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A Calendar of Mathematical Dates January A CALENDAR OF MATHEMATICAL DATES V. Frederick Rickey Department of Mathematical Sciences United States Military Academy West Point, NY 10996-1786 USA Email: fred-rickey @ usma.edu JANUARY 1 January 4713 B.C. This is Julian day 1 and begins at noon Greenwich or Universal Time (U.T.). It provides a convenient way to keep track of the number of days between events. Noon, January 1, 1984, begins Julian Day 2,445,336. For the use of the Chinese remainder theorem in determining this date, see American Journal of Physics, 49(1981), 658{661. 46 B.C. The first day of the first year of the Julian calendar. It remained in effect until October 4, 1582. The previous year, \the last year of confusion," was the longest year on record|it contained 445 days. [Encyclopedia Brittanica, 13th edition, vol. 4, p. 990] 1618 La Salle's expedition reached the present site of Peoria, Illinois, birthplace of the author of this calendar. 1800 Cauchy's father was elected Secretary of the Senate in France. The young Cauchy used a corner of his father's office in Luxembourg Palace for his own desk. LaGrange and Laplace frequently stopped in on business and so took an interest in the boys mathematical talent. One day, in the presence of numerous dignitaries, Lagrange pointed to the young Cauchy and said \You see that little young man? Well! He will supplant all of us in so far as we are mathematicians." [E. T. Bell, Men of Mathematics, p. 274] 1801 Giuseppe Piazzi (1746{1826) discovered the first asteroid, Ceres, but lost it in the sun 41 days later, after only a few observations. Using his new technique of least squares, Gauss correctly predicted where it could be found. This made Gauss a celebrity. [DSB 5, 300 and 10, 591{592; Buhler, Gauss, pp. 40{45] 1806 France adopts the Gregorian calendar for the second time. See October 5, 1793. 192? G. H. Hardy sent the following New Year's wishes on a postcard to a friend: (1) Prove the Riemann hypothesis. (2) make 211 not out in the fourth innings of the last test match at the Oval. (3) find an argument for the nonexistence of God which shall convince the general public. (4) be the first man to the top of Mt. Everst. (5) be proclaimed the first president of the U.S.S.R. of Great Britain and Germany. (6) murder Mussolini. [DSB 6, 114] 1938 Hungary issued a stamp portraying Pope Sylvester II, Archbishop of Astrik. [Scott #511] 1962 The standard meter is redefined as \the length of 1,656,763.83 wave lengths of a certain type of orange colored radiation given off in a vacuum by the atom of krypton 86." [Martin Gardner, Relativity for the Million (1962), p 5]. 1999 How would you write the Roman numeral for the antepenultimate year of the twentieth century? Should we write it purely additively as MDCCCCLXXXXVIIII or should we use the subtractive principle and write MXMXCIX. Or do you prefer the mimimal solution MIM? This question stumped Marilyn vos Savant, who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under \Highest IQ." [Prade Magazine, 5 November 1989, p. 2] 2001 The first day of the 21st century. This is the answer to a good trivia question; 2000 is the last year of the 20th century and is a leap year. c Copyright V. Frederick Rickey MMX Typeset using TEX on June 16, 2010 at 1:55 P.M. V. Frederick Rickey A CALENDAR OF MATHEMATICAL DATES Page 2 2 January 1663 The Republic of Venice offered Stefano DegliAngeli (1623{1697) the professorship of mathemat- ics at the University of Padua, a post that Galileo held earlier. He was a student of Cavalieri who generalized the Archimedian spiral. See DSB 1, 164. 1697 In his New Year's greetings to Duke Rudolph August, Leibniz sent a \thought-penny or medal" showing his invention of the binary system. Leibniz argued that just as all numbers can be created from the symbols 0 and 1, so God created all things. [The Monist 26 (1916), p 561]. 1738/9 At age 23, John Winthrop, former pupil of Isaac Greenwood, succeeded him as the second Hollis Professor at Harvard. [I. B. Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science, p. 36] 1822 Rudolf Clausius born. He established the foundations of modern thermodynamics. 1879 West Point cadet J. W. Acton wrote in his copy of Charles Davies' Algebra (1877 edition) that he had been examined on logarithms and \fessed cold," which was cadet slang for flunking. Then he added this ditty: This study was ordained in hell to torment those who on earth dwell And it suits its purpose well Glory Hallelujah!! Amen! Amen! Amen! Apparently Acton never mastered logarithms for he did not graduate from USMA. 1890 President Benjamin Harrison received, from the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France, an exact duplicate of the standard kilogram; it is housed at the Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. [Thanks to Howard Eves] 1920 Isaac Asimov born. He has written more than 300 books, many of which deal with mathematics. 