Mathematics in Modern World

Quiz 1 Reviewer
Nature’s Numbers
by Ian Stewart
Chapter 1 The Natural Order

​Mathematics - formal system of thought for recognizing, classifying, and exploiting patterns
The Six Cornered Snowflake – book written by German Astronomer Johannes Kepler four
hundred years ago
planetes – Greek term for planets which literally means wanderer
Two types of patterns:
a) Fractals - are geometric shapes that repeat their structure on ever-finer scales
b) Chaos - chaos is a kind of apparent randomness whose origins are entirely
deterministic
Numbers – simplest mathematical objects
Numerology – easiest and most dangerous method for finding patterns
General shape – collection of dots, and can be represented as a list of pair of numbers
Chapter 2 What Mathematics is For

​Ellipse – oval curve that was much studied by ancient Greek geometers
Isaac Newton – made the epic discovery that the motion of an object is described by a
mathematical relation between forces that act on the body and the acceleration it experiences
Acceleration – “second order” rate of change; rate of change of a rate of change
Gottfried Leibniz – German mathematician who invented calculus
Gregor Mendel – discovered genes
Erwin Chagaff – discovered that the four bases of DNA molecule occur in related proportions
Daniel Nielsson & Susanne Pelger – computer simulation of evolution of the eye
Chapter 3 What Mathematics is About

​Numbers – heart of mathematics

​Concept of Zero – invented between 400 and 1200 AD
​Carl Friedrich Gauss – dubbed as the greatest mathematician ever; non notationes, sed notions
​Operations – something you apply to two objects to get a third object
​Functions – mathematical rule that starts with a mathematical object
​
Bertrand Russel & Alfred North Whitehead – wrote the three volume work, Principia
Mathematica

​Proof – determines the route from one fact to another

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 Chapter 4 Constants of Change

​Heraclitus – “you can’t step in the same river twice”

​John Maynard Kaynes – wrote the essay Newton, the Man
​Ptolemy – theory of planetary motion
​Paul Dirac – “God is a mathematician”
Charles-Eugene Delaunay – wrote an entire book with a single approximation to the motion of
the Moon
Zhihong Xia – proved that three-body system is not integrable
Vladimir Arnold – discovered the Arnold diffusion
Chapter 5 From Violin to Videos

​Number Theory – dubbed as queen of mathematics by Gauss

​Sinusoidal waves – shaped like a sine curve
​Brook Taylor – published the fundamental vibrational frequency of a violin
​Jean Le Rond d’Alembert – showed that many vibrations of a violin string are not sine waves
​Leonhard Euler – worked out the wave equation for the string
​Daniel Bernoulli – solved the wave equation
​William Gilbert – described Earth as a giant magnet
​Benjamin Franklin – proved that lightning is a form of electricity
​Luigi Calvani – noticed that electrical sparks in frog’s leg muscles caused it to contract
​Alessandro Volta – first battery
​Michael Faraday – electric current would create magnetic force; theory of electromagnetism
​James Clerk Maxwell – electromagnetism
​Heinrich Hertz – generated electromagnetic waves
​Guglielmo Marconi – first wireless telegraphy

Chapter 6 Broken Symmetry

​Pierre Curie – “effects are as symmetric as their causes”

​Spontaneous symmetry breaking – effects that are not as symmetric as their causes
​Types of symmetry:
​ ​Translation (slides) – transformations that slide objects along without rotating them
Reflection (flips) – choose some point on the original object and look at where that point

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 ends
Rotation (turns) - choose a point, called the center, and turn the object about that center,
as a wheel turns about its hub
B.P. Belousov – discovered a chemical reaction that spontaneously formed patterns, apparently
out of nothing

​A. M. Zhabotinskii – modified Belousov’s reaction

​Jack Cohen & Arthur Winfree – refined the B-Z reaction
Chapter 7 The Rhythm of Life

