You are here: Home › Search Results for: "principia"

Search Results for: principia

mathematics
Gottlob Frege and the Formula Language of Pure Thinking

Gottlob Frege and the Formula Language of Pure Thinking

Harald Sack
On November 8, 1848, German mathematician, logician and philosopher Gottlob Frege was born. He is considered as one of the fathers of modern mathematical logic and has developed the Begriffsschrift, an approach to put classical philosophical logic into a formal mathematical language. While he was mainly ignored by the intellectual world when he published his writings, Giuseppe Peano [7] and Bertrand Russell [8] introduced his work to later generations of logicians and philosophers. Unless…
Read more
archeology
William Stukeley and the Mystery of Stonehenge

William Stukeley and the Mystery of Stonehenge

Harald Sack
On November 7, 1687, English antiquarian and Anglican clergyman William Stukeley was born. He pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as probably the most important of the early forerunners of the discipline of archaeology. Stukeley was also one of the first biographers of Isaac Newton, of whom he was a friend. William Stukeley – Early Years William Stukeley was born in Holbeach in…
Read more
geology
Pierre Louis Maupertuis – The Man who flattened the Earth

Pierre Louis Maupertuis – The Man who flattened the Earth

Tabea Tietz
On September 28, 1698, French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters Pierre Louis Maupertuis was born. Maupertuis made an expedition to Lapland to determine the shape of the Earth. He is also credited with having invented the principle of least action, an integral equation that determines the path followed by a physical system. “Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects.” – Formulation of the principle of least action, as…
Read more
mathematics
Giovanni Saccheri and his Problems with Euclidian Geometry

Giovanni Saccheri and his Problems with Euclidian Geometry

Harald Sack
On September 5, 1667, Italian Jesuit priest, scholastic philosopher, and mathematician Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri was born. He is primarily known today for his last publication, Euclide Ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus (Euclid Freed of Every Flaw, 1733), now considered the second work in non-Euclidean geometry. First Contact with Euclid’s Elements Saccheri was born in Sanremo to his father Giovanni Felice Saccheri, a lawyer and notary.[6] As a child Saccheri ‘was notably precocious’.[1] He entered the…
Read more
philosophy
Johann Valentin Andreae and the Legend of the Rosicrucians

Johann Valentin Andreae and the Legend of the Rosicrucians

Harald Sack
On August 17, 1586, German theologian and author Johannes Valentinus Andreae  was born. He claimed to be the author of the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz), one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, a philosophical secret society said to have been founded in late medieval Germany by Christian Rosenkreutz. Rosicrucianism holds a doctrine or theology “built on esoteric truths of the ancient past“,…
Read more
mathematics
Abraham de Moivre and the Doctrine of Chances

Abraham de Moivre and the Doctrine of Chances

Harald Sack
On May 26, 1667, French mathematician Abraham de Moivre was born. De Moivre is best known for de Moivre‘s formula, one of those that link complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling. De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, said to have been prized by gamblers. He…
Read more
history
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

Harald Sack
On March 6, 1665, the very first issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was published. The journal published by the Royal Society was the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science. Moreover, it is also the world’s longest-running scientific journal. “Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralised upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with…
Read more
astronomy
The underused Talents of Mary Somerville, Mathematician and Astronomer

The underused Talents of Mary Somerville, Mathematician and Astronomer

Harald Sack
On December 26, 1780, Scottish science writer and polymath Mary Somerville was born. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel.[1] The word scientist was coined for her. Mary Somerville acquired her knowledge autodidactically and became well known as a science writer. “Astronomy affords the most extensive example of the connection of physical…
Read more
astronomy
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and the Evolution of Stars

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and the Evolution of Stars

Harald Sack
On October 19, 1910, Indian-American astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics together with William Alfred Fowler for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars. Actually, winning Nobel Prizes in physics must lie somehow in the family of Chandrasekhar, because his uncle Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics already in 1930,…
Read more
mathematics
Brook Taylor – Forerunner of Differential Calculus

Brook Taylor – Forerunner of Differential Calculus

Harald Sack
On August 18, 1685, EnglishmathematicianBrook Taylor was born. He is best known for Taylor’s theorem and the Taylor series, a method for expanding functions into infinite series. “It is generally thought very ridiculous to pretend to write an Heroic Poem, or a fine Discourse upon any Subject, without understanding the Propriety of the Language wrote in; and to me it seems no less ridiculous for one to pretend to make a good Picture without…
Read more
Relation Browser
Timeline
0 Recommended Articles:
0 Recommended Articles: