of a
heart attack in Turin on April 20, 1932.
312 M AT H M A K E R S
The popular legacy that Peano has left for us are the Peano axioms,
which are as follows:
This time we will assume that the theorem is true for some value of n,
such as k:
S k = 1+ 3+ 5+ 7 +!+ (2k −1) = k 2 . We must now prove that if this theo-
rem is true for n = k, it must also be true for the next consecutive value of
n, which is n = k + 1. To do that we need to add the next odd integer (2k
+ 1) to both sides of the above equation:
S k + (2k +1) = 1+ 3+ 5+ 7 +!+ (2k −1) + (2k +1) = k 2 + (2k +1) .
We then get S k+1 = k 2 + 2k +1 = (k +1)2 .
Thus, we have proved that since the theorem was true for n = 1, and
then we assumed it was true for n = k, and then showed it was true for the
successor—namely, n = k + 1, we can conclude that it is true for all natural
numbers. This is the very important legacy developed by Giuseppe Peano.
Chapter 40
David Hilbert:
German (1862–1943)
313
314 M AT H M A K E R S
sides of equal length) and then “prove” it is actually isosceles (i.e., a triangle
with two sides of equal length). Consider the scalene triangle ABC, where
we then draw the bisector of angle C and the perpendicular bisector of AB.
From their point of intersection, G, draw perpendiculars to AC and CB,
meeting them at points D and F, respectively. Depending on the shape of
the scalene triangle drawn, we could now have four possibilities meeting
the above description for the various scalene triangles: One possible config-
uration is shown in figure 40.1, where CG and GE meet inside the triangle
at point G.
Another configuration is shown in figure 40.2, where CG and GE meet
on side AB. (Points E and G coincide.)
A third configuration is shown in figure 40.3, where CG and GE meet
outside the triangle (in G), but the perpendiculars GD and GF intersect the
segments AC and CB (at points D and F, respectively).
Our fourth configuration is shown in figure 40.4, where CG and GE
meet outside the triangle, but the perpendiculars GD and GF intersect the
extensions of the sides AC and CB outside the triangle (in points D and F
respectively).
The “proof ” of the mistake or fallacy can be done with any of the
above figures. Follow along and see if the mistake shows itself without
Figure 40.1.
David Hilbert: German (1862–1943) 315
Figure 40.2.
Figure 40.3.
316 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 40.4.
Figure 40.5.
between the vertices, while the other will not. We can “blame” this mistake
on Euclid’s neglect of the concept of betweenness.
Begin by considering the circumcircle of triangle ABC (fig. 40.5). The
bisector of angle ACB must contain the midpoint, M, of arc AB (because
angles ACM and BCM are congruent inscribed angles). The perpendicular
bisector of AB must bisect arc AB, and therefore, pass through M. Thus, the
bisector of angle ACB and the perpendicular bisector of AB intersect on the
circumscribed circle, which is outside the triangle at M (or G). This elimi-
nates the possibilities we used in figures 40.1 and 40.2.
Now consider the inscribed quadrilateral ACBG. Since the opposite
angles of an inscribed (or cyclic) quadrilateral are supplementary, CAG +
CBG = 180°. If angles CAG and CBG were right angles, then CG would be
a diameter and triangle ABC would be isosceles. Therefore, since triangle
ABC is scalene, angles CAG and CBG are not right angles. In this case one
must be acute and the other obtuse. Suppose angle CBG is acute and angle
CAG is obtuse. Then in triangle CBG the altitude on CB must be inside the
triangle, while in obtuse triangle CAG, the altitude on AC must be outside
318 M AT H M A K E R S
the triangle. The fact that one and only one of the perpendiculars intersects
a side of the triangle between the vertices destroys the fallacious “proof.”
This demonstration hinges on the definition of betweenness, a concept not
available to Euclid, but made clear through Hilbert’s axioms.
David Hilbert was born on January 23, 1862, in Königsberg, Prussia,
which today is Kaliningrad, Russia, but then a German city. His father, Otto
Hilbert, was a city judge and his mother, Maria Hilbert, pursued philosophy
and astronomy. With this rearing, David Hilbert, as a child, already showed
a special gift for mathematics and an interest in languages. In 1872, he en-
tered the Friedrichs Kolleg Gymnasium, and seven years later graduated
from the Wilhelm Gymnasium. The following year, in 1880, he enrolled in
the University of Königsberg to study mathematics. There he befriended a
colleague mathematician, Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909), who in 1882
returned from Berlin to Königsberg, where he had been previously study-
ing. Minkowski became Hilbert’s dearest lifelong friend. In 1884, Hilbert
and Minkowski collaborated with a newly arrived professor from Göttin-
gen, Adolf Hurwitz (1859–1919). This three-way friendship and collabo-
ration had a lasting effect on their professional careers. Upon receiving his
doctorate in 1885, Hilbert began to prepare for the state examination to
qualify for a teaching position at a gymnasium. Of course, he passed the
examination. During this time, he also attended courses on plane geometry
David Hilbert: German (1862–1943) 319
and spherical geometry. Hurwitz suggested that he spend the winter of that
year at the University of Leipzig, specifically to attend the lectures of the
well-known German mathematician Felix Klein (1849–1925). Klein then
suggested that he visit Paris, to establish contact with several famous math-
ematicians, which he did successfully, even though it was somewhat strenu-
ous for his French colleagues to speak German, since Hilbert was unable to
speak French. Soon thereafter, he returned to the University of Königsberg
to be a member of the faculty from 1886 until 1895, being appointed to the
full professorship in 1893.
On October 12, 1892, Hilbert married his second cousin, Käthe Je-
rosch. They had one son, Franz, who was born on August 11, 1893. Hilbert’s
professional career moved along with the strong support of Felix Klein, who
arranged for Hilbert to be appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Uni-
versity of Göttingen, which was a center for many famous mathematicians
such as Carl Friedrich Gauss (see chap. 29), Bernhard Riemann (see chap.
36), and Emmy Noether (see chap. 42), to name just a few. Hilbert spent the
rest of his professional life at the University of Göttingen, where he super-
vised 69 doctoral students, many of whom became famous mathematicians
in their own right. Hilbert also showed an intense interest in mathemati-
cal physics, which built a strong physics component at the university, and
which ultimately showed its significance in having generated three Nobel
laureates in physics: Max von Laue (1914), James Franck (1925), and Wer-
ner Heisenberg (1932).
In 1899, Hilbert published a book titled Foundations of Geometry,
where he proposed a set of axioms that were intended to replace those that
Euclid made famous in his Elements. Over the next several years, the book
was translated into several languages. This set a new trend of a modern ax-
iomatic method. One newly introduced concept was that of betweenness,
as we mentioned earlier.
In the Appendix (see page 401), we provide a summary of Hilbert’s Ax-
ioms, but note that line segments, angles, and triangles may each be defined
in terms of points and straight lines, using the relations of betweenness and
containment. All points, straight lines, and planes in the following axioms
are distinct, unless otherwise stated. Hilbert’s axioms essentially unified
plane geometry and solid geometry into a single system.
In 1900, at the Second International Congress of Mathematicians in Par-
is,1 Hilbert proposed his famous 23 unsolved problems, which were con-
sidered the most challenging problems ever produced by a mathematician.
320 M AT H M A K E R S
spaces provided the basis for important contributions to physics over the
following decades and may still offer one of the best mathematical formu-
lations of quantum mechanics. We show an example of a Hilbert algorithm
for space-filling curves in figure 40.7.4
The mid-1930s was also the time when Hilbert and the Swiss mathema-
tician Paul Bernays (1888–1977) coauthored the two-volume work Foun-
dations of Mathematics, which presented fundamental mathematical ideas
and introduced a collection of axiomatic systems, which formalized natural
numbers and their subsets, and which offered an alternative to axiomatic
set theory.
Hilbert’s legacy lives on today because of the many innovations he made
in a variety of fields of mathematics. This is evidenced by the many mathe-
matical concepts that still carry his name, such as Hilbert Number, Hilbert
Matrix, Einstein–Hilbert Equations, Hilbert’s Axioms, Hilbert System, Hil-
bert Polynomial, Hilbert Function, Hilbert Curves, and many others.
Figure 40.7.
Chapter 41
G. H. Hardy:
English (1877–1947)
322
G. H. Hardy: English (1877–1947) 323
his parents, Hardy showed early signs of mathematical talent when at the age
of two he was able to write the sequence of numbers from 1 to 1,000,000. He
went to school in his hometown up to age 12, and in 1889 won a scholarship
to Winchester College, Winchester, England. This college was considered
at the time to offer the best training in mathematics in England; however,
Hardy found nothing enjoyable there beyond the academic training. Hardy
was relatively frail and shy as compared to his colleagues and found beat-
ing them in mathematics gave him some posture. In 1896, Hardy entered
Trinity College, Cambridge University on a scholarship. At the start he was
assigned to Robert Rumsey Webb (1850–1936) as his coach, who seemed
more interested in showing him how to pass examinations than to make the
subject of mathematics interesting and exciting. As he was contemplating
a change of subject interest to history, he had the good fortune of having a
new coach, A. E. H. Love, who guided him to read material that once again
rekindled his interest in mathematics. In later years, Hardy claims that Ca-
mille Jordan’s (1838–1922) book, Cours d’analyse, had a lasting effect on
him and defined for him what mathematics really meant.
324 M AT H M A K E R S
sum of the at most k natural numbers to the power of n. For example, every
natural number is the sum of at most 4 squares, 9 cubes, or 19 fourth pow-
ers. The problem was posed by the British mathematician Edward Waring
(1736–1798) in 1770 and was proved to be true by David Hilbert in 1909. It
served as the basis for further investigations by Hardy and Littlewood, who
further made a number of conjectures.