​Eadweard Muybridge – pioneered the study of gaits

Eberhard Hopf – known for the Hoph bifurcation; proved that if the simplified system wobbles,
so does the original system
Milton Hildebrand – noticed that most gaits possess a degree of symmetry
Chapter 8 Do Dice play God?
Pierre-Simon de Laplace – wrote Analytic Theory of Probabilities; believes in a deterministic
world
42 – the answer of Deep Thought(a supercomputer) when instructed by Majikthise and
Vroomfondel to calculate the answer to the Great Question in life
Albert Einstein – refused to believe that God plays dice
Chaos behavior obeys deterministic laws
Henri Poincare – invented the concept of phase space
Mitchell Feigenbaum – discovered how the period of the drips relates to the rate of flow of the
water; 4.669, quantitative signature for any period-doubling cascade,
Chapater 9 Drops, Dynamics, and Daisies
Complexity theory - large-scale simplicities emerge from the complex interactions of large
numbers of components
Leonardo Fibonacci – invented the Fibonacci number; in which each number is the sum of the
two that precedes it
BOOK
Chapter 1: Mathematics and its History
Mathematics – comes from the Greek word mathema, “subject of instruction”
Sumer/Babylonia (3000 – 1750 BC)
- had the earliest known writing system called cuneiform
- developed a mathematical system to measure land, plots, taxation etc.
- probably the first people to use symbolic representation to describe numbers larger than 10
Egyptian
- papyrus, closest use of paper
- first approached mathematics through recording the phases of moon, and of the seasons
- utilized body parts as measurement
- in 2700 BC, they introduced a fully developed base-10 numeration system; no concept of place value
- Moscow papyrus, 2000-1800 BCE, oldest mathematical text recorded
- Rhind papyrus, 1650 BCE, first manual for the basic arithmetic operations and geometry

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 - Berlin papyrus , 1300 BCE, shows evidence of Egyptians able to solve quadratic equations
- almost approximation of pi with less than % difference
Greek
- the Grecian numerical system is known as Attic or Herodianic Numerals, base 10 numeral system
- mostly dealt with mathematical relying on logic, concept of providing proof for a definitive statement
- favored deductive reasoning
- first to delve about the concept of infinity through Zeno’s Tortoise Paradox
Pythagoras – formulated the Pythagorean theorem, led to advances in the early study of geometry
Hellenistic – period of the empire of Alexander the Great
The Library – Greek version of university founded by Ptolemy I and his successors in Egypt; rivals the
Athenian academy
Euclid – most celebrated Greek mathematician, father of Geometry, compiled his works on his book
Stoicheion or Elements
Archimedes – one of the greatest pure mathematicians of all time, works includes Archimedes palimpsest
and Method of Exhaustion( yields a close approximation to the value of pi ranging between 31/7 to 310/7)
rd
Eratosthenes of Alexandria – considered as the Archimedes of 3 Century BC, greatest work is the Sieve
of Eratosthenes (simple algorithm primarily used to identify the prime numbers up to any value)
Chinese
- thrived mostly due to their trade tactics
- uses bamboo rods or sticks to denote numbers 1 to 9, zero is absent in their numbering system
nd
- Suanpan is the first Chinese abacus which dates back only to 2 century BCE
- due to their fascination with astrology, they used mathematics as a tool to chart stars and their cosmic
significance
- magic squares are square of numbers where each row, column and diagonal added up to the same sum,
believed to have religious and cosmic significance
- the need for administrators and government employees who are competent in math is the main catalyst
for advancement of Chinese mathematics
- Jiuzhang Suanshu or Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (200 BC) is a textbook that became the
center point for mathematical training of would be govt. Officials
Indian
- Indian civilization started on the Indus Valley 3000 to 2000 BCE
- Mantras from early Vedic period is proof of Indian’s ability to write numbers with powers of 10 up to a
trillion
- Buddha came remarkable close to the actual size of a Carbon atom
th
- Sulba Sutras (8 Century BCE) listed a couple of simple Pythagorean triples
- Jain mathematicians recognized 5 different types of infinities
3 categories of numbers according to Indian literature:
1. numbers that can be counted 2. numbers that cannot be counted 3. infinity
Bindu – ancient Hindu symbol of a circle with a dot in the middle, symbolizing void or negation of self,
probably influenced the use of circle as a representation of zero
Harappan period – concept of decimal system was used
Golden Age of Indian mathematics – concepts of trigonometric functions was utilized to measure land
size, navigation through the sea and the chart of heaven

