Champions of Mathematics by Tiner John Hudson

Author:Tiner, John Hudson [Tiner, John Hudson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Biblical Biography / General
ISBN: 9781614583080
Publisher: Master Books
Published: 2000-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

A FAMILY OF

MATHEMATICIANS

The Bible says, “Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance” (Matt. 13:12). Jesus was speaking of spiritual matters. Scientists call this statement Matthew’s law and apply it to the way certain locations attract great scientists. Once a university earns a good reputation, bright students flock there and enhance its appeal even more.

In ancient Greece, Athens earned the reputation as the center of learning. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lived in Athens. The city attracted students who wanted to study under the great thinkers of that age.

Later, Alexandria rose to the center of learning. Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and others made it the powerhouse of mathematics and astronomy. Informed students abandoned Athens in favor of Alexandria.

Following the Dark Ages, cities in Italy rose to prominence. In the 1500s, Florence became a center for artists. Leonardo da Vinci studied and painted there. Pisa, Italy, had its share of great scientists who helped the revival of learning in Europe. Marcello Malpighi taught medicine at the University of Pisa. He discovered the tiny capillary blood vessels that connected arteries to veins.

Galileo studied at the University of Pisa. To prove his contention that all objects fall at the same speed, he was rumored to have dropped two balls of different weights from the Leaning tower of Pisa. Later, Galileo taught at the University of Padua, another Italian city.

In the 1600s, the scene shifted to England. The chemist Robert Boyle, his assistant Robert Hooke, architect Christopher Wren, astronomer Edmund Halley, and Isaac Newton made London, with its Royal Society, the chief city for scientific discoveries. For almost one hundred years scientists visited London to learn the latest advances.

In the 1700s, Basel, a university town in Switzerland took the lead. Sometimes it is difficult to know why one town becomes the center of learning. In the case of Basel, the reason is easy to understand. The success of Basel can be traced to a single family – the Bernoullis.

Nicolaus Bernoulli came to Switzerland because of its greater religious freedom. He became a wealthy merchant. He had three sons: Jacob, Nicolaus, and Johann. He assumed his first son, Jacob, would become a businessman, too. Instead, Jacob mastered calculus on his own and made improvements to it. He taught calculus at the university in Basel, Switzerland.

Calculus makes it possible to study bodies that have two motions at once. For instance, suppose a wagon wheel is rolling forward. A point on the wheel has two motions – the forward motion of the wagon and a circular motion as the wheel rotates. What curve does the point on the wheel trace out? The curve is called a cycloid, which Jacob investigated with calculus.

For practical applications, mathematicians were interested in figuring the highest, lowest, shortest, or fastest. Suppose a farmer wanted to build a sheep pen, but had only enough stone to make one with a certain perimeter (distance around). What shape should it have to enclose the most space? Should it be a triangle, rectangle, square,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.