One of their conjectures dealt with twin prime numbers, which are
prime-number pairs that are consecutive odd prime numbers, for example,
5 and 7 are twin primes, as are 41 and 43. They took this a step further to
investigate sequences of primes with a common difference between them.
Another of their conjectures concerns the number of primes in intervals.
The conjecture states that π (x + y) ≤ π (x) + π ( y) , where π (x) represents the
number of prime numbers less than or equal to the real number x. For ex-
ample, π (2) = 1, since there is only one prime number less than or equal
to 2—namely, 2 itself. Thus, the conjecture implies that π ( y + 2) ≤ 1+ π ( y ) ,
or π ( y + 2) − π ( y ) ≤ 1 , meaning that the number of primes greater than y
and less than or equal to y + 2 is at most 1. This is correct because at most
one of two consecutive numbers can be prime. However, the conjecture
even states that π ( x + y ) − π ( x ) ≤ π ( y ) , which means that the number of
primes greater than π (x) and less than or equal to π ( x + y ) is not larger
than the number of primes between 1 and y. In other words, the number of
primes among n consecutive numbers gets smaller as the starting number
gets larger. Over the next several decades this collaboration between Hardy
and Littlewood was considered one of the major accomplishments in the
field of mathematics. Today there are seven volumes published by Oxford
University Press consisting of Hardy’s collected papers,1 many of which are
collaborations with Littlewood and Ramanujan, as well as with other fa-
mous mathematicians.
By 1913, life began to change for Hardy. He received a letter from the
Indian mathematics enthusiast Srinivasa Ramanujan asking to obtain sup-
port with his studies. Previously, Ramanujan’s efforts to obtain support were
ignored by two other eminent mathematicians, but somehow Hardy recog-
nized the genius from the received correspondence and invited Ramanujan
to visit him at Cambridge, England. This led to an important collaboration
that resulted in five very significant mathematical papers. (See chap. 43
for more about this collaboration.) One example of Hardy’s collaboration
with Ramanujan is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan asymptotic formula,
which has broad applications in physics. This work was based on integer
326 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 41.4. Hardy leading his cricket team onto the field.
him. He also despised having a mirror in his midst, and it is said that when-
ever he entered a hotel room with a mirror, he immediately covered it with
a towel. He was very devoted to his students and expected perfection from
them, yet he felt that one of his greatest contributions to mathematics was
discovering Ramanujan.
Perhaps in closing the biography of Godfrey Harold Hardy it would
be appropriate to consider a quotation from his essay A Mathematician’s
Apology:
Emmy Noether:
German (1882–1935)
You have probably seen an ice skater spinning on the tip of one skate, and
suddenly start spinning dramatically faster as she pulls her limbs closer to
her body. This faster rotation results from a redistribution of mass. You can
make yourself suddenly spin faster while sitting in a rotating desk chair. Sit
in the chair and hold your arms and legs straight out, and have a friend give
you a gentle spin. While you are spinning slowly, quickly pull the masses in
toward your body and notice that you rotate much faster. If you stick out
your arms and legs, you will slow down again. The spinning desk chair is a
demonstration of the “conservation of angular momentum,” which is one of
the fundamental conservation laws in physics. It is similar to the conserva-
tion of linear momentum, which is more familiar to most people. Newton’s
first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in
a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force. Today, we call this obser-
vation the law of conservation of momentum. The linear momentum, p, of
an object with mass m and velocity v is the product mv. It is a conserved
quantity, meaning that its value and direction remain constant as long as no
force is applied. Similarly, a rotating object tends to remain rotating with a
constant angular momentum unless it is acted upon by an outside twisting
force. If an object with mass m rotates with an angular velocity w, then its
angular momentum, L, is the product mwr2, where r is the radius of the cir-
cle that the object traces out. In a closed physical system, the total angular
momentum is conserved, meaning that its value and the axis of rotation
329
330 M AT H M A K E R S
remain constant. If you are sitting in a spinning desk chair with your arms
and legs stretched out, these parts of your body will trace out circles of
certain radii as the chair rotates. If you now pull your arms and legs closer
to your body, the radii of these circles get smaller. But since the total angu-
lar momentum of the spinning chair is conserved—meaning that the value
of the product mwr2 remains constant—a smaller radius implies that the
angular velocity increases. For example, if the radius is halved, w will qua-
druple. Thus, the increase in angular velocity as you pull your arms and legs
to your body is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum.
Note, however, that we have not taken friction into account here. Friction
acts like a force counteracting the rotation; it will gradually make the chair
spin more slowly until it eventually stops. Linear and angular momentum
are not the only quantities in physics satisfying conservation laws; other
examples include energy and mass. Conservation laws have always been
very important in physics, yet they often appeared somewhat miraculously
languages as well. In 1903, she passed the entrance examination that would
have allowed a male student to enter any university. She went to the Uni-
versity of Göttingen, which was the leading place for mathematical research
in Germany at that time. While in Göttingen, she attended lectures by Karl
Schwarzschild, Otto Blumenthal, David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Hermann
Minkowski. Again, she was only allowed to audit lectures as a guest, with-
out being officially enrolled. After one semester at Göttingen, in 1904, she
returned to Erlangen, when the university finally allowed women to enroll.
She declared her intention to study mathematics and was then among the
first women in Germany to officially study at a university. She completed
her dissertation under the supervision of Paul Gordan in 1907. The natu-
ral next step would have been the habilitation, a postdoctoral qualification
that was required for a professorship. Of course, this track was not possible
for Emmy Noether; restrictions on women’s access to universities at these
higher levels were still in effect. For the next seven years she taught at the
University of Erlangen’s Mathematical Institute without pay, assisting her
father and substituting for him when he did not have time to hold a sched-
uled lecture. She also continued her research and published papers extend-
ing the work of her thesis. The quality of her work made her name known
to other mathematicians, and in 1909, Noether became a member of the
German Mathematical Society and was invited to give a lecture at its annual
meeting. Naturally, she would stand out at such extremely male-dominated
events. During a mathematical conference in Vienna in 1913, she visited
the Austrian mathematician Franz Mertens (1840–1927), whose grandson
later remembered her visit, describing her as follows:
our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are
required to learn at the feet of a woman?”—to which Hilbert gave a now-fa-
mous reply: “We are a university, not a bath house!” Yet Hilbert’s efforts
turned out to have been in vain, when the responsible authorities rejected
a petition of the faculty to grant her the habilitation to become a privat-do-
cent. Without an official position, she could not receive any payment from
the university and her lectures were advertised under Hilbert’s name, with
Noether as his “assistant.” Without her family’s financial support, she would
not have been able to continue her research at the University of Göttingen.
Soon after her arrival at Göttingen, she proved the theorem now known as
Noether’s theorem, which was, however, not published until 1918. Upon
receiving her work, Einstein wrote to Hilbert,
In 1918, after the end of World War I and the collapse of the German
empire, Germany became a republic and women’s rights were significantly
improved, including the admission of women to the habilitation process. In
1919, Emmy Noether became the first woman to be granted a habilitation,
allowing her to obtain the rank of privat-docent—however, still without a
salary. It was not until 1922 that she became what translates to an “associate
professor without tenure,” and began to receive a modest salary. Until then
she had to live off a small inheritance, adopting a frugal lifestyle that she
would maintain for the rest of her life. In 1924, a young Dutch mathema-
tician, B. L. van der Waerden (1903–1996), began working with Noether,
who provided fundamental ideas of abstract conceptualization. In 1931, he
published Moderne Algebra, an influential two-volume treatise on abstract
algebra. The second volume is based heavily on Noether’s work. Although
Noether did not seek recognition, van der Waerden included the following
as a note in the seventh edition: “based, in part, on lectures by E. Artin and
E. Noether.” Noether remained a leading member of the University of Göt-
tingen mathematics department until 1933, during which time she had vis-
iting professorships in Moscow and Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. How-
ever, despite her major contributions in the field of mathematics, she was
334 M AT H M A K E R S
Srinivasa Ramanujan:
Indian (1887–1920)
336
Srinivasa Ramanujan: Indian (1887–1920) 337
smallpox, he survived, unlike many others at that time who had the same
disease. During his youth he lived with both maternal and paternal grandpar-
ents, who against his will sent him to school. The school board dismissed him
and he went back to live with his parents and formed a close relationship with
his mother. Once again in primary school, he performed well in English and
other subjects, but excelled in arithmetic. From there he entered secondary
school in Kumbakonam. There, he had his first opportunity to be exposed to
mathematics beyond arithmetic. At age eleven he was already at college-level
mathematics and by age thirteen he mastered advanced trigonometry, during
which time he was already developing sophisticated mathematical theorems.
Within the next year, he was already receiving awards for his mathematical
achievements and showed a specific interest in geometry and infinite series.
When Ramanujan was fifteen, he was shown how to solve a cubic equation,
and he devised his own technique for solving quadratic equations. In 1903,
when Ramanujan was sixteen years old, he got a copy of A Synopsis of Ele-
mentary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics from the library, which is a
helped him publish his work in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical
Society.
As a simple example to demonstrate the genius that Ramanujan pos-
sessed, consider the formula he developed to get the value of π:
3π ∞ ⎛2⎞
= ∑ arctan ⎜ 2 ⎟ .
4 k=1 ⎝k ⎠
He also did some playful things, such as creating this very unusual
magic square:
First of all, as with all magic squares, all the rows, columns, and diag-
onals have the same sum. In this case the sum is 139. However, with this
unusual magic square there are also additional sums that total to 139, such
as the following:
By now you must realize the genius of this man to create this fabulous
magic square. It should also be noted that Ramanujan developed a series of
other such magic squares; the topic surely fascinated him.
