Name

While there is a tendency to misspell his name as "Aryabhatta" by analogy with other names having the "bhatta" suffix, his name is properly spelled Aryabhata: every astronomical text spells his name thus,[1] including Brahmagupta's references to him "in more than a hundred places by name".[2] Furthermore, in most instances "Aryabhatta" does not fit the metre either.[1]
[edit]Birth

Aryabhata mentions in the Aryabhatiya that it was composed 3,600 years into the Kali Yuga, when he was 23 years old. This corresponds to 499 CE, and implies that he was born in 476 CE. Aryabhata provides no information about his place of birth. The only information comes from Bh skara I, who describes Aryabhata as mak ya, "one belonging to the a maka country." It is widely attested that, during the Buddha's time, a branch of the A maka people settled in the region between the Narmada and Godavari rivers in central India, today the South GujaratNorth Maharashtra region. Aryabhata is believed to have been born there.[1][3] However, early Buddhist texts describe Ashmaka as being further south, in dakshinapath or theDeccan, while other texts describe the Ashmakas as having fought Alexander,
[edit]Work

It is fairly certain that, at some point, he went to Kusumapura for advanced studies and that he lived there for some time.[4] Both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, as well as Bh skara I (CE 629), identify Kusumapura as P aliputra, modern Patna.[1] A verse mentions that Aryabhata was the head of an institution (kulapa) at Kusumapura, and, because the university ofNalanda was in Pataliputra at the time and had an astronomical observatory, it is speculated that Aryabhata might have been the head of the Nalanda university as well.[1] Aryabhata is also reputed to have set up an observatory at the Sun temple in Taregana, Bihar.[5]
[edit]Other

hypotheses

It was suggested that Aryabhata may have been from Tamilnadu, but K. V. Sarma, an authority on Kerala's astronomical tradition, disagreed[1] and pointed out several errors in this hypothesis.[6] Aryabhata mentions "Lanka" on several occasions in the Aryabhatiya, but his "Lanka" is an abstraction, standing for a point on the equator at the same longitude as his Ujjayini.[7]
[edit]Works

Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on mathematics and astronomy, some of which are lost. His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines. The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary, Varahamihira, and later mathematicians and commentators, including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I. This work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta and uses the midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. It also contained a description of several astronomical instruments: the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra), possibly angle-measuring devices, semicircular and circular (dhanur-yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called the chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.[3] A third text, which may have survived in the Arabic translation, is Al ntf or Al-nanf. It claims that it is a translation by Aryabhata, but the Sanskrit name of this work is not known. Probably dating from the 9th century, it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India, Ab Rayh n al-B r n .[3]
[edit]Aryabhatiya

Direct details of Aryabhata's work are known only from the Aryabhatiya. The name "Aryabhatiya" is due to later commentators. Aryabhata himself may not have given it a name. His disciple Bhaskara I calls it Ashmakatantra (or the treatise from the Ashmaka). It is also occasionally referred to as Arya-shatas-aShTa (literally, Aryabhata's 108), because there are 108 verses in the text. It is written in the very terse style typical of sutra literature, in which each line is an aid to memory for a complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to commentators. The text consists of the 108 verses and 13 introductory verses, and is divided into four p das or chapters: 1. Gitikapada: (13 verses): large units of timekalpa, manvantra, and yugawhich present a cosmology different from earlier texts such as Lagadha's Vedanga Jyotisha (c. 1st century BCE). There is also a table of sines (jya), given in a single verse. The duration of the planetary revolutions during a mahayuga is given as 4.32 million years. 2. Ganitapada (33 verses): covering mensuration (k etra vy vah ra), arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon / shadows (shanku-chhAyA), simple, quadratic, simultaneous, and indeterminate equations (kuTTaka) 3. Kalakriyapada (25 verses): different units of time and a method for determining the positions of planets for a given day, calculations concerning the intercalary month (adhikamAsa), kShaya-tithis, and a seven-day week with names for the days of week. 4. Golapada (50 verses): Geometric/trigonometric aspects of the celestial sphere, features of the ecliptic, celestial equator, node, shape of the earth, cause of day and night, rising ofzodiacal signs on horizon, etc. In addition, some versions cite a few colophons added at the end, extolling the virtues of the work, etc. The Aryabhatiya presented a number of innovations in mathematics and astronomy in verse form, which were influential for many centuries. The extreme brevity of the text was elaborated in commentaries by his

disciple Bhaskara I (Bhashya, c. 600 CE) and by Nilakantha Somayaji in his Aryabhatiya Bhasya, (1465 CE).
[edit]Mathematics [edit]Place

value system and zero

The place-value system, first seen in the 3rd century Bakhshali Manuscript, was clearly in place in his work. While he did not use a symbol for zero, the French mathematician Georges Ifrah explains that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata's place-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients[8] However, Aryabhata did not use the Brahmi numerals. Continuing the Sanskritic tradition from Vedic times, he used letters of the alphabet to denote numbers, expressing quantities, such as the table of sines in a mnemonic form.[9]
[edit]Approximation

of

Aryabhata worked on the approximation for pi ( ), and may have come to the conclusion that is irrational. In the second part of the Aryabhatiyam (ga itap da 10), he writes: caturadhikam atama agu am dv a istath sahasr m ayutadvayavi kambhasy sanno v ttapari ha . "Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000 can be approached."[10] This implies that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter is ((4 + 100) 8 + 62000)/20000 = 62832/20000 = 3.1416, which is accurate to five significant figures. It is speculated that Aryabhata used the word sanna (approaching), to mean that not only is this an approximation but that the value is incommensurable (or irrational). If this is correct, it is quite a sophisticated insight, because the irrationality of pi was proved in Europe only in 1761 by Lambert.[11] After Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic (c. 820 CE) this approximation was mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra.[3]

[edit]Trigonometry

In Ganitapada 6, Aryabhata gives the area of a triangle as tribhujasya phalashariram samadalakoti bhujardhasamvargah that translates to: "for a triangle, the result of a perpendicular with the half-side is the area."[12] Aryabhata discussed the concept of sine in his work by the name of ardha-jya. Literally, it means "half-chord". For simplicity, people started calling it jya. When Arabic writers translated his works from Sanskrit into Arabic, they referred it as jiba. However, in Arabic writings, vowels are omitted, and it was abbreviated as jb. Later writers substituted it with jiab, meaning "cove" or "bay." (In Arabic, jiba is a meaningless word.) Later in the 12th century, when Gherardo of Cremona translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, he replaced the Arabic jiabwith its Latin counterpart, sinus, which means "cove" or "bay". And after that, the sinus became sine in English.[13]
[edit]Indeterminate

equations

A problem of great interest to Indian mathematicians since ancient times has been to find integer solutions to equations that have the form ax + by = c, a topic that has come to be known as diophantine equations. This is an example from Bh skara's commentary on Aryabhatiya: Find the number which gives 5 as the remainder when divided by 8, 4 as the remainder when divided by 9, and 1 as the remainder when divided by 7 That is, find N = 8x+5 = 9y+4 = 7z+1. It turns out that the smallest value for N is 85. In general, diophantine equations, such as this, can be notoriously difficult. They were discussed extensively in ancient Vedic text Sulba Sutras, whose more ancient parts might date to 800 BCE. Aryabhata's method of solving such problems is called the ku aka ( ) method.Kuttaka means "pulverizing" or "breaking into small pieces", and the method involves a recursive algorithm for writing the original factors in

smaller numbers. Today this algorithm, elaborated by Bhaskara in 621 CE, is the standard method for solving first-order diophantine equations and is often referred to as the Aryabhata algorithm.[14] The diophantine equations are of interest in cryptology, and the RSA Conference, 2006, focused on the kuttaka method and earlier work in the Sulbasutras.
[edit]Algebra

In Aryabhatiya Aryabhata provided elegant results for the summation of series of squares and cubes:[15]

and
[edit]Astronomy

Aryabhata's system of astronomy was called the audAyaka system, in which days are reckoned from uday, dawn at lanka or "equator". Some of his later writings on astronomy, which apparently proposed a second model (or ardha-rAtrikA, midnight) are lost but can be partly reconstructed from the discussion in Brahmagupta's khanDakhAdyaka. In some texts, he seems to ascribe the apparent motions of the heavens to the Earth's rotation. He also treated the planet's orbits as elliptical rather than circular.[16][17]
[edit]Motions

of the solar system

Aryabhata correctly insisted that the earth rotates about its axis daily, and that the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth, contrary to the then-prevailing view that the sky rotated. This is indicated in the first chapter of the Aryabhatiya, where he gives the number of rotations of the earth in a yuga,[18] and made more explicit in his gola chapter:[19]

In the same way that someone in a boat going forward sees an unmoving [object] going backward, so [someone] on the equator sees the unmoving stars going uniformly westward. The cause of rising and setting [is that] the sphere of the stars together with the planets [apparently?] turns due west at the equator, constantly pushed by the cosmic wind. Aryabhata described a geocentric model of the solar system, in which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles. They in turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found in the Pait mahasiddh nta (c. CE 425), the motions of the planets are each governed by two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) and a larger ghra (fast). [20] The order of the planets in terms of distance from earth is taken as: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the asterisms."[3] The positions and periods of the planets was calculated relative to uniformly moving points. In the case of Mercury and Venus, they move around the Earth at the same mean speed as the Sun. In the case of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, they move around the Earth at specific speeds, representing each planet's motion through the zodiac. Most historians of astronomy consider that this two-epicycle model reflects elements of pre-Ptolemaic Greek astronomy.[21] Another element in Aryabhata's model, the ghrocca, the basic planetary period in relation to the Sun, is seen by some historians as a sign of an underlying heliocentric model.[22]
[edit]Eclipses

Solar and lunar eclipses were scientifically explained by Aryabhata. Aryabhata states that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. Instead of the prevailing cosmogony in which eclipses were caused by pseudoplanetary nodes Rahu and Ketu, he explains eclipses in terms of shadows cast by and falling on Earth. Thus, the lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters into the Earth's

shadow (verse gola.37). He discusses at length the size and extent of the Earth's shadow (verses gola.3848) and then provides the computation and the size of the eclipsed part during an eclipse. Later Indian astronomers improved on the calculations, but Aryabhata's methods provided the core. His computational paradigm was so accurate that 18th century scientist Guillaume Le Gentil, during a visit to Pondicherry, India, found the Indian computations of the duration of the lunar eclipse of 30 August 1765 to be short by 41 seconds, whereas his charts (by Tobias Mayer, 1752) were long by 68 seconds.[3]
[edit]Sidereal

periods

Considered in modern English units of time, Aryabhata calculated the sidereal rotation (the rotation of the earth referencing the fixed stars) as 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds;[23]the modern value is 23:56:4.091. Similarly, his value for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes, and 30 seconds (365.25858 days)[24] is an error of 3 minutes and 20 seconds over the length of a year (365.25636 days).[25]
[edit]Heliocentrism

As mentioned, Aryabhata advocated an astronomical model in which the Earth turns on its own axis. His model also gave corrections (the gra anomaly) for the speeds of the planets in the sky in terms of the mean speed of the sun. Thus, it has been suggested that Aryabhata's calculations were based on an underlying heliocentric model, in which the planets orbit the Sun,[26][27][28] though this has been rebutted.[29] It has also been suggested that aspects of Aryabhata's system may have been derived from an earlier, likely pre-Ptolemaic Greek, heliocentric model of which Indian astronomers were unaware,[30] though the evidence is scant.[31] The general consensus is that a synodic anomaly (depending on the position of the sun) does not imply a physically heliocentric orbit (such corrections being also

present in late Babylonian astronomical texts), and that Aryabhata's system was not explicitly heliocentric.[32]
[edit]Legacy

Aryabhata's work was of great influence in the Indian astronomical tradition and influenced several neighbouring cultures through translations. The Arabic translation during the Islamic Golden Age (c. 820 CE), was particularly influential. Some of his results are cited by Al-Khwarizmi and in the 10th century Al-Biruni stated that Aryabhata's followers believed that the Earth rotated on its axis. His definitions of sine (jya), cosine (kojya), versine (utkramajya), and inverse sine (otkram jya) influenced the birth of trigonometry. He was also the first to specify sine and versine(1 cos x) tables, in 3.75 intervals from 0 to 90, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places. In fact, modern names "sine" and "cosine" are mistranscriptions of the words jya and kojya as introduced by Aryabhata. As mentioned, they were translated as jiba and kojiba in Arabic and then misunderstood by Gerard of Cremona while translating an Arabic geometry text to Latin. He assumed that jiba was the Arabic word jaib, which means "fold in a garment", L.sinus (c. 1150).[33] Aryabhata's astronomical calculation methods were also very influential. Along with the trigonometric tables, they came to be widely used in the Islamic world and used to compute manyArabic astronomical tables (zijes). In particular, the astronomical tables in the work of the Arabic Spain scientist Al-Zarqali (11th century) were translated into Latin as the Tables of Toledo (12th c.) and remained the most accurate ephemeris used in Europe for centuries. Calendric calculations devised by Aryabhata and his followers have been in continuous use in India for the practical purposes of fixing the Panchangam (the Hindu

calendar). In the Islamic world, they formed the basis of the Jalali calendar introduced in 1073 CE by a group of astronomers including Omar Khayyam,[34] versions of which (modified in 1925) are the national calendars in use in Iran and Afghanistan today. The dates of the Jalali calendar are based on actual solar transit, as in Aryabhata and earlier Siddhanta calendars. This type of calendar requires an ephemeris for calculating dates. Although dates were difficult to compute, seasonal errors were less in the Jalali calendar than in the Gregorian calendar. India's first satellite Aryabhata and the lunar crater Aryabhata are named in his honour. An Institute for conducting research in astronomy, astrophysics and atmospheric sciences is theAryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) near Nainital, India. The inter-school Aryabhata Maths Competition is also named after him,[35] as is Bacillus aryabhata, a species of bacteria discovered by ISRO scientists in 2009.[36]
[edit]See

also

   [edit]

ryabha a numeration Aryabhatiya Aryabhata's sine table

Isaac Newton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Isaac Newton

Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton (age 46)

Born

25 December 1642
[NS: 4 January 1643]
[1]

Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth Lincolnshire, England

Died

20 March 1727 (aged 84)

[NS: 31 March 1727]
[1]

Kensington, Middlesex, England

Residence

England

Nationality

English

Fields

Physics, mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, alchemy, Christian theology

Institutions

University of Cambridge Royal Society Royal Mint

Alma mater

Trinity College, Cambridge

Academic advisors

Isaac Barrow

[2] [3][4]

Benjamin Pulleyn

Notable students

Roger Cotes William Whiston

Known for

Newtonian mechanics Universal gravitation Infinitesimal calculus Optics Binomial series Newton's method Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Influences

Henry More

[5] [6]

Polish Brethren

Influenced

Nicolas Fatio de Duillier John Keill

Signature

Notes His mother was Hannah Ayscough. His half-niece wasCatherine Barton.

Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 20 March 1727 [NS: 4 January 1643 31 March 1727])[1] was an English physicist,mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian. His monograph Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus

removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution. The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written. Widely regarded as one of the most influential people in human history, Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope[7] and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series. Newton was also highly religious. He was an unorthodox Christian, and wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics, the subjects he is mainly associated with. Newton secretly rejected Trinitarianism, fearing to be accused of refusing holy orders.
Contents
[hide]

1 Life

o o

1.1 Early life 1.2 Middle years

   o o

1.2.1 Mathematics 1.2.2 Optics 1.2.3 Mechanics and gravitation

1.3 Later life 1.4 After death

  o

1.4.1 Fame 1.4.2 Commemorations

1.5 In popular culture

2 Religious views

o o

2.1 Effect on religious thought 2.2 Views of the end of the world

3 Enlightenment philosophers 4 Counterfeiters 5 Laws of motion 6 Apple analogy

7 Writings 8 See also 9 Footnotes and references 10 References 11 Further reading

o o

11.1 Religion 11.2 Primary sources

12 External links

12.1 Writings by him

Life
Early life
Main article: Early life of Isaac Newton Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 [OS: 25 December 1642][1] at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-byColsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. At the time of Newton's birth, England had not adopted the Gregorian calendar and therefore his date of birth was recorded as Christmas Day, 25 December 1642. Newton was born three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. Born prematurely, he was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscoughreportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug ( 1.1 litres). When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabus Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. The young Isaac disliked his stepfather and held some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."[8] While Newton was once engaged in his late teens to a Miss Storey, he never married, being highly engrossed in his studies and work.[9][10][11]

Newton in a 1702 portrait byGodfrey Kneller

Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of Science. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889)

From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham (where his alleged signature can still be seen upon a library window sill). He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where his mother, widowed by now for a second time, attempted to make a farmer of him. He hated farming.[12] Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student.[13] In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a sizar a sort of work-study role.[14] At that time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers, such as Descartes, and of astronomers such asCopernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became infinitesimal calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his degree in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against theGreat Plague. Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student,[15] Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on calculus, optics and the law of gravitation. In 1667, he returned to Cambridge as a fellow of Trinity.[16] Fellows were required to become ordained priests, something Newton desired to avoid due to his unorthodox views. Luckily for Newton, there was no specific deadline for ordination and it could be postponed indefinitely. The problem became more severe later when Newton was elected for the prestigious Lucasian Chair. For such a significant appointment, ordaining normally could not be dodged.

Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by means of a special permission from Charles II (see "Middle years" section below).

Middle years
Mathematics
Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied".[17] His work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus is seen, for example, in a manuscript of October 1666, now published among Newton's mathematical papers.[18] A related subject was infinite series. Newton's manuscript "De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas" ("On analysis by equations infinite in number of terms") was sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669: in August 1669 Barrow identified its author to Collins as "Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young ... but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things".[19] Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of infinitesimal calculus. Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed infinitesimal calculus independently, although with very different notations. Occasionally it has been suggested that Newton published almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account until 1704, while Leibniz began publishing a full account of his methods in 1684. (Leibniz's notation and "differential Method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians.) Such a suggestion, however, fails to notice the content of calculus which critics of Newton's time and modern times have pointed out in Book 1 of Newton's Principia itself (published 1687) and in its forerunner manuscripts, such as De motu corporum in gyrum ("On the motion of bodies in orbit"), of 1684. The Principia is not written in the language of calculus either as we know it or as Newton's (later) 'dot' notation would write it. But his work extensively uses an infinitesimal calculus in geometric form, based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishing small quantities: in thePrincipia itself Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of 'the method of first and last ratios'[20] and explained why he put his expositions in this form,[21] remarking also that 'hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles'. Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times[22] and "lequel est presque tout de ce calcul" ('nearly all of it is of this calculus') in Newton's time.[23] His use of methods involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684[24] and in his papers on motion "during the two decades preceding 1684".[25] Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism.[26] He had a very close relationship with Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who from the beginning was

impressed by Newton's gravitational theory. In 1691, Duillier planned to prepare a new version of Newton's Principia, but never finished it. However, in 1693 the relationship between the two men changed. At the time, Duillier had also exchanged several letters with Leibniz.[27] Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society (of which Newton was a member) accused Leibniz of plagiarism, and the dispute broke out in full force in 1711. The Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud. This study was cast into doubt when it was later found that Newton himself wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716.[28] Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula), and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. He was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669 on Barrow's recommendation. In that day, any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford was required to become an ordained Anglicanpriest. However, the terms of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder not be active in the church (presumably so as to have more time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.[29]

Optics

A replica of Newton's second Reflecting telescope that he presented to the Royal Society in 1672[30]

From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light.[31] He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour.[32] From this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours (chromatic aberration). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using a mirror as the objective to bypass that problem.[33] Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as a Newtonian telescope,[33] involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, usingNewton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668[34] he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope.[35] Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour, which he later expanded into his Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 167980, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, opened up a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions,[36] which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector (see Newton's law of universal gravitation History and De motu corporum in gyrum). But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke's death.[37] Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (Opticks Bk.II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of fits that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). Later physicists instead favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns, and the general phenomenon of diffraction. Today's quantum mechanics,photons and the idea of waveparticle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton's understanding of light. In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the theosophist Henry More, revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of the age

of reason: He was the last of the magicians."[38] Newton's interest in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science; however, he did apparently abandon his alchemical researches.[5] (This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science.) Had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity. (See also Isaac Newton's occult studies.) In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[39] Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe (Optics, 8th Query). In an article entitled "Newton, prisms, and the 'opticks' of tunable lasers[40] it is indicated that Newton in his book Opticks was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander. In the same book he describes, via diagrams, the use of multiple-prism arrays. Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multipleprism expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers. Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory.[40]

Mechanics and gravitation

Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand-written corrections for the second edition

Further information: Writing of Principia Mathematica In 1679, Newton returned to his work on (celestial) mechanics, i.e., gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets, with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 167980 with Hooke, who had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions.[36] Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 16801681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed.[41] After

the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector (see Newton's law of universal gravitation History and De motu corporum in gyrum). Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum, a tract written on about 9 sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684.[42] This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the Principia. The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that enabled many of the advances of the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not to be improved upon for more than 200 years, and are still the underpinnings of the non-relativistic technologies of the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation. In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis by 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination (based on Boyle's law) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of the spheroidal figure of the Earth, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the moon, provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more. Newton made clear his heliocentric view of the solar system developed in a somewhat modern way, because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the solar system.[43] For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line" (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest).[44] Newton's postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing "occult agencies" into science.[45] Later, in the second edition of thePrincipia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression Hypotheses non fingo). With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised.[46] He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with whom he formed an intense relationship that lasted until 1693, when it abruptly ended, at the same time that Newton suffered a nervous breakdown.[47]

Later life

Isaac Newton in old age in 1712, portrait by Sir James Thornhill

Personal coat of arms of Sir Isaac Newton[48]

Main article: Later life of Isaac Newton In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Henry More's belief in the Universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton's religious ideas. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published. Later works The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to alchemy (see above).

Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.[49] Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, somewhat treading on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower (and securing the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley). Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held until his death. These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the currency and punishclippers and counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint in 1717 in the "Law of Queen Anne" Newton moved the Pound Sterling de facto from the silver standard to the gold standard by setting the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and the silver penny in favour of gold. This caused silver sterling coin to be melted and shipped out of Britain. Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Acadmie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.[50] In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the Parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.[51] Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Sir Francis Bacon. Towards the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester with his niece and her husband, until his death in 1727.[52]Newton died in his sleep in London on 31 March 1727 [OS: 20 March
1726],[1]

and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His half-niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt,[53] served as his

hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle,"[54] according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox. Newton, a bachelor, had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and diedintestate. After his death, Newton's body was discovered to have had massive amounts of mercury in it, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.[55]

After death
Fame
French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the

world to establish."[56] English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's accomplishments to write the famous epitaph: Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light. Newton himself had been rather more modest of his own achievements, famously writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.[57][58] Two writers think that the above quote, written at a time when Newton and Hooke were in dispute over optical discoveries, was an oblique attack on Hooke (said to have been short and hunchbacked), rather than or in addition to a statement of modesty.[59][60] On the other hand, the widely known proverb about standing on the shoulders of giants published among others by 17th-century poet George Herbert (a former orator of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College) in his Jacula Prudentum (1651), had as its main point that "a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two", and so its effect as an analogy would place Newton himself rather than Hooke as the 'dwarf'. In a later memoir, Newton wrote: I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.[61] Newton remains influential to scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein. Royal Society scientists deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution.[62] In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of today's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever;" with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton.[63]

Commemorations

Newton statue on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Newton's monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey, at the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack (16941770) in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent. The monument features a figure of Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of 1680. A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism.[64] The Latin inscription on the base translates as: Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25 December 1642, and died on 20 March 1726/7. Translation from G.L. Smyth, The Monuments and Genii of St. Paul's Cathedral, and of Westminster Abbey (1826), ii, 7034.[64] From 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D 1 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last 1 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.[65] A statue of Isaac Newton, standing over an apple, can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

In popular culture
Main article: Isaac Newton in popular culture

Religious views
Main article: Isaac Newton's religious views

Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey

According to most scholars, Newton was a monotheist who believed in biblical prophecies but was Antitrinitarian.[6][66] 'In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin'.[67] Historian Stephen D. Snobelen says of Newton, "Isaac Newton was a heretic. But ... he never made a public declaration of his private faith which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs."[6] Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an anti-trinitarian.[6] In an age notable for its religious intolerance, there are few public expressions of Newton's radical views, most notably his refusal to take holy orders and his refusal, on his death bed, to take the sacrament when it was offered to him.[6] In a view disputed by Snobelen,[6] T.C. Pfizenmaier argues that Newton held the Arian view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants.[68] In his own day, he was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal Society and in the court of Charles II).[69] Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."[70]

His scientific fame notwithstanding, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were also noteworthy. Newton wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. He also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which agrees with one traditionally accepted date.[71] He also tried, unsuccessfully, to find hidden messages within the Bible. Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, Newton claimed that in writing the Principia "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity".[72] He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities.[73] For this, Leibniz lampooned him: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."[74] Newton's position was vigorously defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence.

Effect on religious thought

Newton and Robert Boyle's mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians.[75] Thus, the clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysicalsuperlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism,[76] and, at the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton's discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a "Natural Religion".

Newton, by William Blake; here, Newton is depicted critically as a "divine geometer".

The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking", and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle's mechanical conception of the Universe. Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising

them.[77] Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles.[78] These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed people to pursue their own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect themselves with their own rational powers.[79] Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.[80][81][82] His spokesman, Clarke, rejected Leibniz' theodicy which cleared God from the responsibility for l'origine du mal by making God removed from participation in his creation, since as Clarke pointed out, such a deity would be a king in name only, and but one step away from atheism.[83]But the unforeseen theological consequence of the success of Newton's system over the next century was to reinforce the deist position advocated by Leibniz.[84] The understanding of the world was now brought down to the level of simple human reason, and humans, as Odo Marquard argued, became responsible for the correction and elimination of evil.[85] On the other hand, latitudinarian and Newtonian ideas taken too far resulted in the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the concept of a mechanical Universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish.[clarification needed][86]

Views of the end of the world

See also: Isaac Newton's occult studies and eschatology In a manuscript he wrote in 1704 in which he describes his attempts to extract scientific information from the Bible, he estimated that the world would end no earlier than 2060. In predicting this he said, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."[87]

Enlightenment philosophers
Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of Nature and Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.[88] It was Newton's conception of the Universe based upon Natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology.[89] Locke and Voltaireapplied concepts of Natural Law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into Natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.

Counterfeiters
As warden of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during The Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon's being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult. However, Newton proved to be equal to the task.[90]Disguised as a habitu of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself.[91] For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners.[92] One of Newton's cases as the King's attorney was against William Chaloner.[93] Chaloner's schemes included setting up phony conspiracies of Catholics and then turning in the hapless conspirators whom he had entrapped. Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman. Petitioning Parliament, Chaloner accused the Mint of providing tools to counterfeiters (a charge also made by others). He proposed that he be allowed to inspect the Mint's processes in order to improve them. He petitioned Parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not be counterfeited, while at the same time striking false coins.[94] Newton put Chaloner on trial for counterfeiting and had him sent to Newgate Prison in September 1697. But Chaloner had friends in high places, who helped him secure an acquittal and his release.[93] Newton put him on trial a second time with conclusive evidence. Chaloner was convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered on 23 March 1699 at Tyburn gallows.[95]

Laws of motion
Classical mechanics

Newton's Second Law

History of classical mechanics Timeline of classical mechanics [show]Branches [show]Formulations [show]Fundamental concepts

[show]Core topics [hide]Scientists Galileo Galilei Isaac Newton Jeremiah Horrocks Leonhard Euler Jean le Rond d'Alembert Alexis Clairaut Joseph Louis Lagrange Pierre-Simon Laplace William Rowan Hamilton Simon-Denis Poisson

vde

Main article: Newton's laws of motion The famous three laws of motion (stated in modernised form): Newton's First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force. Newton's Second Law states that an applied force, momentum, , on an object equals the rate of change of its

, with time. Mathematically, this is expressed as

If applied to an object with constant mass (dm/dt = 0), the first term vanishes, and by substitution using the definition of acceleration, the equation can be written in the iconic form

The first and second laws represent a break with the physics of Aristotle, in which it was believed that a force was necessary in order to maintain motion. They state that a force is only needed in order to change an object's state of motion. The SI unit of force is the newton, named in Newton's honour. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that any force exerted onto an object has a counterpart force that is exerted in the opposite direction back onto the first object. A common example is of two ice skaters pushing against each other and sliding apart in opposite directions. Another example is the recoil of a firearm, in which the force propelling the bullet is exerted equally back onto the gun and is felt by the shooter. Since the objects in question do not necessarily have the same mass, the resulting acceleration of the two objects can be different (as in the case of firearm recoil).

Unlike Aristotle's, Newton's physics is meant to be universal. For example, the second law applies both to a planet and to a falling stone. The vector nature of the second law addresses the geometrical relationship between the direction of the force and the manner in which the object's momentum changes. Before Newton, it had typically been assumed that a planet orbiting the sun would need a forward force to keep it moving. Newton showed instead that all that was needed was an inward attraction from the sun. Even many decades after the publication of the Principia, this counterintuitive idea was not universally accepted, and many scientists preferred Descartes' theory of vortices.[96]

Apple analogy

Reputed descendants of Newton's apple tree, at theCambridge University Botanic Garden and the Instituto Balseiro library garden

Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.[97] Cartoons have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit Newton's head, and that its impact somehow made him aware of the force of gravity, though this is not reported in the biographical manuscript by William Stukeley, published in 1752, and made available by the Royal Society.[98] It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however it took him two decades to

develop the full-fledged theory.[99] John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton's life: In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.[100] The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation". Stukeley recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726, in which Newton recalled: when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the Earth's centre? Assuredly the reason is, that the Earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. And the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the Earth must be in the Earth's centre, not in any side of the Earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly or towards the centre? If matter thus draws matter; it must be proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the Earth, as well as the Earth draws the apple.

Euclid ( / ju kl d/ EWK-lid; Ancient Greek: Eukleid s), fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I (323283 BC). His Elements is one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics, serving as the main textbook for teachingmathematics (especially geometry) from the time of its publication until the late 19th or early 20th century.[1][2][3] In the Elements, Euclid deduced the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms. Euclid also wrote works

onperspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, number theory and rigor. "Euclid" is the anglicized version of the Greek name ( Eukle d s), meaning "Good Glory".
Contents
[hide]

1 Life 2 Elements 3 Other works 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit]Life

Little is known about Euclid's life, as there are only a handful of references to him. The date and place of Euclid's birth and the date and circumstances of his death are unknown, and only roughly estimated in proximity to contemporary figures mentioned in references. No likeness or description of Euclid's physical appearance made during his lifetime survived antiquity. Therefore, Euclid's depiction in works of art is the product of the artist's imagination. The few historical references to Euclid were written centuries after he lived, by Proclus and Pappus of Alexandria.[4] Proclus introduces Euclid only briefly in his fifth-century Commentary on the Elements, as the author of Elements, that he was mentioned by Archimedes, and that when King Ptolemy asked if there was a shorter path to learning geometry than Euclid'sElements, "Euclid replied there is no royal road to geometry."[5] Although the purported citation of Euclid by Archimedes has been judged to be an interpolation by later editors of his works, it is still believed that Euclid wrote his works before those of Archimedes.[6][7] In addition, the "royal road" anecdote is questionable

since it is similar to a story told aboutMenaechmus and Alexander the Great.[8] In the only other key reference to Euclid, Pappus briefly mentioned in the fourth century that Apollonius "spent a very long time with the pupils of Euclid at Alexandria, and it was thus that he acquired such a scientific habit of thought."[9] It is further believed that Euclid may have studied at Plato's Academy in Athens.
[edit]Elements

One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to circa AD 100. The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition 5.[10]

Main article: Euclid's Elements Although many of the results in Elements originated with earlier mathematicians, one of Euclid's accomplishments was to present them in a single, logically coherent framework, making it easy to use and easy to reference, including a system of rigorous mathematical proofs that remains the basis of mathematics 23 centuries later.[11] There is no mention of Euclid in the earliest remaining copies of the Elements, and most of the copies say they are "from the edition ofTheon" or the "lectures of Theon",[12] while the text considered to be primary, held by the Vatican, mentions no author. The only reference that historians rely on of Euclid having written the Elements was from Proclus, who briefly in his Commentary on the Elements ascribes Euclid as its author. Although best-known for its geometric results, the Elements also includes number theory. It considers the connection between perfect numbers and Mersenne primes, the infinitude of prime numbers, Euclid's lemma on factorization (which leads to the fundamental theorem of

arithmetic on uniqueness of prime factorizations), and the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers. The geometrical system described in the Elements was long known simply as geometry, and was considered to be the only geometry possible. Today, however, that system is often referred to as Euclidean geometry to distinguish it from other so-called non-Euclidean geometries that mathematicians discovered in the 19th century.
[edit]Other

works

Euclid's construction of a regular dodecahedron

Construction of a dodecahedron basing on a cube

In addition to the Elements, at least five works of Euclid have survived to the present day. They follow the same logical structure as Elements, with definitions and proved propositions.


Data deals with the nature and implications of "given" information in geometrical problems; the subject matter is closely related to the first four books of the Elements. On Divisions of Figures, which survives only partially in Arabic translation, concerns the division of geometrical figures into two or more equal parts or into parts in given ratios. It is similar to a third century AD work by Heron of Alexandria. Catoptrics, which concerns the mathematical theory of mirrors, particularly the images formed in plane and spherical concave mirrors. The attribution to Euclid is doubtful. Its author may have been Theon of Alexandria. Phaenomena, a treatise on spherical astronomy, survives in Greek; it is quite similar to On the Moving Sphere by Autolycus of Pitane, who flourished around 310 BC.

Statue of Euclid in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Optics is the earliest surviving Greek treatise on perspective. In its definitions Euclid follows the Platonic tradition that vision is caused

bydiscrete rays which emanate from the eye. One important definition is the fourth: "Things seen under a greater angle appear greater, and those under a lesser angle less, while those under equal angles appear equal." In the 36 propositions that follow, Euclid relates the apparent size of an object to its distance from the eye and investigates the apparent shapes of cylinders and cones when viewed from different angles. Proposition 45 is interesting, proving that for any two unequal magnitudes, there is a point from which the two appear equal. Pappus believed these results to be important in astronomy and included Euclid's Optics, along with his Phaenomena, in the Little Astronomy, a compendium of smaller works to be studied before the Syntaxis (Almagest) of Claudius Ptolemy. Other works are credibly attributed to Euclid, but have been lost.


Conics was a work on conic sections that was later extended by Apollonius of Perga into his famous work on the subject. It is likely that the first four books of Apollonius's work come directly from Euclid. According to Pappus, "Apollonius, having completed Euclid's four books of conics and added four others, handed down eight volumes of conics." The Conics of Apollonius quickly supplanted the former work, and by the time of Pappus, Euclid's work was already lost. Porisms might have been an outgrowth of Euclid's work with conic sections, but the exact meaning of the title is controversial. Pseudaria, or Book of Fallacies, was an elementary text about errors in reasoning. Surface Loci concerned either loci (sets of points) on surfaces or loci which were themselves surfaces; under the latter interpretation, it has been hypothesized that the work might have dealt with quadric surfaces. Several works on mechanics are attributed to Euclid by Arabic sources. On the Heavy and the Light contains, in nine definitions and five propositions, Aristotelian notions of moving bodies and the concept of specific gravity. On the Balance treats the theory of the lever in a similarly Euclidean manner, containing one definition, two

axioms, and four propositions. A third fragment, on the circles described by the ends of a moving lever, contains four propositions. These three works complement each other in such a way that it has been suggested that they are remnants of a single treatise on mechanics written by Euclid.
[edit] Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: ; c. 287 BC c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, andastronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.[1] Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time.[2][3] He used themethod of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi.[4] He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers. Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere inscribed within a cylinder. Archimedes had proven that the sphere has two thirds of the volume and surface area of the cylinder (including the bases of the latter), and regarded this as the greatest of his mathematical achievements. Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during theRenaissance,[5] while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.[6]
Contents
[hide]

1 Biography

2 Discoveries and inventions

o o o o o

2.1 The Golden Crown 2.2 The Archimedes Screw 2.3 The Claw of Archimedes 2.4 The Archimedes Heat Ray 2.5 Other discoveries and inventions

3 Mathematics 4 Writings

o o

4.1 Surviving works 4.2 Apocryphal works

5 Archimedes Palimpsest 6 Legacy 7 See also 8 Notes and references

o o

8.1 Notes 8.2 References

9 Further reading 10 The Works of Archimedes online 11 External links

Biography

This bronze statue of Archimedes is at the Archenhold Observatory in Berlin. It was sculpted by Gerhard Thieme and unveiled in 1972.

Archimedes was born c. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily, at that time a selfgoverning colony in Magna Graecia. The date of birth is based on a statement by the Byzantine Greek historian John Tzetzes that Archimedes lived for 75 years.[7] In The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes

gives his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing is known. Plutarch wrote in his Parallel Lives that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse.[8] A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure.
[9]

It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children. During his youth

Archimedes may have studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries. He referred to Conon of Samos as his friend, while two of his works (The Method of Mechanical Theorems and the Cattle Problem) have introductions addressed to Eratosthenes.
[a]

Archimedes died c. 212 BC during the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse after a two-year-long siege. According to the popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. The soldier was enraged by this, and killed Archimedes with his sword. Plutarch also gives a lesser-knownaccount of the death of Archimedes which suggests that he may have been killed while attempting to surrender to a Roman soldier. According to this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical instruments, and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items. General Marcellus was reportedly angered by the death of Archimedes, as he considered him a valuable scientific asset and had ordered that he not be harmed.[10]

A sphere has 2/3 the volume and surface area of its circumscribing cylinder. A sphereand cylinder were placed on the tomb of Archimedes at his request.

The last words attributed to Archimedes are "Do not disturb my circles" (Greek: ), a reference to the circles in the mathematical drawing that he was supposedly studying when disturbed by the Roman soldier. This quote is often given in Latin as "Noli turbare circulos meos," but

there is no reliable evidence that Archimedes uttered these words and they do not appear in the account given by Plutarch.
[10]

The tomb of Archimedes carried a sculpture illustrating his favorite mathematical proof, consisting of a sphere and a cylinder of the same height and diameter. Archimedes had proven that the volume and surface area of the sphere are two thirds that of the cylinder including its bases. In 75 BC, 137 years after his death, the Roman orator Cicero was serving as quaestor in Sicily. He had heard stories about the tomb of Archimedes, but none of the locals was able to give him the location. Eventually he found the tomb near the Agrigentine gate in Syracuse, in a neglected condition and overgrown with bushes. Cicero had the tomb cleaned up, and was able to see the carving and read some of the verses that had been added as an inscription.
[11]

A tomb discovered in a hotel courtyard in Syracuse in the early 1960s was

[12]

claimed to be that of Archimedes, but its location today is unknown.

The standard versions of the life of Archimedes were written long after his death by the historians of Ancient Rome. The account of the siege of Syracuse given by Polybius in his Universal History was written around seventy years after Archimedes' death, and was used subsequently as a source by Plutarch and Livy. It sheds little light on Archimedes as a person, and focuses on the war machines that he is said to have built in order to defend the city.[13]

Discoveries and inventions

The Golden Crown

Archimedes may have used his principle of buoyancy to determine whether the golden crown was less dense than solid gold.

The most widely known anecdote about Archimedes tells of how he invented a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. According to Vitruvius, a votive crown for a temple had been made for King Hiero II, who had supplied the pure gold to be used, and Archimedes was asked to

determine whether some silver had been substituted by the dishonest goldsmith.

[14]

Archimedes had to

solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. For practical purposes water is incompressible,
[15]

so the submerged crown would displace an amount of

water equal to its own volume. By dividing the mass of the crown by the volume of water displaced, the density of the crown could be obtained. This density would be lower than that of gold if cheaper and less dense metals had been added. Archimedes then took to the streets naked, so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying "Eureka!" (Greek: " !," meaning "I have found it!"). The test
[16]

was conducted successfully, proving that silver had indeed been mixed in.

The story of the golden crown does not appear in the known works of Archimedes. Moreover, the practicality of the method it describes has been called into question, due to the extreme accuracy with which one would have to measure the water displacement.[17] Archimedes may have instead sought a solution that applied the principle known in hydrostatics as Archimedes' Principle, which he describes in his treatise On Floating Bodies. This principle states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces.[18] Using this principle, it would have been possible to compare the density of the golden crown to that of solid gold by balancing the crown on a scale with a gold reference sample, then immersing the apparatus in water. If the crown was less dense than gold, it would displace more water due to its larger volume, and thus experience a greater buoyant force than the reference sample. This difference in buoyancy would cause the scale to tip accordingly. Galileo considered it "probable that this method is the same that Archimedes followed, since, besides being very accurate, it is based on demonstrations found by Archimedes himself."[19]

The Archimedes Screw

The Archimedes screw can raise water efficiently.

A large part of Archimedes' work in engineering arose from fulfilling the needs of his home city of Syracuse. The Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratisdescribed how King Hieron II commissioned Archimedes to design a huge ship, the Syracusia, which could be used for luxury travel, carrying supplies,

and as a naval warship. The Syracusia is said to have been the largest ship built in classical antiquity.
[20]

According to Athenaeus, it was capable of carrying 600 people and included garden

decorations, a gymnasium and a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite among its facilities. Since a ship of this size would leak a considerable amount of water through the hull, the Archimedes screw was purportedly developed in order to remove the bilge water. Archimedes' machine was a device with a revolving screw-shaped blade inside a cylinder. It was turned by hand, and could also be used to transfer water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation canals. The Archimedes screw is still in use today for pumping liquids and granulated solids such as coal and grain. The Archimedes screw described in Roman times by Vitruvius may have been an improvement on a screw pump that was used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. screw.[24]
[21][22][23]

The world's first seagoing steamship with a screw propellerwas

the SS Archimedes, which was launched in 1839 and named in honor of Archimedes and his work on the

The Claw of Archimedes

The Claw of Archimedes is a weapon that he is said to have designed in order to defend the city of Syracuse. Also known as "the ship shaker," the claw consisted of a crane-like arm from which a large metal grappling hook was suspended. When the claw was dropped onto an attacking ship the arm would swing upwards, lifting the ship out of the water and possibly sinking it. There have been modern experiments to test the feasibility of the claw, and in 2005 a television documentary entitled Superweapons of the Ancient World built a version of the claw and concluded that it was a workable device.[25][26]

The Archimedes Heat Ray

Archimedes may have used mirrors acting collectively as a parabolic reflector to burn ships attacking Syracuse.

The 2nd century AD author Lucian wrote that during the Siege of Syracuse (c. 214212 BC), Archimedes destroyed enemy ships with fire. Centuries later, Anthemius of Tralles mentions burning-glasses as Archimedes' weapon.
[27]

The device, sometimes called the "Archimedes heat ray", was used to focus

sunlight onto approaching ships, causing them to catch fire. This purported weapon has been the subject of ongoing debate about its credibility since the Renaissance. Ren Descartes rejected it as false, while modern researchers have attempted to recreate the effect using only the means that would have been available to Archimedes.
[28]

It has been suggested

that a large array of highly polished bronze or copper shields acting as mirrors could have been employed to focus sunlight onto a ship. This would have used the principle of the parabolic reflector in a manner similar to a solar furnace. A test of the Archimedes heat ray was carried out in 1973 by the Greek scientist Ioannis Sakkas. The experiment took place at the Skaramagasnaval base outside Athens. On this occasion 70 mirrors were used, each with a copper coating and a size of around five by three feet (1.5 by 1 m). The mirrors were pointed at a plywood mock-up of a Roman warship at a distance of around 160 feet (50 m). When the mirrors were focused accurately, the ship burst into flames within a few seconds. The plywood ship had a coating of tar paint, which may have aided combustion.[29] In October 2005 a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology carried out an experiment with 127 one-foot (30 cm) square mirror tiles, focused on a mock-up wooden ship at a range of around 100 feet (30 m). Flames broke out on a patch of the ship, but only after the sky had been cloudless and the ship had remained stationary for around ten minutes. It was concluded that the device was a feasible weapon under these conditions. The MIT group repeated the experiment for the television show MythBusters, using a wooden fishing boat in San Francisco as the target. Again some charring occurred, along with a small amount of flame. In order to catch fire, wood needs to reach itsautoignition temperature, which is around 300 C (570 F).[30][31] When MythBusters broadcast the result of the San Francisco experiment in January 2006, the claim was placed in the category of "busted" (or failed) because of the length of time and the ideal weather conditions required for combustion to occur. It was also pointed out that since Syracuse faces the sea towards the east, the Roman fleet would have had to attack during the morning for optimal gathering of light by the mirrors. MythBusters also pointed out that conventional weaponry, such as flaming arrows or bolts from a catapult, would have been a far easier way of setting a ship on fire at short distances.
[1]

In December 2010, MythBusters again looked at the heat ray story in a special edition featuring Barack Obama, entitled President's Challenge. Several experiments were carried out, including a large scale test with 500 schoolchildren aiming mirrors at a mock-up of a Roman sailing ship 400 feet (120 m) away. In all of the experiments, the sail failed to reach the 210 C (410 F) required to catch fire, and the verdict was

again "busted". The show concluded that a more likely effect of the mirrors would have been blinding, dazzling, or distracting the crew of the ship.
[32]

Other discoveries and inventions

While Archimedes did not invent the lever, he gave an explanation of the principle involved in his work On the Equilibrium of Planes. Earlier descriptions of the lever are found in thePeripatetic school of the followers of Aristotle, and are sometimes attributed to Archytas.[33][34] According to Pappus of Alexandria, Archimedes' work on levers caused him to remark: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth." (Greek: )[35] Plutarch describes how Archimedes

designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move.[36] Archimedes has also been credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult, and with inventing the odometer during the First Punic War. The odometer was described as a cart with a gear mechanism that dropped a ball into a container after each mile traveled.[37] Cicero (10643 BC) mentions Archimedes briefly in his dialogue De re publica, which portrays a fictional conversation taking place in 129 BC. After the capture of Syracuse c. 212 BC, General Marcus Claudius Marcellus is said to have taken back to Rome two mechanisms used as aids in astronomy, which showed the motion of the Sun, Moon and five planets. Cicero mentions similar mechanisms designed by Thales of Miletus and Eudoxus of Cnidus. The dialogue says that Marcellus kept one of the devices as his only personal loot from Syracuse, and donated the other to the Temple of Virtue in Rome. Marcellus' mechanism was demonstrated, according to Cicero, by Gaius Sulpicius Gallus to Lucius Furius Philus, who described it thus: Hanc sphaeram Gallus cum moveret, fiebat ut soli luna totidem conversionibus in aere illo quot diebus in ipso caelo succederet, ex quo et in caelo sphaera solis fieret eadem illa defectio, et incideret luna tum in eam metam quae esset umbra terrae, cum sol e regione. When Gallus moved the globe, it happened that the Moon followed the Sun by as many turns on that bronze contrivance as in the sky itself, from which also in the sky the Sun's globe became to have that same eclipse, and the Moon came then to that [38][39] position which was its shadow on the Earth, when the Sun was in line. This is a description of a planetarium or orrery. Pappus of Alexandria stated that Archimedes had written a manuscript (now lost) on the construction of these mechanisms entitledOn Sphere-Making. Modern research in this area has been focused on the Antikythera mechanism, another device from classical antiquity that was probably designed for the same purpose. Constructing mechanisms of this kind would have required a sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing. This was once thought to have been beyond the range of the technology available in ancient times, but the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism in 1902 has confirmed that devices of this kind were known to the ancient Greeks.[40][41]

Mathematics

While he is often regarded as a designer of mechanical devices, Archimedes also made contributions to the field of mathematics. Plutarch wrote: "He placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life."
[42]

Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to approximate the value of pi.

Archimedes was able to use infinitesimals in a way that is similar to modern integral calculus. Through proof by contradiction (reductio ad absurdum), he could give answers to problems to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, while specifying the limits within which the answer lay. This technique is known as the method of exhaustion, and he employed it to approximate the value of pi. He did this by drawing a larger polygonoutside a circle and a smaller polygon inside the circle. As the number of sides of the polygon increases, it becomes a more accurate approximation of a circle. When the polygons had 96 sides each, he calculated the lengths of their sides and showed that the value of pi lay between 317 (approximately 3.1429) and 31071 (approximately 3.1408), consistent with its actual value of approximately 3.1416. He also proved that the area of a circle was equal to pi multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle. In On the Sphere and Cylinder, Archimedes postulates that any magnitude when added to itself enough times will exceed any given magnitude. This is the Archimedean property of real numbers.[43] In Measurement of a Circle, Archimedes gives the value of the square root of 3 as lying between 265153 (approximately 1.7320261) and 1351780 (approximately 1.7320512). The actual value is approximately 1.7320508, making this a very accurate estimate. He introduced this result without offering any explanation of the method used to obtain it. This aspect of the work of Archimedes caused John Wallis to remark that he was: "as it were of set purpose to have covered up the traces of his investigation as if he had grudged posterity the secret of his method of inquiry while he wished to extort from them assent to his results."[44]

As proven by Archimedes, the area of the parabolic segment in the upper figure is equal to 4/3 that of the inscribed triangle in the lower figure.

In The Quadrature of the Parabola, Archimedes proved that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is 43 times the area of a corresponding inscribed triangle as shown in the figure at right. He expressed the solution to the problem as an infinite geometric series with thecommon ratio 14:

If the first term in this series is the area of the triangle, then the second is the sum of the areas of two triangles whose bases are the two smallersecant lines, and so on. This proof uses a variation of the series 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256 + which sums to 13. In The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes set out to calculate the number of grains of sand that the universe could contain. In doing so, he challenged the notion that the number of grains of sand was too large to be counted. He wrote: "There are some, King Gelo (Gelo II, son of Hiero II), who think that the number of the sand is infinite in multitude; and I mean by the sand not only that which exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily but also that which is found in every region whether inhabited or uninhabited." To solve the problem, Archimedes devised a system of counting based on the myriad. The word is from the Greek murias, for the number 10,000. He proposed a number system

using powers of a myriad of myriads (100 million) and concluded that the number of grains of sand required to fill the universe would be 8 vigintillion, or 81063.[45]

Writings

The works of Archimedes were written in Doric Greek, the dialect of ancient Syracuse.

[46]

The written

work of Archimedes has not survived as well as that of Euclid, and seven of his treatises are known to have existed only through references made to them by other authors. Pappus of Alexandria mentions On Sphere-Making and another work on polyhedra, while Theon of Alexandria quotes a remark about refraction from thenow-lost Catoptrica.[b] During his lifetime, Archimedes made his work known through correspondence with the mathematicians in Alexandria. The writings of Archimedes were collected by the Byzantine architect Isidore of Miletus (c. 530 AD), while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD helped to bring his work a wider audience. Archimedes' work was translated into Arabic by Th bit ibn Qurra (836901 AD), and Latin by Gerard of Cremona (c. 11141187 AD). During the Renaissance, the Editio Princeps (First Edition) was published in Basel in 1544 by Johann Herwagen with the works of Archimedes in Greek and Latin.[47] Around the year 1586Galileo Galilei invented a hydrostatic balance for weighing metals in air and water after apparently being inspired by the work of Archimedes.[48]

Surviving works

Archimedes is said to have remarked of the lever: Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.

On the Equilibrium of Planes (two volumes) The first book is in fifteen propositions with seven postulates, while the second book is in ten propositions. In this work Archimedes explains the Law of the Lever, stating, "Magnitudes are in equilibrium at distances reciprocally proportional to their weights." Archimedes uses the principles derived to calculate the areas and centers of gravity of various geometric figures including triangles,parallelograms and parabolas.[49]  On the Measurement of a Circle

This is a short work consisting of three propositions. It is written in the form of a correspondence with Dositheus of Pelusium, who was a student of Conon of Samos. In Proposition II, Archimedes shows that the value of pi ( ) is greater than 22371 and less than 227. The latter figure was used as

an approximation of pi throughout the Middle Ages and is still used today when only a rough figure is required.  On Spirals

This work of 28 propositions is also addressed to Dositheus. The treatise defines what is now called the Archimedean spiral. It is the locus of points corresponding to the locations over time of a point moving away from a fixed point with a constant speed along a line which rotates with constant angular velocity. Equivalently, inpolar coordinates (r, ) it can be described by the equation

with real numbers a and b. This is an early example of a mechanical curve (a curve traced by a moving point) considered by a Greek mathematician.  On the Sphere and the Cylinder (two volumes)

In this treatise addressed to Dositheus, Archimedes obtains the result of which he was most proud, namely the relationship between a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder of the same height and diameter. The volume is 43 r3 for the sphere, and 2 r3 for the cylinder. The surface area is 4 r2 for the sphere, and 6 r2 for the cylinder (including its two bases), where ris the radius of the sphere and cylinder. The sphere has a volume two-thirds that of the circumscribed cylinder. Similarly, the sphere has an area two-thirds that of the cylinder (including the bases). A sculpted sphere and cylinder were placed on the tomb of Archimedes at his request.  On Conoids and Spheroids

This is a work in 32 propositions addressed to Dositheus. In this treatise Archimedes calculates the areas and volumes of sections of cones, spheres, and paraboloids.  On Floating Bodies (two volumes)

In the first part of this treatise, Archimedes spells out the law of equilibrium of fluids, and proves that water will adopt a spherical form around a center of gravity. This may have been an attempt at explaining the theory of contemporary Greek astronomers such as Eratosthenes that the Earth is round. The fluids described by Archimedes are not self-gravitating, since he assumes the existence of a point towards which all things fall in order to derive the spherical shape. In the second part, he calculates the equilibrium positions of sections of paraboloids. This was probably an idealization of the shapes of ships' hulls. Some of his sections float with the base under water and the summit above water, similar to the way that icebergs float. Archimedes' principle of buoyancy is given in the work, stated as follows:

Any body wholly or partially immersed in a fluid experiences an upthrust equal to, but opposite in sense to, the weight of the fluid displaced.  The Quadrature of the Parabola

In this work of 24 propositions addressed to Dositheus, Archimedes proves by two methods that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is 4/3 multiplied by the area of atriangle with equal base and height. He achieves this by calculating the value of a geometric series that sums to infinity with the ratio 14.  (O)stomachion

This is a dissection puzzle similar to a Tangram, and the treatise describing it was found in more complete form in the Archimedes Palimpsest. Archimedes calculates the areas of the 14 pieces which can be assembled to form a square. Research published by Dr. Reviel Netz of Stanford University in 2003 argued that Archimedes was attempting to determine how many ways the pieces could be assembled into the shape of a square. Dr. Netz calculates that the pieces can be made into a square 17,152 ways.[50] The number of arrangements is 536 when solutions that are equivalent by rotation and reflection have been excluded.[51] The puzzle represents an example of an early problem in combinatorics. The origin of the puzzle's name is unclear, and it has been suggested that it is taken from the Ancient Greek word for throat or gullet, stomachos ( ).[52] Ausonius refers to the (osteon, bone) puzzle as Ostomachion, a Greek compound word formed from the roots of and Box.
[53]

(mach fight). The puzzle is also known as the Loculus of Archimedes or Archimedes'

Archimedes' cattle problem

This work was discovered by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in a Greek manuscript consisting of a poem of 44 lines, in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbttel, Germany in 1773. It is addressed to Eratosthenes and the mathematicians in Alexandria. Archimedes challenges them to count the numbers of cattle in the Herd of the Sun by solving a number of simultaneous Diophantine equations. There is a more difficult version of the problem in which some of the answers are required to be square numbers. This version of the problem was first solved by A. Amthor[54] in 1880, and the answer is a very large number, approximately 7.76027110206,544.[55]  The Sand Reckoner

In this treatise, Archimedes counts the number of grains of sand that will fit inside the universe. This book mentions the heliocentric theory of the solar system proposed by Aristarchus of

Samos, as well as contemporary ideas about the size of the Earth and the distance between various celestial bodies. By using a system of numbers based on powers of the myriad, Archimedes concludes that the number of grains of sand required to fill the universe is 81063 in modern notation. The introductory letter states that Archimedes' father was an astronomer named Phidias. The Sand Reckoner or Psammites is the only surviving work in which Archimedes discusses his views on astronomy.
[56]

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

This treatise was thought lost until the discovery of the Archimedes Palimpsest in 1906. In this work Archimedes uses infinitesimals, and shows how breaking up a figure into an infinite number of infinitely small parts can be used to determine its area or volume. Archimedes may have considered this method lacking in formal rigor, so he also used the method of exhaustion to derive the results. As with The Cattle Problem, The Method of Mechanical Theorems was written in the form of a letter to Eratosthenes in Alexandria.

Apocryphal works
Archimedes' Book of Lemmas or Liber Assumptorum is a treatise with fifteen propositions on the nature of circles. The earliest known copy of the text is in Arabic. The scholars T. L. Heath and Marshall Clagett argued that it cannot have been written by Archimedes in its current form, since it quotes Archimedes, suggesting modification by another author. The Lemmasmay be based on an earlier work by Archimedes that is now lost.[57] It has also been claimed that Heron's formula for calculating the area of a triangle from the length of its sides was known to Archimedes. However, the first
[c]

reliable reference to the formula is given by Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century AD.
[58]

Archimedes Palimpsest
Main article: Archimedes Palimpsest

Stomachion is a dissection puzzle in theArchimedes Palimpsest.

The foremost document containing the work of Archimedes is the Archimedes Palimpsest. In 1906, the Danish professor Johan Ludvig Heibergvisited Constantinople and examined a 174-page goatskin parchment of prayers written in the 13th century AD. He discovered that it was apalimpsest, a document with text that had been written over an erased older work. Palimpsests were created by scraping the ink from existing works and reusing them, which was a common practice in the Middle Ages

as vellum was expensive. The older works in the palimpsest were identified by scholars as 10th century AD copies of previously unknown treatises by Archimedes.
[59]

The parchment

spent hundreds of years in a monastery library in Constantinople before being sold to a private collector in the 1920s. On October 29, 1998 it was sold at auction to an anonymous buyer for $2 million at Christie's in New York.[60] The palimpsest holds seven treatises, including the only surviving copy of On Floating Bodies in the original Greek. It is the only known source of The Method of Mechanical Theorems, referred to by Suidas and thought to have been lost forever. Stomachion was also discovered in the palimpsest, with a more complete analysis of the puzzle than had been found in previous texts. The palimpsest is now stored at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where it has been subjected to a range of modern tests including the use of ultraviolet and x-ray light to read the overwritten text.
[61]

The treatises in the Archimedes Palimpsest are: On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Spirals, Measurement of a Circle, On the Sphere and the

Cylinder, On Floating Bodies, The Method of Mechanical Theorems and Stomachion.

Legacy

The Fields Medal carries a portrait of Archimedes.

There is a crater on the Moon named Archimedes (29.7 N, 4.0 W) in his honor, as well as a lunar mountain range, the Montes Archimedes(25.3 N, 4.6 W).[62] The asteroid 3600 Archimedes is named after him.[63] The Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics carries a portrait of Archimedes, along with his proof concerning the sphere and the cylinder. The inscription around the head of Archimedes is a quote attributed to him which reads in Latin: "Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri" (Rise above oneself and grasp the world).[64]

Archimedes has appeared on postage stamps issued by East Germany (1973), Greece (1983), Ita ly (1983), Nicaragua (1971), San Marino(1982), and Spain (1963). The exclamation of Eureka! attributed to Archimedes is the state motto of California. In this instance the word refers to the discovery of gold nearSutter's Mill in 1848 which sparked the California Gold Rush.[66] A movement for civic engagement targeting universal access to health care in the US state of Oregon has
[65]

Srinivasa Ramanujan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Ramanujan" redirects here. For other uses, see Ramanujan (disambiguation).

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Born

22 December 1887 Erode, India

Died

26 April 1920 (aged 32) Chetput, (Madras), British India

Residence

India, U.K.