1947 Matt Weinstock's column in the Los Angeles Daily News began: \Readers of Esquire magazine [January 1948] ::: are slowly losing their minds over a story by Martin Gardner" entitled the \No-Sided Professor." This story is the first time that the M¨obiusstrip, a one-sided surface, was used in a piece of fantasy. The story is reprinted in Gardner's The No-Sided Professor (1987), pp 45{58. 1979 Software Arts incorporated. They designed and programmed VisiCalc, the best-selling micro- computer program ever made. 3 January 1777 Birthdate of Louis Poinsot, discover of star polyhedra. 1870 Construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge. 1920 Zygmunt Janiszewski died. Later in 1920 the first volume of Fundamenta Mathematicae, which he founded, appeared. [Kuratowski, Half Century of Polish Mathematics, p. 33.] 1956 Israel issued the world's first postage stamp picturing Albert Einstein, the German born Amer- ican theoretical physicist who invented the theory of Relativity. Naturally his famous equation E = mc2 appears on the stamp. [Scott #117] 1977 Apple incorporated. 4 January 1754 Kings College, now Columbia University, founded in New York City. 1845 The Italian geometer Giusto Bellavitis (1803{1880) was appointed, via a competitive examina- tion, full professor of descriptive geometry at the University of Padua. He held no degrees until the university awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy and mathematics the following year. [DSB 1, 590] 1952 While still a movie actor and before he entered politics, Ronald Reagan wrote to a high school student who had asked advice on how to become a sports announcer (one of Reagan's earlier V. Frederick Rickey A CALENDAR OF MATHEMATICAL DATES Page 3 jobs). In the letter Reagan confessed that he had a weakness in mathematics. [Eves, Return to Mathematical Circles, ◦33.] 1958 Sputnik I, the first artificial earth satellite, fell to earth. See October 4, 1957. 1987 The New York Times reported that an Energy Expo in Seattle unveiled \high-tech, energy- efficient buildings. ::: Some of the judges' favorites include ::: an office building with `parabolic' lighting fixtures designed to focus light better than flat systems." Isn't it amazing how long it takes technology to catch up with theory? 5 January 1643 Isaac Newton born. It was Christmas day of 1642, old style. 1665 The first volume of the Journal des Savants appeared in Paris. [Muller] 1838 Birthdate of Camille Jordan. 1871 Federigo Enriques born in Leghorn, Italy. In 1907 he and Severi received the Bordin Prize from the Paris Academy for their work on hyperelliptical surfaces. [DSB 4, 373]. 1871 Gino Fano born in Mantua, Italy. He was a pioneer in finite geometries [DSB 4, 523]. 1874 In a letter to Dedekind, Cantor asks if the points in a square can be put in one-to-one cor- respondence with those on a line. \Methinks that answering this question would be no easy job, despite the fact that the answer seems so clearly to be `no' that proof appears almost unnecessary." It was three years before Cantor could prove the answer was \yes". [DSB 3, 54] 1974 The famous grasshopper weather vane atop Faneuil Hall in Boston was removed by thieves, but later recovered. When a weather vane was fashioned for this famous trading hall of colonial Boston, the grasshopper was chosen as it appears on the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of England's Royal Exchange. He also founded the earliest professorship of mathematics in Great Britain, the chair in Geometry at Gresham College London. [Eves, Adieu, 28◦] 6 January 1699 Newton wrote Flamsteed, probably alluding to Bernoulli's challenge of the brachistochrone problem, \I do not love ::: to be dunned and teezed by forreigners about Mathematical things ::: " [Westfall, 582]. 1838 Telegraph first publically tested. 1887 Sherlock Holmes \born"|at age 33|in a short story, \A Study in Scarlet," published in London in the now defunct Strand Magazine. Mr. Holmes no longer lives at 221 B. Baker Street. \At the moment he is in retirement in Sussex keeping bees." All mathematicians should admire and emulate his deductive powers. 1900 Frege wrote to Hilbert: \Suppose we know that the propositions (1) A is an intelligent being, (2) A is omnipresent, (3) A is omnipotent, together with all their consequences did not contradict one another; could we infer from this that there was an omnipotent, omnipresent, intelligent being?" [Frege's Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence]. [Thanks to Smory´nski] 7 January 1610 Galileo discovered the first three moons of Jupiter (now ? are known), or the Medicean Stars, as he named them after his patron.
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