We might also look at some of his other elementary discoveries, such
as his nest of radicals:
3 = 1+ 2 1+ 3 1+ 4 1+ 5 1+ 6 1+ 7 1+ 8 1+ 9 1+!
Most of Ramanujan’s discoveries are clearly far beyond the scope of this
book, so we present merely a few to demonstrate the brilliance of the man.
Mathematicians in India became fascinated with Ramanujan’s talent
and began to connect him with mathematicians in England. Some of the
English mathematicians did not even reply to his letters because he claimed
to have no formal education. However, in 1913, enthralled by the book Or-
ders of Infinity, and looking to expand his horizons, Ramanujan wrote a
letter to the book’s author, the famous English mathematician G. H. Hardy
(1877–1947), who was a professor at the University of Cambridge. Once
again, he indicated his lack of formal education, but included a collection of
some of his findings to see what Hardy would think about them. Hardy was
amazed at the ingenuity of what he found in this letter. Relationships were
proposed, which he had never seen before, such as
2π
−
e 5
5+ 5
= − φ , where ϕ represents the golden radio.
e−2 π 2
1+
e−4 π
1+
1+!
Srinivasa Ramanujan: Indian (1887–1920) 341
Figure 43.2.
Figure 43.3.
Chapter 44
343
344 M AT H M A K E R S
than 150 papers in his life. During World War II, von Neumann worked on
the Manhattan Project, where he developed the mathematical models that
were behind the explosive lenses and worked out key steps in the nuclear
physics involved in the hydrogen bomb. By the way, the Manhattan Project
is also the most famous modern example for the employment of “human
computers” on a massive scale, and it should be mentioned that most of
them were women.
John von Neumann was born János Neumann on December 28, 1903,
in Budapest, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He
was the eldest of three brothers. His father, Miksa (Max) Neumann, was
a successful banker and held a doctorate in law. John’s mother came from
a wealthy Jewish family. However, the family did not observe strict reli-
gious practices. In 1913, Emperor Franz Joseph elevated Max Neumann to
nobility for his contribution to the then successful economy. His son later
used the German form von Neumann where the “von” indicated the nobil-
ity title. Until the age of ten, John and his brothers were taught by various
governesses, since at that time formal education did not begin earlier in
Hungary. John was an exceptional case of a child prodigy. At the age of six,
he was able to converse with his father in classical Greek and he showed an
amazing memory. The Neumann family sometimes entertained guests with
demonstrations of John’s memory by letting a guest select a random page
of the phone book. After reading over it a few times, young John had mem-
orized the names, addresses, and numbers; he could answer any question
put to him. Later he was able to recite whole books such as Goethe’s Faust.
By the age of eight, he was familiar with differential and integral calculus.
However, he was particularly interested in history, and by reading a large
number of books, he acquired an incredible historical knowledge before
entering school. In 1911 von Neumann entered the Lutheran Gymnasium,
which was one of the best schools in Budapest. At that time, Hungary had
an excellent education system, which produced several outstanding mathe-
maticians and physicists. Among the brilliant and creative minds who were
educated in Budapest from their childhoods to their teens are Leó Szilárd
(1898–1964), Eugene Wigner (1902–1995), Edward Teller (1908–2003),
Paul Erdős (1913–1996), and Peter Lax (1926– ), to name just a few. The
concentration of great mathematicians who were educated in Budapest in
the early twentieth century was so strong that Peter Lax once said, “You
don’t have to be Hungarian to be a mathematician, but it helps.” Apart from
the excellent school system, several other factors may have contributed to
346 M AT H M A K E R S
pages. His wife, Klara, became one of the first computer programmers. Von
Neumann was one the most influential mathematicians who ever lived. Ed-
ward Teller wrote that “Nobody knows all science, not even von Neumann
did. But as for mathematics, he contributed to every part of it except num-
ber theory and topology. That is, I think, something unique.” Other mathe-
maticians were stunned by von Neumann’s mental calculation abilities and
his incredible speed. The Hungarian-American mathematician Paul Hal-
mos (1916–2006) recounts a story told by physicist Nicholas Metropolis
(1915–1999), concerning the speed of von Neumann’s calculations, when
somebody asked von Neumann to solve the famous fly puzzle:
Two bicyclists start 20 miles apart and head toward each other, each
going at a steady rate of 10 mph. At the same time a fly that trav-
els at a steady 15 mph starts from the front wheel of the southbound
bicycle and flies to the front wheel of the northbound one, then turns
around and flies to the front wheel of the southbound one again, and
continues in this manner till he is crushed between the two front
wheels. Question: what total distance did the fly cover? The slow way
to find the answer is to calculate what distance the fly covers on the
first, southbound, leg of the trip, then on the second, northbound, leg,
then on the third, etc., etc., and, finally, to sum the infinite series so
obtained.
The quick way is to observe that the bicycles meet exactly one hour
after their start, so that the fly had just an hour for his travels; the answer
must therefore be 15 miles.
When the question was put to von Neumann, he solved it in an instant,
and thereby disappointed the questioner: “Oh, you must have heard the
trick before!” “What trick?” asked von Neumann; “All I did was sum the
geometric series.” That meant doing it the long way—instantly!
After the war, von Neumann served on the General Advisory Commit-
tee of the US Atomic Energy Commission, and later as one of its commis-
sioners. He was a consultant to a number of organizations, including the US
Air Force, the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory, the Armed Forces
Special Weapons Project, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laborato-
ry. In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with cancer. He died at age 53 on
February 8, 1957, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington,
350 M AT H M A K E R S
DC, under military security lest he reveal military secrets while heavily
medicated. His mathematical legacy is perhaps best described in Peter Lax’s
foreword to von Neumann’s Selected Letters, edited by Miklós Rédei: “To
gain a measure of von Neumann’s achievements, consider that had he lived
a normal span of years, he would certainly have been a recipient of a Nobel
Prize in economics. And if there were Nobel Prizes in computer science
and mathematics, he would have been honored by these, too. So the writer
of these letters should be thought of as a triple Nobel laureate or, possibly, a
31/2-fold winner, for his work in physics, in particular, quantum mechanics.”
Chapter 45
Kurt Gödel:
Austrian-American (1906–1978)
In the late nineteenth century, Georg Cantor developed set theory, which
became a fundamental theory in mathematics. It offered a common foun-
dation to all fields of mathematics, and mathematicians attempted to for-
malize Cantor’s set theory by finding a minimal of axioms, from which
all further mathematical statements within the theory can be derived. Al-
though this endeavor seemed very promising at the beginning, the axiom-
atization of set theory ran into serious problems when it was discovered
that it suffered from logical paradoxes and inconsistencies. This led to a
severe foundational crisis of mathematics. In response to this crisis, math-
ematician David Hilbert initiated a program to find a complete and finite
set of axioms that would provide a stable basis for all existing mathemat-
ical systems, from arithmetic and geometry to advanced calculus and all
other fields as well. More complicated systems would be proved in terms
of simpler systems and these by even simpler systems, and ultimately the
consistency of all mathematics would be reduced to basic arithmetic. More
precisely, Hilbert’s program to establish secure foundations for all mathe-
matics comprised the following goals:1
351
352 M AT H M A K E R S
Kurt and his elder brother, Rudolf, were raised Protestant in a country with
a Catholic majority. Kurt went through several episodes of poor health
as a child. When he was six years old, he suffered from rheumatic fever.
Although he recovered well, he became convinced that his heart was per-
manently damaged as a result of the illness. He arrived at this conclusion
when he began to read medical books at the age of 8, initiating a lifelong
hypochondria. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up at the end of
World War I, Czechoslovakia declared its independence and Gödel’s fam-
ily automatically became Czechoslovak citizens, suddenly belonging to a
German-speaking minority in the Republic of Czechoslovakia. However,
Gödel could barely speak Czech and felt alien in this newly founded state. It
was common that many of the German-speaking residents still considered
themselves Austrian. By the time Gödel completed his school education
in Brno, he had mastered university mathematics. Besides mathematics,
languages were his favorite subjects. His brother later recalled that during
his whole high school career, Kurt had made not a single grammatical er-
ror in Latin; needless to say, his schoolwork had always received the top
marks. In 1923, Gödel took Austrian citizenship and moved to Vienna. He
354 M AT H M A K E R S
rotating yet?” and be told “No, it isn’t.” For his work in relativity, Gödel was
awarded (with physicist Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award
in 1951. Gödel remained in Princeton for the rest of his life. A permanent
member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton since 1946, he
became a full professor in 1953. During his first years in the United States,
he continued to publish fundamental mathematical papers. However, in his
later years, he devoted more and more time to studying philosophy. He ad-
mired the works of Leibniz and began writing about philosophical issues.
As Gödel aged, his paranoia got worse. His fear of being poisoned became
obsessive, and he would eat only food that his wife, Adele, prepared for him.
But in 1977 she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized for several months.
During this time, she had to watch her husband continuously losing weight
because he refused to eat. When she left the hospital, Gödel weighed only
66 pounds, whereupon she immediately brought him to the hospital. Fur-
ther treatment was too late, and he died a few weeks later, on January 14,
1978. He essentially starved to death. His death certificate reported that he
died of “malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance.” His
wife, Adele, died in 1981. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and some of
his other mathematical works are ranked among the greatest mathematical
achievements of the twentieth century. He was one of the most significant
logicians in history. His name is also known from a popular 1979 book,
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. The book won the Pulitzer Prize
for general nonfiction and the National Book Award for Science. It explores
relationships between the works of Gödel, along with those of artist M. C.
Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
Chapter 46
Alan Turing:
English (1912–1954)
358
Alan Turing: English (1912–1954) 359
Figure 46.2.
