Mathematicians Of The Day
4th April
On this day in 1820 Farkas Bolyai wrote to his son János about Euclid's 5th postulate:-
Do not try the parallels in that way: I know that way all along. I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there.
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Born:
- 1782: Vincenzo Flauti
- 1790: Jean-Baptiste Bélanger Ⓟ
- 1809: Benjamin Peirce Ⓟ
- 1842: Édouard Lucas Ⓟ
- 1863: Jean-Marie Le Roux
- 1868: Philippa Fawcett Ⓟ
- 1884: Thomas MacRobert Ⓟ
- 1902: Eberhard Hopf Ⓟ
- 1939: Mary Lee Wheat Gray Ⓟ
- 1949: Shing-Tung Yau Ⓟ
Died:
- 1617: John Napier Ⓟ
- 1807: Jérôme Lalande Ⓟ
- 1923: John Venn Ⓟ
- 1925: Walter Rouse Ball Ⓟ
- 1949: William Threlfall Ⓟ
- 1961: Simion Stoilow Ⓟ
- 1981: Carl Siegel Ⓟ
- 1991: Hans Reichardt Ⓟ
- 2012: Nikolai Nikolaevich Krasovskii Ⓟ
- 2017: Dan Mostow Ⓟ
Quotation of the day
From Walter Rouse Ball
The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in his sleep.