HackingTheUniverse

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If you have not yet taken a look at Khan Academy, you should. KHANACADEMY – [khanacademy.org] Founded by Salman Kahn in 2006, the academy is non-profit educational resource that uses youtube videos as a primary teaching/learning tool. The videos come in a short enough format to keep attention focused, usually in a range from 6-12 […]

Clio Cresswell is a mathematician who believes in using math in her everyday life. She’s also good looking. Mathematics and sex | Clio Cresswell | TEDxSydney – [youtube.com] Mathematics and sex are deeply intertwined. From using mathematics to reveal patterns in our sex lives, to using sex to prime our brain for certain types of […]

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1646 and became known primarily for his contributions to philosophy and mathematics but was also accomplished in many other fields. He created the modern binary number system that is used by computers and at the same time as Newton, invented calculus. He invented the mathematical sign […]

Rudolph Kalman was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930 and was known for his work in mathematics and electrical engineering. The “Kalman filter” is an algorithm known as a linear quadratic estimation, and is used in time series analysis and applied to signal processing, trajectory optimization, and econometrics. This means it is used widely in […]

Paul Erdos was born in 1913 in Hungary and was a mathematician. He had an eccentric personality and was one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, either writing or collaborating on 1,475 papers. He did work in number theory, set theory, and probability theory, and is credited with founding the field of discrete mathematics. […]

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in 1887 in southern India. He was a self taught mathematical genius, who learned by reading books and often struggled with studies in school other than mathematics because of his intense focus. At the age of fifteen, he learned how cubic equations had been solved and developed his own technique to […]

Charles Hermite was born in the Lorraine region of France in 1822 and was a mathematician. He made contributions to number theory, algebra, and elliptic functions. He used elliptic functions to solve a fifth degree algebraic equation. In 1873, he proved that “e” is a transcendental number. PREQUISITE: 1707 – Euler 1736 – Lagrange 1777 […]

Georg Cantor was born in 1845, in Russia, but spent most of his life in Germany and is known as a German mathematician who invented set theory. In 1874, he published a paper titled, “On a Characteristic Property of All Real Algebraic Numbers”, which examined relationships between the elements of two sets. Cantor also did […]

Friedrich Engel was born in 1861 in Saxony (now Germany) and was a mathematician primarily known for collaborating with Sophus Lie to publish, “Theory of Transformation Groups”. He did his doctoral studies under the guidance of Felix Klein. He studied the history of non-euclidean geometry and translated some of the papers of Lobachevsky from Russian […]

Shen Kuo was born in 1031 in Qiantang (Hangzhou today) in Eastern China. He excelled in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, medicine, literature, engineering, and was also known as a diplomat and expert at military strategy. Both his knowledge and assorted skills were encyclopedic. PRECURSOR: -0325 – Euclid 0220 – Ma Jun 0283 […]