360 M AT H M A K E R S
somewhat strange behavior. One of his colleagues was Joan Clarke, who
seemed to have caught his eye and to whom he proposed marriage. This was
enthusiastically accepted; however, shortly thereafter Turing withdrew his
offer and exposed to her his homosexuality. This would not have stopped
her from marrying him, but he could no longer go forward in that regard.
In November 1942 he came to the United States to further work on the
U-boat Enigma crisis, which had still perplexed the Allies; they couldn’t
decipher the signals. By March 1943 the U-boat enigma decryption was
effectively resolved and remained so for the rest of the war. Once again, his
brilliance became a key factor supporting the Allied troops in the war.
In the later years of the war, Turing had worked with electronic enci-
phering speech in the telephone system. Although this eventually produced
successful results, they were mostly too late to be useful during the war.
After the war, Turing lived in London, where he worked on the automatic
computing engine, which was a significant forerunner to today’s comput-
ers. Secrecy still permeated the field and a lot of his contributions to the de-
velopment of computers was not publicized until after his death. Beginning
in 1948, Turing held the position of reader in the mathematics department
at Victoria University in Manchester, England, where he also worked at the
computing machine laboratory and helped develop software for the earli-
est stored-program computer called the Manchester Mark 1. There, he also
dabbled with the notion of artificial intelligence, which was one of the earli-
est attempts to see how a computer could correspond with a human being.
In a rather indirect way, these early results by Turing are used today on the
internet when we wish to find out if the user is a human or a computer. This
test is called CAPTCHA.
In 1948 Turing turned his attention to work with colleagues to develop
a program for a computer that would allow it to play chess against a human
being. Eventually this became successful, but the moves by the computer
took as much as a half-hour; it did in fact beat some competitors, but not
all.
By 1951 Turing took up an interest in biology, albeit from a mathemat-
ical point of view. He was fascinated by how biological organisms develop
their shape. For example, he wanted to understand how phyllotaxis seemed
to be dominated by the Fibonacci numbers.3 In more general terms he stud-
ied morphogenesis. His work in this field is still relevant today as a defin-
ing portion of mathematical biology. Turing’s work in biology has helped
364 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 46.5.
Alan Turing: English (1912–1954) 365
Today Alan Turing is heralded as the father of computers and the ini-
tiator of investigations in a number of areas of science and mathematics.
Although he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1946,
and then elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951, his name appears
in countless mathematical and scientific concepts and university buildings
and halls throughout the world. This is further evidenced by the fact that
he was chosen from a list of 227,299 nominees—including Charles Babbage
and Ada Lovelace—to be pictured on the highest-denomination banknote
in England, the fifty-pound banknote, as shown in figure 46.5. For those
interested in this unusually brilliant person, Alan Turing’s life is chronicled
in the 2014 movie The Imitation Game.
Chapter 47
Paul Erdős:
Hungarian (1913–1996)
It is not uncommon that people who have a true genius mentality are
often socially unusual. There is probably no better example of this than
the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, who had no stable residence,
traveled endlessly visiting one mathematician after another while carrying
all his belongings in one suitcase. It was clear that all he cared about was
mathematics—making conjectures and proving them as theorems. He
connected with most of the world-famous mathematicians of his lifetime.
However, curiously enough, he published profusely and very often with
other mathematicians as coauthors. One of the many legacies that he left
behind is what is known today as the Erdős number, which is assigned to
mathematicians as follows: If a mathematician coauthored an article with
him, he or she had an Erdős number 1. If a mathematician coauthored an
article with another mathematician who already had an Erdős number
of 1, then he or she was assigned an Erdős number 2. If a mathematician
coauthored an article with a mathematician who already had an Erdős
number 2, then he or she would be assigned an Erdős number 3, and so
it would continue. Of course, Paul Erdős himself had Erdős number 0. In
other words, there is great prestige in mathematical circles of having any
Erdős number at all. As a matter of fact, Albert Einstein had an Erdős
number 2. Incidentally, the American Mathematical Society provides a free
online tool to compute the Erdős number of an author.1 Nowhere else in the
mathematics world does this kind of jubilation take place.
366
Paul Erdős: Hungarian (1913–1996) 367
Paul Erdős spent almost all of his waking hours doing mathematics
either by himself or in conversation with others. Oftentimes, he spent eigh-
teen hours a day engrossed with mathematics. It is believed that he col-
laborated with more than 500 mathematicians and wrote more than 1,500
mathematical papers during his lifetime. This is likely one of the largest
productions of mathematics contributions in history.2
Paul Erdős was born in Budapest, Hungary on March 26, 1913, to par-
ents who both were high school mathematics teachers. He was particularly
treasured by his parents, since his two sisters died of scarlet fever in their
youth on the day of his birth. His childhood began in a rather strange fash-
ion, since his father was a prisoner of war in Siberia till 1920, and so to
support the family his mother needed to leave him alone at home, where
he entertained himself by looking at mathematics books that were lying
around the house. And at a very early age he showed an incredible facility
for doing mathematical calculations in his head, such as multiplying two
three-digit numbers in his head at age three. When his father returned from
Siberia, he recognized his son’s talents and began to move them along so
368 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 47.2.
370 M AT H M A K E R S
It is also interesting to see a graph (fig. 47.4) of the steps of this process.
Regardless of which number we begin with (here we started with 7), we
will eventually get to 1.
This is truly remarkable! Try it for some other numbers to convince
yourself that it really does work. Had we started with 9 as our arbitrarily
selected number, it would have required 19 steps to reach 1. Starting with
41 will require 109 steps to reach 1.
Paul Erdős lived a full and apparently satisfied life completely en-
grossed with mathematics. He died at the age of eighty-three on Septem-
ber 20, 1996, of a heart attack while attending a mathematics conference in
Warsaw, Poland. He was buried in a grave next to that of his parents in Bu-
dapest, and for his epitaph he offered, “I’ve finally stopped getting dumber.”
Figure 47.4.
Chapter 48
Herbert A. Hauptman:
American (1917–2011)
372
Herbert A. Hauptman: American (1917–2011) 373
time, they have developed an immunity against this spray. The same, he
said, occurs in the bacteria or virus world, where they build an immunity
against combative pharmaceuticals. The system he helped develop allows
the pharmaceutical industry to continue to develop new and effective drugs
through an analysis of the crystal structure of the bacteria or other harmful
cells, and therefore, develop appropriate combatants.
It is interesting to view the story as to how Dr. Hauptman reached this
exclusive position in his career. He was born in the Bronx, New York, on
February 14, 1917. He attended the local public schools, where he excelled
in mathematics and won entry into the most prestigious high school in the
country at the time, Townsend Harris High School, which admitted boys
through a very challenging entrance examination. This was a three-year
high school with an automatic admission to the City College of New York,
at the time a highly sought-after tuition-free college, which to date has had
ten of its former students winning the Nobel Prize—more than any other
public institution in the United States.
Prior to his graduation from City College, he was awarded the very
prestigious Belden Prize in Mathematics in 1936 and graduated with a BS in
374 M AT H M A K E R S
mathematics in 1937. Because the United States was then in a severe depres-
sion, jobs were very difficult to come by. However, as a mathematics major,
there were always jobs available in New York City as a teacher of mathemat-
ics. At the time, there were several exams one had to pass to qualify for the
position of high school teacher. One of these exams was a speech test. For-
tunately, or unfortunately, Hauptman failed the speech test, since he was told
that he had a Bronx dialect, which at that time was unacceptable. Thereupon,
he entered Columbia University, earning a master of arts degree in mathe-
matics in 1939. With the war now in full swing, Hauptman enlisted in the
navy, where he served as a weather forecaster in the South Pacific.
After the war, he decided to seek an advanced degree and pursue a
career in basic scientific research, whereas teaching was no longer an op-
tion. There he entered into a partnership with Jerome Karle, a chemist who
graduated from City College the same year as Hauptman, although, inter-
estingly enough, they did not know each other during their student years.
While he worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, he
simultaneously enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Maryland.
And so began a multiyear collaboration of the mathematician Dr. Haupt-
man and a physical chemist, Dr. Karle. Their 1953 monograph, “Solution of
the Phase Problem I—The Centrosymmetric Crystal,” which relied heavi-
ly on Dr. Hauptman’s mathematical talents, contains the main ideas of his
research, the most important of which was the introduction of the joint
probability distributions of several structure factors as the essential tool for
phase determination. In this monograph, they also introduced the concepts
of the structure invariants and semi-invariants, special linear combinations
of the phases, and used them to devise recipes for origin specification in
all the centrosymmetric space groups. The notion of the structure invari-
ants and semi-invariants proved to be of particular importance because
they also served to link the observed diffraction intensities with the needed
phases of the structure factors.
With a clear picture of the structure of hormones and other biological
molecules, researchers better understood the chemistry of the body and of
drugs used to treat various illnesses. For example, once they understood
the structure of enkephalins, pain-control substances found naturally in
the body, they were able to make progress in developing new pain-killing
drugs.
It must be said that the mathematical talent that Dr. Hauptman pro-
vided to the chemistry field enabled him to produce results that had the
Herbert A. Hauptman: American (1917–2011) 375
Figure 48.2.
376 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 48.3.
Benoit Mandelbrot:
Polish-American (1924–2010)
There are times when a mathematician is largely known for one mathe-
matical discovery. This is the case with the mathematician Benoit Mandel-
brot, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 20, 1924, although
through his peripatetic life he has held both French and American citizen-
ships. He was always fascinated with geometry. Even as a boy it is said that
he saw chess games rather geometrical than logical. Later in life through
his innovative publication The Fractal Geometry of Nature,1 he asks, “Why
is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inabil-
ity to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.” His
primary claim to fame within the realm of mathematics is his development
of fractals, a field in geometry comprised of objects in similar patterns with
increasingly smaller scales. We will inspect fractals in greater detail after we
consider the lifestyle of Mandelbrot, which brought him to these curious
discoveries.
