The Week in Math: October

Here are the highlights from the historical world of mathematics for the month of October.  While this list is not meant to be all-encompassing, I have tried to pick out those things that I find most interesting.

October 1:

Deaths: Robert Simson (1687-1768)

October 2:

Math News: In 1667, Newton is elected a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.  (See MathDL for details.)

Deaths: Paul Halmos (1916-2006) – Click here to read my post about Halmos

October 3:

Math News: In 1842, Arthur Cayley becomes the youngest fellow (21 years old) at Trinity College, Cambridge.  (See MathDLfor details.)

Deaths: Edouard Lucas (1842-1891)

October 4:

Math News: In 1957, Sputnik is launched.  (See MathDL for details.)

Birthdays: Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891)

Deaths: R. L. Moore (1882-1974), Max Planck (1858-1947)

October 5:

Birthdays: Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), Thomas Little Heath (1861-1940)

Deaths: Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), Lodovico Ferrari (1522-1565)

October 6:

Birthdays: Richard Dedekind (1831-1916)

October 7:

Birthdays: Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Oystein Ore (1899-1968)

Deaths: Rudolf Lipschitz (1832-1903)

October 9:

Birthdays: Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916)

Deaths: Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)

October 10:

Deaths: David Gregory (1659-1708)

October 11:

Birthdays: Samuel Clarke (1675-1729)

Deaths: Gotthold Eisenstein (1823-1852), Vito Volterra (1860-1940)

October 13:

Math News: In 1729, Euler writes to Goldbach, briefly discussing the Gamma Function.  (See MathDL for details.)

Deaths: William Hopkins (1793-1866)

October 14:

Birthdays: Robert Simson (1687-1768)

Deaths: Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010), Jules Richard (1862-1956)

October 15:

Birthdays: Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)

October 16:

Math News: In 1707, Roger Cotes is elected the first Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge.  In 1797, Gauss writes in his diary that he has discovered a new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.  In 1843, Sir William Hamilton invents quaternions during a walk along the Royal Canal in Dublin.  So excited, he uses his pocketknife to scratch the multiplication formulas on the side of Brougham Bridge.  (See MathDL for details.)

October 17:

Birthdays: Jacob(II) Bernoulli (1759-1789)

Deaths: Gustav Kirchhoff (1824-1887), Frank Morley (1860-1937), Jacques Hadamard (1865-1963)

October 18:

Math News: In 1640, Fermat first mentions his Little Theorem in a letter to Frenicle de Bessey.  In 1921, Bohr introduces the world to the Bohr Model – his quantum model of the atom.  (See MathDL for details.)

Deaths: John Wilson (1741-1793)

October 19:

Birthdays: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)

October 20:

Deaths: Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

October 21:

Birthdays: Nicolaus(I) Bernoulli (1687-1759), Martin Gardner (1914-2010)

Deaths: Waclaw Sierpinski (1882-1969)

October 24:

Math News: In 1676, Newton writes a summary for Leibniz regarding the development of fluxions and power series.  (SeeMathDL for details.)

Birthdays: Philipp von Seidel (1821-1896), Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891)

Deaths: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

October 25:

Math News: In 1713, Leibniz writes to Johann Bernoulli stating that an alternating series whose terms monotonically decrease to zero in absolute value is convergent (Alternating Series Test).  (See MathDL for details.)

Birthdays: Evariste Galois (1811-1832)

Deaths: Giovanni Saccheri (1667-1733), Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)

October 26:

Birthdays: Georg Frobenius (1849-1917)

Deaths: Mark Kac (1914-1984)

October 27:

Math News: In 1654, Pascal writes to Fermat, complimenting him for his solution to the Problem of Points.  (See MathDL for details.)

October 28:

Deaths: John Wallis (1616-1703)

October 29:

Math News: In 1669, Newton, at the age of 26, is appointed Lucasian Professor at Cambridge.  In 1675, Leibniz first uses the integral sign and the ‘d’ for differential.  (See MathDL for details.)

Deaths: Jean d’Alembert (1717-1783)

October 30:

Birthdays: Harold Davenport (1907-1969)

Deaths: Willebrord Snell (1580-1626)

October 31:

Math News: In 1903, Frank Cole gives his famous silent presentation of his paper entitled, “On the factoring of large numbers.”  At the chalkboard, he shows that the number (2^67) – 1 is not a Mersenne prime by computing the product of 193,707,721 and 761,838,257,287 – by hand!  Click here to read my post about Frank Cole.  (See MathDL for details.)

Birthdays: Ronald Graham (1935-present), Karl Weierstrass (1815-1897)

References: If you are interested in additional facts or birthdays, please visit the sites that I used to generate these lists:

• http://mathdl.maa.org – general mathematical facts
• http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk:80/~history/Day_files/Now.html – birthdays