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 Surya Siddhanta – contains the roots of modern trigonometry, first real use of trigonometric functions
Benara – center for mathematical study
Madhava – discovered series expansion of cos and sin functions before Newton by almost three centuries
and the unpolished Newton-Gauss interpolation formulate
Charles Whish – published the paper Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Ireland which recognized the works of Madhava or the Kerala mathematics
Medieval Europe
- dark ages
- Robert Chester translated Euclid’s Elements and al-Khwarizmi’s book to Latin
Nicole Oresme – introduced rectangular coordinate system
Rene Descartes – popularized the same idea, first to use fractional exponents, worked with infinite series ,
and the first to prove that the harmonic series is a divergent infinite series
th
Renaissance Mathematics (16 Century)
- resurgence of learning
- standardization and use of mathematical sysmbols such as multiplication, division, equals, radical,
decimal and inequality symbols

Symbol Founder

+/- Johannes Widmann(1439)/Luca Pacioli(1494)/Giel

Vander Hoecke(1514)

x William Oughtred (1631 or 1618)

. (multiplication) Gottfried Leibniz (1698) / Johann Bernoulli (1694)

/ (division) Johann Rahn (1659)/John Pell (1688)

“=” Robert Recorde (1557)/William Oughtred (1618)

< / > Thomas Harriot (1631)

exponents Nicolas Chuquet (1484)/Pierre Herigone

(1634)/Rene Descartes (1637)

Radical root Christoff Rudolff (1525) / Albert Guard (1629) /

Rene Descartes (1637)

Fraction bar Fibonacci (1202)

Decimal point Francesco Pellos ( 1492)/ G.A. Magini

(1592)/Bartholomaeus Pitiscus (1595)/ John Napier
(1617)

th
17 Century mathematicians and their works/contributions

Name Work/Contribution

Rene Descartes - published Discoures de la methode and La

Geometrie
- Cartesian coordinate system
- Father of Modern philosophu
-rule of sign

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 Pierre de Fermat - two square theorem
- Piece de resistance theorem

Blaise Pascal - Pascal’s theorem

- Pascal’s triangle

Isaac Newton - infinitesimal calculus (method of fluxions, method

of fluents)
- Generalized Binomial Theorem

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - infinitesimal calculus ( differentiation and

integration)
- rediscovered a method of arranging linear equation
into array or matrix
- binary number system

th
18 Century
- dominated by the Bernoulli (Jacob and Johann) family and Leonhard Euler
- Jacob Bernoulli was the first person to use the word integral referring to the area under the curve and
invented the polar coordinates
- Euler standardized most of the mathematical equations used up to date, and developed the Euler’s
Identity and Euler’s formula

​
th
19 Century Mathematicians and their Works

Name Works

Evariste Galois - theory of equations

- solving quantic equations
- Abelian integrals

Carl Friedrich Gauss - Prince of Mathematics and greatest mathematician

since antiquity
- formulated prime number theorem
- first clear exposition of complex numbers
- Proved the fundamental concepts of Algebra
-Published Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
- Established the Gaussian distribution, Gaussian
function and the Gaussian error curve
- Number theory

Janos Bolyai - explored imaginary geometry (hyperbolic

geometry)

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 Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky - contributed on the development of Euclid’s fifth
postulate
- contribution on hyperbolic geometry

Bernhard Riemann - developed elliptic geometry

- contributed on the concept of multi-dimensional
space or hyperspace
- contributions on number theory
- developed the function in the complex plane called
the Riemann zeta function
- combined Newton’s Differential and Leibniz’s
Integral Calculus

Georg Cantor - gave mathematical meaning to the concept of

infinity with precision
- refined set theory
- introduce the concept of ordinality and cardinality

George Boole - established Boolean algebra

th
20 Century
- defines mathematics as a field of study that can stand alone and not just a field of study that is developed
due to its practical applications
- hundreds of specialized areas and field of study such as:
1. group theory
2. graph theory
3. functional analysis
4. singularity theory
5. chaos theory
6. model theory
7. category theory
8. game theory
9. complexity theory

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