![The Famous Problem of the Brachistochrone](/content/images/size/w600/2024/02/1-mrER7ni6Xa4cGhUIrs6c4w-2.webp)
Calculus
The Famous Problem of the Brachistochrone
From Newton’s “Lion Claws” to the Modern Solution
Calculus
From Newton’s “Lion Claws” to the Modern Solution
Fermat
A journey through Fermat’s pseudoprimes and Fermat numbers
Wald
The legend of Abraham Wald
Zero
Gems in STEM: The History of Zero
Number Theory
How Hippasus of Metapontum ended up being drowned at sea for coming up with a groundbreaking proof.
Abel
“Although Abel shared with many mathematicians a complete lack of musical talent, I will not sound absurd if I compare his kind of…
Ramanujan
“I had never seen anything in the least like [it] before” — G.H. Hardy On or about the 31st of January 1913, mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) of Trinity College at Cambridge University received a parcel of papers from Madras, India. The package included a cover letter where a young
Calculus
How modern calculus of variations solved an ancient math problem.
Economics
A Debate on the Scientific or Ideological Nature of Economics
Geometry
How far are you, my Sunshine?
Feynman
“I went through fire on my first.” While still a graduate student at Princeton University in 1940, Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988) gave his first lecture in a seminar on electrodynamics, the topic that would eventually earn him the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics. In front of a prestigious audience
Gödel
Hungarian polymath John von Neumann (1903–1957) once wrote that Kurt Gödel was “absolutely irreplaceable” and “in a class by himself”.
Ramanujan
On or about the 31st of January 1913, mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) of Trinity College at Cambridge University received a parcel of papers from Madras, India which included a cover letter from an aspiring young Indian mathematician by the name of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920).
Physics
The now famous Einstein-Szilárd letter was written at the initiative of Hungarian nuclear physicist Leó Szilárd with help from Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner in 1939.
Feynman
«You don’t understand “ordinary people”. To you they are “stupid fools”» Entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram is a unique egg. By age 14, he had written three books on particle physics. He earned his Ph.D. at age 20 and began publishing research papers at the age of 18, some of
History
How big are you, my Earth?