Benoit Mandelbrot spent the first eleven years of his life in Poland in a
family that was rather academic, his mother being a dentist. However, it was
two of his uncles who introduced and motivated him toward mathematics.
In 1936, with the rise of Nazism, his family emigrated to France where his
uncle, who was a professor of mathematics, took responsibility for Mandel-
brot’s education. Studying in Paris at the start of World War II was rather
difficult and gave him an opportunity to think about mathematics inde-
pendently, which allowed him to gravitate further toward geometry. In an
377
378 M AT H M A K E R S
attempt to avoid the Nazis, who occupied much of France at the time, he
left Paris with his family and continued his studies in Tulle, France. In 1944
he returned to Paris to continue his studies at the Lycée du Parc on Lyon,
and from 1945 to 1947 he attended the École Polytechnique. From there
he went on to the California Institute of Technology, where, in 1949, he re-
ceived a master’s degree in aeronautics. He then went back to France to the
University of Paris, where he earned a doctorate in mathematics in 1952.
Soon thereafter, he left Paris to return once again to the United States, this
time to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, where he was men-
tored by John von Neumann. Once again on the move, in 1955 he went to
France to work at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientific, where he
met and married Aliette Kagan, and soon the couple moved to Switzerland
and then again back to France. Finally, the couple, still mobile, moved back
to the United States where he took the position of a research fellow at the
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York,
because Mandelbrot felt uncomfortable with the French style of mathemat-
ics study, whereas the IBM environment allowed him greater freedom in
exploring mathematics from his geometrical viewpoint. He remained at
IBM for the next thirty-five years.
Benoit Mandelbrot: Polish-American (1924–2010) 379
In 1980, with the aid of the computer, Mandelbrot showed that pic-
tures of mathematical objects created in 1918 by the French mathematician
Gaston Julia (1893–1978) were quite beautiful, not monstrous as some may
have felt. And more importantly, he showed that, rather than pathological,
the ragged outlines and the repeating patterns of those figures were often
found in nature. (See fig. 49.2 for some examples.) Mandelbrot used the
Latin word fractus, meaning broken or fractured, to coin a word to denote
the new mathematical objects: fractals.
In figure 49.2 the images to the left are pictures of real-life scenes.
Those pictures to the right are related fractal models. The characteristic fea-
ture of fractals is self-similarity: Geometric patterns seen in the big picture
Figure 49.2.
380 M AT H M A K E R S
of a fractal are repeated in their parts in smaller and smaller scales. Making
fractals involves the repeated application of a geometric rule, or transfor-
mation, of an original figure or set of points, which we will refer to as the
seed of the fractal.
Once we determine what the generative procedure and the seed of a
fractal will consist of, we can begin constructing the fractal by repeatedly
applying the generative procedure—first to the seed, then once again to the
resulting output, and so on. There lies another definitive aspect of fractal
construction: It is made up of consecutive phases called iterations. An iter-
ation is the act of applying one algorithm or procedure one time through in
a repetitive process.
When constructing a fractal, the iterations of the generative procedure
are done recursively—that is, the input of each iteration is the output of the
previous one—with the exception of the first iteration, which is applied to a
seed. In some cases, this means that each subsequent iteration will be more
cumbersome than the previous one. In those cases, programmable technol-
ogy is definitely immensely helpful.
A fractal ideally entails the iteration of a procedure an infinite number
of times, although in practice we can iterate a procedure only a finite num-
ber of times. We can use computers to help us perform as many iterations
as we want, which would give us different stages in the construction of a
fractal. Or we can use mathematics to deduce what would be the result
of performing that infinite process. Let us consider the generative process
described above, and the appropriate terminology through a classical ex-
ample, the Koch Snowflake (fig. 49.3).2
For the construction of this fractal, the seed will be an equilateral
triangle. Because the generation of the fractal happens by successive
iterations, we will call the result of each iteration a stage in the fractal
construction. The generative procedure will consist of erasing the middle
third of every line segment (the initiator) in a stage and replacing it with
two line segments of the same length (one-third of the length of the original
segment) at an angle of 60°; this will form cusps (which look like partial
equilateral triangles—the generator), where before there were segments.
We can see this procedure illustrated in figure 49.3.
Each iteration will consist of applying the fractal construction proce-
dure to each line segment in a stage of the fractal, which will create the next
stage. Figure 49.4 shows the first two iterations in the construction of the
Koch Snowflake.
Benoit Mandelbrot: Polish-American (1924–2010) 381
Figure 49.5.
done with the aid of a computer, and only a finite number of times, although
a very large number of times. In fact, it was only under the right conditions,
in which Benoit Mandelbrot’s vision and intellect was combined with the
environment of IBM’s Watson Research Center, that a revival of work on
this set that had been initiated by Julia in the 1920s was made possible.
So the construction of the image of the Mandelbrot set requires one
more element besides the seed, the rule, and the iterations that the fractals,
previously discussed, also had: It involves a test of numbers. Let us say the
number we are testing is c.
The seed for this fractal is the number zero; not a triangle or a seg-
ment, but a number, because this fractal is numerical in nature. The rule
or transformation is: “square the input and add c,” which can be expressed
algebraically as x2 + c.
Suppose we want to test the number c = 1. Our transformation be-
comes: x2 + 1.
Let us see the result of a few iterations, starting with the seed 0 as the
input, and then using the output of each iteration as the input for the next:
02 +1 = 1
12 +1 = 2
22 +1 = 5
!
2
5 +1 = 26
!
262 +1 = 677
!
2
677 +1 = 458,330
We can see that with more iterations, the greater the result will be. The
terms of the sequence of numbers will increase without bound. We say that
“it goes to infinity.”
Let us test for another number, c = 0. With this value for c, our rule
becomes: x2 + 0.
Starting with the same seed 0, a few iterations will show that the se-
quence will be fixed at zero:
First iteration: 02 + 0 = 0
Second iteration: 02 + 0 = 0.
Benoit Mandelbrot: Polish-American (1924–2010) 385
As a third example, let us take c = -2, for which the rule becomes: x2 – 2.
We start with the same seed -2 and again obtain a fixed sequence after the
first iteration:
For each value of c, the “test” (repeatedly iterating the rule) will tell us
whether the result will go to infinity, or if it will not. Values of c that will
result in an escape to infinity are not in the set; all the others are in the set.
The image of the Mandelbrot set is actually a record of the fate of each num-
ber, c, under this test.5 The key to understanding the image is to unveil the
code used. The most frequently used code for plotting the results of these
tests is to use the color black to represent those points in the plane that are
in the Mandelbrot set, and to color the others according to their “escape
speed”—that is, using different colors to represent the number of iterations
that value takes to reach a certain distance from the origin. Another tradi-
tional way of plotting the Mandelbrot set is just to use black for points that
are in the set and white for those that are not.
Figure 49.8. The main cardioid and bulbs in the Mandelbrot set.
386 M AT H M A K E R S
We will now look at the image of the Mandelbrot set with a categorical
eye. At the core of the image, we can see a heart-shaped figure, the main
cardioid.6 We can also note many round decorations, or bulbs (fig. 49.8). We
call any bulb that is directly attached to the main cardioid a primary bulb.
The primary bulbs have in turn many smaller decorations attached to them.
Among them, we can identify what appear to be antennas (fig. 49.9).
We will call the longest of these antennas the main antenna. Finally, the
main antennas show several “spokes” (fig. 49.10). Note that the number of
spokes in a main antenna varies from decoration to decoration. We will call
this number the period of that bulb or decoration. To determine the period
of that bulb, just count the number of spokes on an antenna. We must re-
member to count the spoke emanating from the primary decoration to the
main junction point. Figure 49.11 displays various primary bulbs and their
periods.
How can the Fibonacci sequence be seen in the Mandelbrot set? We
will consider the period of the main cardioid to be 1. Then, by counting the
spokes in the main antenna of the largest primary bulbs, we will determine
their period. The result of this counting—that is, the period of the main
cardioid and of some of the largest primary bulbs, are registered in figure
49.12.
It is surprising to see from an inspection of figure 49.12 that the largest
bulb between the bulb of period 1 and the bulb of period 2 is a bulb with
period 3. The largest bulb between the period-2 bulb and a period-3 bulb
is a period-5 bulb. And the largest bulb between a period-5 bulb and a pe-
riod-3 bulb is a period-8 bulb. Interestingly, the Fibonacci numbers seem
to appear. There are no obvious explanations as to why they appear. The
Fibonacci numbers are not related directly to the way in which the periods
of primary bulbs are calculated. The Fibonacci sequence inexplicably makes
a mysterious and remarkable appearance—just another striking feature of
fractals.
As well as being an IBM Fellow at the Watson Research Center, Man-
delbrot held numerous other academic positions such as Professor of the
Practice of Mathematics at Harvard University, Professor of Engineering
388 M AT H M A K E R S
Maryam Mirzakhani:
Iranian (1977–2017)
389
390 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 50.2.
392 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 50.3.
left) and the Klein bottle (below it). On the other hand, a torus (which is the
mathematical notion for the shape of a donut) is orientable.
The realm of Riemann surfaces can be divided into three classes: hy-
perbolic, parabolic, and elliptic Riemann surfaces. These notions corre-
spond to negative curvature, zero curvature (flat), and positive curvature.
A sphere is an example of a surface with constant positive curvature, a plane
has constant curvature zero, and an example of a hyperbolic surface is a
“saddle,” shown if figure 50.4.
