Niccoló Tartaglia and how to solve Cubic Equations
Italian Renaissance mathematician and engineer Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia is best known today for his contributions in solving cubic equations.
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Euclid
Giovanni Saccheri and his Problems with Euclidian Geometry
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…
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Al-Biruni – Mathematician, Astronomer and Founder of Indology
On September 4, 973, Muslim scholar Al-Biruni was born. He is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic era and was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist. He is referred to as the founder of Indology for his remarkable description of early 11th-century India. “You well know … for which reason I began searching for a…
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Guillaume Postel – French Linguist and Religious Universalist
On March 25, 1510, French linguist, astronomer, Cabbalist, diplomat, professor, and religious universalist Guillaume Postel was born. A universal and cosmopolitan spirit, Postel is the most characteristic French representative of the Christian Kabbalah. “Ibn Sina says more in one or two pages than does Galen in five or six large volumes” – Guillaume Postel Guillaume Postel – From Politics to Philology Postel was adept at Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac and other Semitic languages, as…
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Nikolai Lobachevsky – The Copernicus of Geometry
On February 24, 1856, Russian mathematician and geometer Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky passed away. He is known primarily for his work on hyperbolic geometry. Lobachevsky’s main achievement is the development (independently from János Bolyai) of a non-Euclidean geometry, also referred to as Lobachevskian geometry. Nikolai Lobachevsky – Early Years Nikolai Lobachevsky was born as one of three children either in or near the city of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia in 1792 to parents…
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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and the Science of Biomechanics
On January 28, 1608, Renaissance Italian physiologist, physicist, and mathematician Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was born. Trained in mathematics, Borelli also made extensive studies of Jupiter’s moons, the mechanics of animal locomotion and, in microscopy, of the constituents of blood. He also used microscopy to investigate the stomatal movement of plants, and undertook studies in medicine and geology. “No sensible person will deny that the works of Nature are in the highest degree…
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Janos Bolyai and the Discovery of Non-Euclidian Geometry
On December 15, 1802, Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai was born. He is most famous for being one of the founders of non-euclidian geometry, a geometry that differs from Euclidean geometry in its definition of parallel lines. János Bolyai – Background Bolyai was born in the Transylvanian town of Kolozsvár (Klausenburg), then part of the Habsburg Empire (now Cluj-Napoca in Romania), the son of Zsuzsanna Benkő and the well-known mathematician Farkas Bolyai. Farkas…
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Nicolaus Copernicus and the Heliocentric Model
On February 19, 1473, Renaissance mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born, who established the heliocentric model, which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. With the publication of his research he started the so-called Copernican Recolution, which started a paradigm shift away from the former Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which postulated the Earth at the center of the universe, towards the heliocentric model with the…
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Benoît Mandelbrot and the Beauty of Mathematics
On November 20, 1924, French American mathematician Benoît B. Mandelbrot was born. Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the popularizer of fractal geometry. He was the one who coined the term ‘fractal’ and described the Mandelbrot set named after him. “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does…
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The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time – Bertrand Russell, Logician and Pacifist
On July 11, 1906, mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was suspended from Trinity College, Cambridge due to his engagement in pacifist activities. The remarkable Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic was best known for the famous ‘Principia Mathematica‘, which he published along with Alfred North Whitehead between 1910 and 1913. “Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of…
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