The third instalment of BBC’s Story
of Maths titled Frontiers of Space talks about what and where the mathematical
ideas progressed during the seventeenth century.
It is said that during the
seventeenth century, the mathematics of Piero della Francesca, Reñe Descartes,
Pierre de Fermat, Leibniz and Isaac Newton’s dispute, the Bernoulli family,
Leonhard Euler, Carl Friedrich Gauss and János Bolyai had an outstanding
contribution to the world of mathematics.
During the seventeenth century, many
people all around the world are having a hard time in representing a third
dimensional image in a two dimensional canvass. However, the famous painting
“The Flagellation of Christ” painted by Piero introduces Perspective wherein
what you see on the real world is drawn on a flat surface such as paper and
canvass and this solved this particular problem. And this lead to the beginning
of a new way to understand geometry.
A mathematician in a village in the center of
France named Descartes was famous for his book La Géometrié, where he linked
both algebra and geometry which became a ground breaking discovery at that time
and this discovery lead the people of France to name a village after him. He
also introduced the formula:
x2 + y2 = r2
to determine whether a curve of a
bridge (or any other curve) is a part of a circle or not.
Fermat’s greatest contribution to
mathematics is that he virtually invented the number theory wherein prime
numbers divided by four remainder 1 could always be written as two square
numbers added together and this would always work however big the number is.
The dispute between Leibniz and
Newton started with the discovery of the miracle of calculus. Both of them
claims that they discovered it first. The royal society decided to end the
disagreement between these two and decided to give the title of first discovery
to Newton and first publication to Leibniz.
The Bernoullis are famous in Europe for
they are a family of mathematicians. Without them, it would take much longer
for calculus to be what it is today. Their calculus of variation have benefited
businessmen to maximize profit and designers to optimize construction.
Because of Leonhard Euler, the symbol
of pi was popularized for he combined and formulated the math alchemy:
Carl Friedrich Gauss, the prince of
mathematics, is the first to explain the imaginary numbers clearly and his tower,
the Gauss tower, questions Euclid’s geometry. While János Bolyai introduced the
hyperbolic geometry.
It is good to know that there are
still people who greatly value these mathematicians that they allot their time
in preserving and taking good care of some of these mathematician’s books where
they used to solve and also building monuments to give recognition to these
people. However, there is a part in the documentary that shows that there are
people who doesn’t know, apart from the discovery of gravitation, Isaac
Newton’s other contributions to math (and come to think of it they live in a
place where there is a monument of Isaac Newton.
All in all, I learned another great
thing about math and that is Mathematics and its relation to geometry time and
space in regards to fixed objects. I also learned that there is a place that is
all about math with mathematical games that would catch the interest of many
people and to be able to actually make them do math.
BY: DAISIC DE ASIS BELLO
Yeah, i learned a lot too.. This is the first time I realized and found out that mathematics and art do connect :)
ReplyDeleteIts really interesting to know that math works in almost everything..
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ReplyDeleteYeah.. people from Europe really value their mathematicians and their mathematics.I really appreciate their generosity because they share their mathematics to us.
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