Hyperbolic surfaces represent the biggest and most diverse group among
Riemannian surfaces. Moreover, while elliptic and parabolic surfaces can
be further divided into subcategories, no such classification is possible for
hyperbolic surfaces. Maryam Mirzakhani’s early work was concerned with
hyperbolic surfaces, more precisely with closed geodesics on hyperbolic
surfaces. A geodesic is a generalization of the notion of a “straight line” to
curved surfaces. The term “geodesic” stems from geodesy, the science of
Maryam Mirzakhani: Iranian (1977–2017) 393
Figure 50.4.
measuring the size and shape of the Earth. Originally, a geodesic meant
the shortest route between two points on the Earth’s surface, but the
abstract mathematical definition of a geodesic as a curve of shortest length
also applies to any Riemannian surface, and even to higher-dimensional
“surfaces” (also called hyper-surfaces). If we assume the surface of the Earth
to be a perfect sphere, then the geodesics are exactly the great circles—that
is, circles whose center is at the center of the sphere. Obviously, a sphere has
infinitely many closed geodesics (a curve is closed if it has no endpoints).
The shape of the Earth is indeed pretty close to that of a sphere, as you
can verify by looking at the image shown in figure 50.5, taken by a NASA
camera onboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, one million
miles away from the Earth.
Isaac Newton had already discovered that the effect of the rotation of
the Earth results in a slight deviation from a spherical shape. The Earth is
flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator, resembling a slightly ob-
late spheroid (an ellipsoid of revolution). An oblate (flattened) spheroid is
obtained if an ellipse is rotated about its minor axis. However, the Earth’s
deviation from a spherical shape is only about one-third of a percent; dis-
tances from points on the surface of the Earth to its center range from 6,353
394 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 50.5.
Figure 50.6a.
Figure 50.6b.
396 M AT H M A K E R S
Figure 50.8.
holes it has. A sphere has genus 0, a torus or donut has genus 1, and in figure
50.8 we also show a genus-2 surface and a genus-3 surface.
To prove her result on the number of closed and simple geodesics on
a hyperbolic surface, Mirzakhani used the concept of the moduli space of
all Riemann surfaces with genus g. Two Riemann surfaces are said to be
topologically equivalent if they can be deformed into each other by contin-
uous deformations. For example, a coffee mug and a torus are both genus-1
surfaces and can be deformed into each other in a continuous fashion (see
fig. 50.9)—that is, without any cutting.
This topological equivalence gave rise to a joke among mathemati-
cians, describing a topologist as someone who cannot tell the difference
between a coffee mug and a donut. A given topological surface can take
on a huge variety of geometric shapes via continuous deformations. For
a topological surface of genus g, these deformations depend on (6g) – (6)
parameters or “moduli.” These moduli define by themselves a mathemati-
cal space of dimension (6g) – (6) with certain geometric properties, called
the moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus g. In her work, Mirzakhani
established a link between calculations on abstract moduli space and the
counting problem for simple closed geodesics on a single surface, allowing
her to translate mathematical results from one world to the other. Not only
Figure 50.9.
398 M AT H M A K E R S
We hope you have enjoyed our journey through the history of mathe-
matics via the lives of those whom we believe are the most significant
mathematicians who have developed the subject to the present day. Se-
lecting fifty outstanding mathematicians from the Western world is a
difficult task, and one that is open to alternative assessments. There are
clearly many other outstanding mathematicians who could just as easily
have been included in our collection; however, we tried to choose those
who helped define mathematics as we know it today. On both ends of
the spectrum, it is a difficult task to summarize the unusual lives of these
mathematicians. For the early days, our resources were very limited. In
some cases, there are no written documents available from the highlight-
ed person and so we had to rely on the commentary of other mathema-
ticians who knew of their work. One such example is Thales of Miletus,
where most of the information available is a collection of commentaries
written by others who flourished during his time and shortly thereafter.
On the other end of the spectrum, the difficulty is to describe very ad-
vanced mathematics to the general readership, which we have tried to do
in the clearest possible way.
It is also noteworthy that those of unusually high intelligence, which
we often referred to as genius, have a lifestyle that is not typical of the av-
erage citizen. We also notice that these brilliant mathematicians struggled
throughout their lives to achieve their groundbreaking ideas and concepts.
Oftentimes, they met with resistance and had to grapple with societal issues
to publicize their ideas. These included, but were not limited to, poverty,
gender, religious beliefs, and other societal peculiarities. Yet these aspects
399
400 Epilogue
of their lives add further interest as we try to understand how they reached
these heights.
We hope that having shed light on these unusually brilliant people will
allow the reader an even greater appreciation for mathematics and motivate
a desire to pursue further the work of these fifty mathematicians and others
that we couldn’t fit into this book.
Appendix
H ilbert ’ s A xioms
I. Incidence
1. For every two points A and B there exists a line a, which contains
both points. We write AB = a, or BA = a. Instead of “contains,”
we may also employ other forms of expression; for example, we
may say “A lies upon a,” “A is a point of a,” “a goes through A and
through B,” “a joins A to B,” etc. If A lies upon a, and at the same
time a lies on another line b, we also make use of the expression
“The lines a and b have the point A in common.”
2. For every two points there exists no more than one line that con-
tains them both; consequently, if AB = a, and AC = a, where B ≠
C, then also BC = a.
3. There exist at least two points on a line. There exist at least three
points that do not lie on the same line.
4. For every three points A, B, C not situated on the same line there
exists a plane α that contains all of them. For every plane, there
exists a point that lies on it. We write plane ABC = α. We may also
use the expressions “A, B, C, lie in α,” “A, B, C are points of α,” etc.
5. For every three points A, B, C that do not lie in the same line,
there exists no more than one plane that contains them all.
6. If two points A, B of a line a lie in a plane α, then every point of
a lies in α. In this case, we say, “The line a lies in the plane α,” etc.
7. If two planes α, β have a point A in common, then they have at
least a second point B also in common.
8. There exist at least four points not lying in a plane.
401
402 Appendix
II. Order
1. If a point B lies between points A and C, B is also between C and
A, and there exists a line containing the distinct points A, B, C.
2. If A and C are two points, then there exists at least one point, B,
on the line AC, such that C lies between A and B.
3. Of any three points situated on a line, there is no more than one
that lies between the other two.
4. Pasch’s Axiom: Let A, B, C be three points not lying in the same
line, and let a be a line lying in the plane ABC and not pass-
ing through any of the points A, B, C. Then, if the line a passes
through a point of the segment AB, it will also pass through either
a point of the segment BC or a point of the segment AC.
III. Congruence
1. If A, B are two points on a line a, and if A′ is a point upon the same
or another line a′, then, upon a given side of A′ on the straight line
a′, we can always find a point B′ so that the segment AB is con-
gruent to the segment A′B′. Every segment is congruent to itself.
2. If a segment AB is congruent to the segment A′B′ and also to the
segment A″B″, then the segment A′B′ is congruent to the segment
A″B″; that is, if AB A′B′ and AB A″B″, then A′B′ A″B″.
3. Let AB and BC be two segments of a line a, which have no points
in common, aside from the point B, and, furthermore, let A′B′
and B′C′ be two segments of the same or of another line a′ having,
with, likewise, no point in common other than B′. Then, if AB
A′B′ and BC B′C′, we have AC A′C′.
4. Let an angle (h, k) be given in the plane α and let a line a′ be
given in a plane α′. Suppose also that, in the plane α′, a definite
side of the straight line a′ be assigned. Denote by h′ a ray of the
straight line a′ emanating from a point O′ of this line. Then in the
plane α′ there is one, and only one ray k′ such that the angle (h,
k), or (k, h), is congruent to the angle (h′, k′), and at the same
time all interior points of the angle (h′, k′) lie upon the given
side of a′.
5. If the angle (h, k) is congruent to the angle (h′, k′) and to the
angle (h″, k″), then the angle (h′, k′) is congruent to the angle
(h″, k″).
Hilbert’s Axioms 403
6. If, in the two triangles ABC and A′B′C′, the following congruenc-
es are true: AB A′B′, AC A′C′, BAC B′A′C′, then the con-
gruence ABC A′B′C′ and ACB A′C′B′ also holds true.
IV. Parallels
1. Euclid’s Axiom: Let a be any line and a point A not on the line.
Then there is at most one line in the plane, determined by a and
A, that passes through A and does not intersect a.
V. Continuity
1. Archimedes’s Axiom: If AB and CD are any segments then there
exists a number n such that n segments CD constructed contigu-
ously from A, along the ray from A through B, will pass beyond
the point B.
2. Axiom of line completeness: An extension of a set of points on a
line with its order and congruence relations that would preserve
the relations existing among the original elements as well as the
fundamental properties of line order and congruence that follows
from Axioms I–III and from V–1 is impossible.
Hilbert’s 21st Axiom: Any four points A, B, C, D of a line can
always be labeled so that B shall lie between A and C and also be-
tween A and D, and, furthermore, that C shall lie between A and D
and also between B and D. (In 1902 the American mathematician
Eliakim Hastings Moore [1862–1932] proved that this 21st axiom
was redundant.)
Notes
Introduction
1. Galileo’s book Il Saggiatore (1623), see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_Assayer.
2. The Man Who Knew Infinity. Film written by Matthew Brown and Robert
Kanigel (2016).
3. Kanigel, Robert, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanu-
jan, New York: Washington Square Press (Simon & Schuster), 1991.
Chapter 1
1. This is mentioned in the book The World of Mathematics, Vol. 1, by James
Roy Newman, (New York: Dover Publications, 2000).
Chapter 2
1. Alfred S. Posamentier, The Pythagorean Theorem: The Story of Its Power and
Beauty (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010).
2. See, for instance, https://books.google.at/books/about/Pythagoras.htm-
l?id=2gLPbFKwY5EC&redir_esc=y.
3. The five Platonic solids are the tetrahedron (a pyramid made of equilateral
triangles), the cube (made of six squares), the octahedron (a double pyramid made
of eight equilateral triangles), the dodecahedron (made of twelve pentagons), and
the icosahedron (made of twenty equilateral triangles).
4. See, for instance, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.
edu/entries/pythagoras/.
5. Pythagoras is mentioned in Plato’s “The Seventh Letter” according to this
book: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3369-essays-in-ancient-greek-philoso.aspx. The
405
406 Notes
statement can be found on page 67: Preus, Anthony, ed. Essays in Ancient Greek
Philosophy VI Before Plato. ISBN13: 978-0-7914-4955-4.
6. Aristotle wrote a monograph titled “On the Pythagoreans,” see https://www
.jstor.org/stable/283647?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
7. Elisha S. Loomis, The Pythagorean Proposition, 2nd ed. (Reston, VA: Na-
tional Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1968).
8. James A. Garfield, “Pons Asinorum,” New England Journal of Education 3
(1876): 116.
Chapter 3
1. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, edited by Tiziano Dorandi, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2013 (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, vol.
50, new radically improved critical edition). Translation by R. D. Hicks. (Eudoxus
is in Book 8.)
Chapter 4
1. “Classics of Mathematics,” Ronald Calinger, ed. Oak Park, IL: Moore
Publishing, 1982; Euclid’s Elements, Dana Densmore, ed. Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion
Press, 2003; A History of Mathematics, V. J. Katz, 3rd ed. New York: Addison-Wesley/
Pearson, 2009.
2. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/autobiog.htm.
3. https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debate4.htm.
Chapter 5
1. No authentic portraits of Archimedes have survived, so the Canadian sculp-
tor R. Tait McKenzie, who designed the medal, had to imagine Archimedes’s ap-
pearance, inspired by earlier portrayals of Archimedes by Renaissance artists.
2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). “Vitruvius,” Encyclopædia Britannica (11th
ed.). Cambridge University Press.
3. His daughter (Marie Louis Sirieix was a man) knew where it was and tried
to sell it. Cambridge University only had one single page of palimpsest (the one von
Tischendorf had excised), but the whole “book” was in Sirieix’s cellar. The Archime-
des Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s
Greatest Scientist, by Reviel Netz and William Noel, Da Capo Press, 2007.
4. The new owner of the book. According to Simon Finch, who represented
the anonymous buyer, stated that the buyer was “a private American” who
worked in “the high-tech industry.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_
Palimpsest.
Notes 407
5. This quote is from the chapter “The Life of Marcellus” in the book The Par-
allel Lives by Plutarch. A reproduction of The Parallel Lives as published in Vol. V
of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1917, can be found on this webpage: http://
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Marcellus*.html.
The quote is from page 481.
Chapter 6
1. Cyrene was an ancient Greek and later Roman city near present-day Shah-
hat, Libya. A relatively reliable online source for this is http://www-groups.dcs.st
-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Eratosthenes.html.
Chapter 7
1. The chord of 60 degrees is the length of a line segment whose endpoints are
on the unit circle and are separated by 60 degrees.
Chapter 8
1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantus.
Chapter 10
1. Maxey Brooke, “Fibonacci Numbers and Their History through 1900,” Fibo-
nacci Quarterly 2 (April 1964): 149.
Chapter 11
1. Gerolamo Cardano, “A Point of View: Are Tyrants Good for Art?” BBC,
August 10, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19202527.
2. Victor J. Katz, and Karen Hunger Parshall, Taming the Unknown: A History
of Algebra from Antiquity to the Early (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2014); MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, School of Mathematics and Statis-
tics, University of St Andrews, Scotland, link: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/
history/Biographies/Cardan.html. Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica
.com/biography/Girolamo-Cardano.
3. “The Story of Mathematics,” website by Luke Mastin, link: http://www
.storyofmathematics.com/16th_tartaglia.html; MacTutor History of Mathematics
archive, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland,
link: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Tartaglia.html.
408 Notes
Chapter 12
1. The following paragraphs are derived from Alfred S. Posamentier and Bernd
Thaller, Numbers: Their Tales, Types, and Treasures (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2015), pp. 212–20.
Chapter 13
1. William J. Broad, “After 400 Years, A Challenge to Kepler: He Fabricated His
Data, Scholar Says,” New York Times, Science Section, January 23, 1990, p. 1.
2. The English mathematician Thomas Simpson re-discovered Kepler’s rule
one hundred years after Kepler. However, he also developed more elaborate approx-
imation formulas, generalizing the formula Kepler had found.
3. A frustum of a cone is the remaining part of the right circular cone, when
the vertex portion is cut off by a plane perpendicular to the altitude of the cone.
Chapter 14
1. This is from the official press release of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska
Institutet: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2017/press-release/.
2. R. E. Langer, “Rene Descartes,” The American Mathematical Monthly Vol. 44,
No. 8 (October, 1937): pp. 495–512. The quote is from page 497. See also: https://
www.jstor.org/stable/2301226?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents.
3. R. E. Langer, “Rene Descartes,” The American Mathematical Monthly Vol. 44,
No. 8 (October, 1937), pp. 495–512. The quote is from page 498. See also: https://
www.jstor.org/stable/2301226?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents.
4. Descartes, Discourse on the Method (Duke Classics, 2012), p. 34.
5. Valentine Rodger Miller, René Descartes: Principles of Philosophy, translat-
ed, with explanatory notes, Collection des Travaux de L’Académie Internationale
D’Histoire des Sciences No 30 (Netherlands: Springer), p. xvii.
6. Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, translated by John Veitch (Cosi-
mo, Inc., 2008), p. 15.
Notes 409
Chapter 15
1. A parliament was a provincial appellate court in the Ancien Régime of France.
In 1789, France had thirteen parliaments, the most important of which was the Par-
liament of Paris. While the English word “parliament” derives from this French term,
parliaments in this sense were not legislative bodies. They consisted of a dozen or
more appellate judges, or about 1,100 judges nationwide (see Wikipedia, s.v. “Parlia-
ment,” last edited February 2, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament).
2. André Weil, Zahlentheorie: Ein Gang durch die Geschichte von Hammurapi
bis Legendre (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 1992), p. 40.
3. Michael Sean Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat, 1601–
1665, Second Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 192.
4. George F. Simmons, Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable Mathematics
(Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America, 2007), p. 98.
5. Michael Sean Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat, 1601–
1665, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 61.
6. The method of infinite descent is a special variant of a proof by contradiction.
To prove that a problem has no solution, one may be able to show that if a solution—
which was in some sense related to one or more natural numbers—would exist, this
would necessarily imply that another solution related to smaller natural numbers
existed. The existence of this solution would then automatically imply the existence
of another solution, related to even smaller natural numbers, and so forth. Since
there cannot be an infinite sequence of smaller and smaller natural numbers
(sooner or later one would encounter the smallest natural number with the desired
property), the premise that the problem has a solution must be wrong. For example,
to show that 2 is not a rational number, we may start a proof by contradiction by
first assuming that 2 is rational. Then we would be able to write
p
2=
q
with p and q some natural numbers. We would then have 2q2 = p2, implying that p2
is even and thus p must be even as well (if p were odd, than p2 cannot be even). Now,
if p is even, we can write p = 2k for some natural number k, which upon inserting in
the last equation yields 2q2 = 4k2, that is, q2 = 2k2 and therefore q must also be even.
Thus, both p and q must be divisible by 2. This means that if 2 had a representation
p
as a rational number 2= this fraction could always be reduced by dividing p and q
q
by 2. But this is impossible since we cannot reduce a fraction further and further,
without end. This contradiction tells us that 2 cannot be rational.
7. Reinhard Laubenbacher and David Pengelley, Mathematical Expeditions:
Chronicles by the Explorers (Springer Science & Business Media, 2013), p. 165.
8. John Tabak, Probability and Statistics: The Science of Uncertainty, The Histo-
ry of Mathematics Series (Infobase Publishing, 2014), p. 27.
9. Simon Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem (Fourth Estate, 1997).
410 Notes
Chapter 18
1. A vacuum tube is a device that controls electric currents between electrodes in
an evacuated container. Invented in 1904, vacuum tubes were a basic component for
electronics throughout the first half of the twentieth century, which saw the diffusion
of radio, television, large telephone networks, as well as analog and digital computers.
2. Wikipedia, s.v. “ENIAC,” last edited February 14, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/ENIAC.
3. Caren L. Diefenderfer and Roger B. Nelsen, The Calculus Collection: A Re-
source for AP and Beyond (MAA, 2019).
4. Richard T. W. Arthur, “The Remarkable Fecundity of Leibniz’s Work on
Infinite Series,” Annals of Science Vol. 63, Issue 2 (2006).
5. G. W. Leibniz, Interrelations between Mathematics and Philosophy, edited by
Norma B. Goethe, Philip Beeley, and David Rabouin (Springer, 2015), p. 146.
6. The translation of Leibniz’s text can be found on the website “Leibniz Trans-
lations” by Lloyd Strickland; here is the link to article about binary arithmetic:
http://www.leibniz-translations.com/binary.htm.
7. The translation of Leibniz’s text can be found on the website “Leibniz Trans-
lations” by Lloyd Strickland; here is the link to article about binary arithmetic:
http://www.leibniz-translations.com/binary.htm.
8. Richard C. Brown, The Tangled Origins of the Leibnizian Calculus: A Case
Study of a Mathematical Revolution (World Scientific, 2012), p. 229.
Chapter 19
1. The text that follows is derived from the appendix of Alfred S. Posamentier,
Robert Geretschläger, Charles Li, and Christian Spreitzer, The Joy of Mathematics:
Marvels, Novelties, and Neglected Gems That Are Rarely Taught in Math Class (Am-
herst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2017), pp. 289–91.
2. This section is derived from Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann,
The Secrets of Triangles: A Mathematical Journey (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,
2012), p. 45.
3. This is a “biconditional” statement that indicates that if the lines are con-
current, then the equation is true; and if the equation is true, then the lines are
concurrent.
4. The following section is derived from Posamentier and Lehmann, Secrets of
Triangles, pp. 135–36 and 342.
Chapter 20
1. One such example is Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert L. Bannister, Geom-
etry: Its Elements and Structure, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover, 2014).
Notes 411
Chapter 21
1. The following biographical information is derived from J. J. O’Connor and
E. F. Robertson, “Christian Goldbach,” August 2006, http://www-history.mcs.st
-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Goldbach.html.
2. Tomas Oliveira e Silva, Siegfried Herzog, and Silvio Pardi, “Emperical Ver-
ification of the Even Goldbach Conjecture and computation of Prime Gaps up to
4 · 1018,” Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 83, No. 288 (July 2014): pp. 2033–60,
S 0025-5718(2013)02787-1, article electronically published on November 18, 2013.
3. H. A. Helfgott, “Major Arcs for Goldbach’s Theorem,” French National Cen-
tre for Scientific Research (May 2013).
Chapter 22
1. Biographical Dictionary of Mathematicians, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s), p. 221.
2. Dirk Jan Struik, A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800 (in the series
Princeton Legacy Library) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 320.
3. Biographical Dictionary of Mathematicians, Vol. 1 (New York: Scribner’s),
p. 228.
Chapter 23
1. The following paragraphs are derived from Alfred S. Posamentier and Chris-
tian Spreitzer, The Mathematics of Everyday Life (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,
2018), pp. 237–41.
Chapter 24
1. Clifford A. Pickover, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimen-
sion, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics, Milestones Series (Sterling Pub-
lishing Company, Inc., 2009), p. 180.
Chapter 25
1. Benjamin Libet, Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
412 Notes
Chapter 26
1. The following discussion of Mascheroni constructions is derived from Al-
fred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschläger, The Circle: A Mathematical Explora-
tion beyond the Line (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2016), pp. 199–215.
2. For a proof of this theorem, see Alfred S. Posamentier and Charles T. Salk-
ind, Challenging Problems in Geometry (New York: Dover, 1996), p. 217.
Chapter 27
1. The following biographical information is derived from Wikipedia, s.v.
“Joseph-Louis Lagrange: Biography,” last modified April 12, 2019, https://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Joseph-Louis_Lagrange.
Notes 413
2. Wikipedia, s.v. “Tautochrone Curve,” last edited March 15, 2019, https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautochrone_curve.
3. The three-body problem is the problem in physics of computing the trajec-
tory of three bodies interacting with one another.
4. T. S. Blyth and E. F. Robertson, Further Linear Algebra (London: Springer,
2002), p. 187.
5. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, “Joseph-Louis Lagrange,” January 1999,
http://www.history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lagrange.html.
6. Wikipedia, s.v. “Joseph-Louis Lagrange: Prizes and Distinctions,” last modi-
fied April 12, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Louis_Lagrange.
Chapter 28
1. Gina Kolata, “At Last, Shout of ‘Eureka!’ in Age-Old Math Mystery,” New
York Times, June 24, 1993.
2. The following biographical information is derived from Wikipedia, s.v.
“Sophie Germain,” last updated April 11, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sophie_Germain.
3. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, “Sophie Germain,” December 1996,
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Germain.html.
4. The content of this paragraph is derived from Wikipedia, s.v., “Sophie Ger-
main: Later Work in Elasticity,” last updated April 11, 2019, https://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain.
5. The content of this paragraph is derived from Wikipedia, s.v. “Sophie Ger-
main: Final Years,” in ibid.
Chapter 29
1. This and the following biographical information is derived from J. J. O’Con-
nor and E. F. Robertson, “Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss,” December 1996, http://
www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Gauss.html.
2. https://thatsmaths.com/2014/10/09/triangular-numbers-eyphka/.
3. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-mathematicians-finall/.
4. This and the following biographical information is derived from ibid.
Chapter 31
1. NBIM, Norges Bank, Statistics Norway; see, for example, “Factbox: Norway’s
$960 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund,” Reuters, June 2, 2017, https://www.reuters
.com/article/us-norway-swf-ceo-factbox/factbox-norways-960-billion-sovereign
-wealth-fund-idUSKBN18T283.
2. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/.
414 Notes
3. “Niels Henrik Abel,” Norsk Biografisk Leksikon, last updated February 13,
2009, https://nbl.snl.no/Niels_Henrik_Abel.
4. Olav Arnfinn Laudal and Ragni Piene, The Legacy of Niels Henrik Abel: The
Abel Bicentennial, Oslo, 2002 (Berlin: Springer, 2013).
5. Arild Stubhaug, Called Too Soon by Flames: Niels Henrik Abel and His Times
(Heidelberg: Springer, 2000).
6. Arild Stubhaug, Niels Henrik Abel and his Times: Called Too Soon by Flames
Afar, translated by R. H. Daly (Springer Science & Business Media, 2013), p. 231.
7. Krishnaswami Alladi, Ramanujan’s Place in the World of Mathematics (New
Delhi: Springer, 2013), p. 83.
8. http://www.abelprize.no/c53680/artikkel/vis.html?tid=53897.
Chapter 32
1. The content of this paragraph is derived from Wikipedia, s.v., “Évariste Ga-
lois: Final Days,” last updated April 25, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3
%89variste_Galois.
2. Ibid.
Chapter 33
1. The content of this and the following paragraphs is derived from Wikipe-
dia, s.v. “James Joseph Sylvester: Biography,” last updated April 11, 2019, https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joseph_Sylvester.
2. J. D. North, “James Joseph Sylvester,” Complete Dictionary of Scientific
Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008), available through MacTutor History
of Mathematics at http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/DSB/Sylvester.pdf, citing
James Joseph Sylvester, Collected Mathematical Papers 4, no. 53 (1888): 588.
3. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Quotations/Sylvester.html.
Chapter 34
1. Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), canto 3, ll. 1–2.
2. Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers (Mill Valley, CA:
Strawberry), pp. 240–61.
Chapter 40
1. At these conferences the famous Fields Medals (i.e., equivalent in mathe-
matics to the Nobel Prize) are awarded every four years to outstanding mathema-
ticians not above age 40.
2. The curious reader is referred to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert
%27s_problems.
Notes 415
3. Hajo G. Meyer, Tragisches Schicksal. Das deutsche Judentum und die Wir-
kung historischer Kräfte: Eine Übung in angewandter Geschichtsphilosophie (Berlin:
Frank & Timme, 2008), 202.
4. See http://www.storyofmathematics.com/20th_hilbert.html.
Chapter 41
1. Godfrey Harold Hardy, Collected Papers of G. H. Hardy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979).
Chapter 43
1. Warner Bros., 2016.
2. Robert Kanigel, The Man Who New Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
(New York: Macmillan, 1991).
3. “Quotations by Hardy,” archived from the original on July 16, 2012, accessed
November 20, 2012, https://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Quotations/Hardy
.html.
4. G. S. Carr, A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathemat-
ics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Chapter 44
1. William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theo-
ry, and the Puzzle of the Bomb (New York: Anchor, 1993).
2. Claudia Dreifus, “Maria Konnikova Shows Her Cards,” New York Times,
August 10, 2018.
Chapter 45
1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program.
Chapter 46
1. A. M. Turing, “Intelligent Machinery” (manuscript) (Turing Archive, 1948), 3.
2. “von Neumann . . . firmly emphasized to me, and to others I am sure, that
the fundamental conception is owing to Turing—insofar as not anticipated by
Babbage, Lovelace and others,” letter by Stanley Frankel to Brian Randell, 1972,
quoted in Jack Copeland, The Essential Turing (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 22.
3. See A. S. Posamentier and I. Lehmann, The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007).
416 Notes
Chapter 47
1. To compute the Erdős number of an author, visit https://mathscinet.ams
.org/mathscinet/freeTools.html and go to the collaboration distance calculator. The
tool will automatically find a path in the MathSciNet database between any two
people you wish (there is a special button for selecting Paul Erdős as one end of the
path).
2. According to “Facts about Erdős Numbers and the Collaboration Graph,”
using the Mathematical Reviews database, the next highest article count is roughly
823, see http://oakland.edu/enp/trivia/.
3. Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (New York: Hyperion,
1998).
4. ln(x) is the natural logarithm of the number, x, and is its logarithm to the
base of the mathematical constant e, where e is an irrational and transcendental
number approximately equal to 2.718281828459 . . .
Chapter 48
1. A. S. Posamentier and H. A. Hauptman, 101+ Great Ideas for Introducing
Key Concepts in Mathematics, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006).
Chapter 49
1. Benoit B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (New York: W. H.
Freeman, 1983), 1.
2. The Koch Snowflake was named in 1904 after the Swedish mathematician
Helge von Koch (1870–1924).
3. Named in 1915 after the Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpiński (1882–
1969).
4. The complex plane is the two-dimensional representation of complex num-
bers with a real axis and an imaginary axis.
5. In fact, figure 49.7 is only an approximation of the Mandelbrot set. In ac-
tuality, we cannot know for sure whether a number c lies in the Mandelbrot set,
because to determine that with absolute certainty we would need to iterate the “test”
an infinite number of times. But even with computers, we can obviously iterate
anything only a finite number of times. But it so happens that the sequence formed
by iterating the rule to a certain value of c may behave differently only after a very
large number of iterations. So we can make our approximation better by iterating a
great number of times. Still, this will not lead to absolute accuracy.
6. A cardioid is a heart-shaped curve generated by a fixed point on a circle as
it rolls around another circle of equal radius.
7. The Economist, October 21, 2010.
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417
418 References