Nationality

Indian

Fields

Mathematics

Alma mater

Government Arts College Pachaiyappa's College Cambridge University

Academic advisors

G. H. Hardy J. E. Littlewood

Known for

Landau Ramanujan constant Mock theta functions Ramanujan conjecture Ramanujan prime Ramanujan Soldner constant Ramanujan theta function Ramanujan's sum Rogers Ramanujan identities

Sr niv sa Aiyang r R m nujan FRS, better known as Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan pronunciation (helpinfo) (Tamil: or ) (22

December 1887 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician andautodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions. Ramanujan's talent was said by the English mathematician G.H. Hardy to be in the same league as legendary mathematicians such as Gauss, Euler, Cauchy, Newton and Archimedes.[1] Born in Erode, Tamil Nadu, India, to a poor Brahmin family, Ramanujan first encountered formal mathematics at age 10. He demonstrated a natural ability, and was given books on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney.[2] He mastered them by age 12, and even discovered theorems of his own, including independently rediscovering Euler's Identity. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning accolades and awards. By 17, Ramanujan conducted his own mathematical research onBernoulli numbers and the Euler

Mascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam, but lost it when he failed his non-mathematical coursework. He joined another college to pursue independent mathematical research, working as a clerk in the Accountant-General's office at the Madras Port Trust Office to support himself.[3] In 19121913, he sent samples of his theorems to three academics at the University of Cambridge. Only Hardy recognized the brilliance of his work, subsequently inviting Ramanujan to visit and work with him at Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge, dying of illness, malnutrition and possibly liver infection in 1920 at the age of 32. During his short lifetime, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3900 results (mostly identities and equations).[4] Although a small number of these results were actually false and some were already known, most of his claims have now been proven correct.[5] He stated results that were both original and highly unconventional, such as the Ramanujan prime and the Ramanujan theta function, and these have inspired a vast amount of further research.[6] However, the mathematical mainstream has been rather slow in absorbing some of his major discoveries. Recently, Ramanujan's formulae have found applications in crystallography and string theory.[citation needed] The Ramanujan Journal, an international publication, was launched to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by his work.[7]
Contents
[hide]

1 Early life 2 Adulthood in India

o o

2.1 Attention from mathematicians 2.2 Contacting English mathematicians

3 Life in England

o o

3.1 Illness and return to India 3.2 Personality and spiritual life

4 Mathematical achievements

o o

4.1 The Ramanujan conjecture 4.2 Ramanujan's notebooks

5 Ramanujan-Hardy number 1729 6 Other mathematicians' views of Ramanujan 7 Recognition 8 In popular culture 9 See also 10 Notes

11 Selected publications by Ramanujan 12 Selected publications about Ramanujan and his work 13 External links

o o o

13.1 Media links 13.2 Biographical links 13.3 Other links

[edit]Early

life

Ramanujan's home on Sarangapani Street, Kumbakonam.

Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in the city Erode, Tamil Nadu, India, at the residence of his maternal grandparents.[8] His father, K. Srinivasa Iyengar worked as a clerk in a sari shop and hailed from the district of Thanjavur.[9] His mother, Komalatammal was a housewife and also sang at a local temple.[10] They lived in Sarangapani Street in a traditional home in the town of Kumbakonam. The family home is now a museum. When Ramanujan was a year and a half old, his mother gave birth to a son named Sadagopan, who died less than three months later. In December 1889, Ramanujan had smallpox and recovered, unlike thousands in the Thanjavur district who died from the disease that year.[11]He moved with his mother to her parents' house in Kanchipuram, near Madras (now Chennai). In November 1891, and again in 1894, his mother gave birth, but both children died in infancy. On 1 October 1892, Ramanujan was enrolled at the local school.[12] In March 1894, he was moved to a Telugu medium school. After his maternal grandfather lost his job as a court official in Kanchipuram,[13] Ramanujan and

his mother moved back to Kumbakonam and he was enrolled in the Kangayan Primary School.[14] After his paternal grandfather died, he was sent back to his maternal grandparents, who were now living in Madras. He did not like school in Madras, and he tried to avoid attending. His family enlisted a local constable to make sure he attended school. Within six months, Ramanujan was back in Kumbakonam.[14] Since Ramanujan's father was at work most of the day, his mother took care of him as a child. He had a close relationship with her. From her, he learned about tradition and puranas. He learned to sing religious songs, to attend pujas at the temple and particular eating habits all of which are part of Brahmin culture.[15] At the Kangayan Primary School, Ramanujan performed well. Just before the age of 10, in November 1897, he passed his primary examinations in English, Tamil, geography and arithmetic. With his scores, he finished first in the district.[16] That year, Ramanujan entered Town Higher Secondary School where he encountered formal mathematics for the first time.[16] By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney.[17][18] He completely mastered this book by the age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own. By 14, he was receiving merit certificates and academic awards which continued throughout his school career and also assisted the school in the logistics of assigning its 1200 students (each with their own needs) to its 35-odd teachers.[19] He completed mathematical exams in half the allotted time, and showed a familiarity with infinite series.In 1903 when he was 16, Ramanujan obtained a library loaned copy of a book by G. S. Carr from a friend.[20][21] The book was titled A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematicsand was a collection of 5000 theorems. Ramanujan reportedly studied the contents of the book in detail.[22] The book is generally acknowledged as a key element in awakening the genius of Ramanujan.[22] The next year, he had independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and had calculated Euler's constant up to 15 decimal places.[23] His peers of the time commented that they "rarely understood him" and "stood in respectful awe" of him.[19] When he graduated from Town Higher Secondary School in 1904, Ramanujan was awarded the K. Ranganatha Rao prize for mathematics by the school's headmaster, Krishnaswami Iyer. Iyer introduced Ramanujan as an outstanding student who deserved scores higher than the maximum possible marks.[19] He received a scholarship to study at Government Arts College, Kumbakonam,[24][25] However, Ramanujan was so intent on studying mathematics that he could not focus on any other subjects and failed most of them, losing his scholarship in the process.[26] In August 1905, he ran away from home, heading towards Visakhapatnam.[27] He later enrolled at Pachaiyappa's College in Madras. He again excelled in mathematics but performed poorly in other subjects such as physiology. Ramanujan failed his Fine Arts degree exam in December 1906 and again a year later. Without a degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics. At this point in his life, he lived in extreme poverty and was often on the brink of starvation.[28]

[edit]Adulthood

in India

On 14 July 1909, Ramanujan was married to a nine-year old bride, Janaki Ammal.[29] in the branch of Hinduism to which Ramanujan belonged, marriage was a formal engagement that was consummated only after the bride turned 17 or 18, as per the traditional calendar. After the marriage, Ramanujan developed a hydrocele testis, an abnormal swelling of the tunica vaginalis, an internal membrane in the testicle.[30] The condition could be treated with a routine surgical operation that would release the blocked fluid in the scrotal sac. His family did not have the money for the operation, but in January 1910, a doctor volunteered to do the surgery for free.[31] After his successful surgery, Ramanujan searched for a job. He stayed at friends' houses while he went door to door around the city of Madras (now Chennai) looking for a clerical position. To make some money, he tutored some students at Presidency College who were preparing for their F.A. exam.[32] In late 1910, Ramanujan was sick again, possibly as a result of the surgery earlier in the year. He feared for his health, and even told his friend, R. Radakrishna Iyer, to "hand these [my mathematical notebooks] over to Professor Singaravelu Mudaliar [mathematics professor at Pachaiyappa's College] or to the British professor Edward B. Ross, of the Madras Christian College."[33] After Ramanujan recovered and got back his notebooks from Iyer, he took a northbound train from Kumbakonam to Villupuram, a coastal city under French control.[34][35]

[edit]Attention

from mathematicians

He met deputy collector V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, who had recently founded the Indian Mathematical Society.[36] Ramanujan, wishing for a job at the revenue department where Aiyer worked, showed him his mathematics notebooks. As Aiyer later recalled: I was struck by the extraordinary mathematical results contained in it [the notebooks]. I had no mind to smother his genius by an appointment in the lowest rungs of the revenue department.[37] Aiyer sent Ramanujan, with letters of introduction, to his mathematician friends in Madras.[36] Some of these friends looked at his work and gave him letters of introduction to R. Ramachandra Rao, the district collector for Nellore and the secretary of the Indian Mathematical Society.[38][39][40] Ramachandra Rao was impressed by Ramanujan's research but doubted that it was actually his own work. Ramanujan mentioned a correspondence he had with Professor Saldhana, a notable Bombay mathematician, in which Saldhana expressed a lack of understanding for his work but concluded that he was not a phony.[41] Ramanujan's friend, C. V. Rajagopalachari, persisted with Ramachandra Rao and tried to quell any doubts over Ramanujan's academic integrity. Rao agreed to give him another chance, and he listened as Ramanujan discussed elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, and his theory of divergent series, which Rao said ultimately "converted" him to a belief in Ramanujan's mathematical brilliance.[41] When Rao asked him what he wanted, Ramanujan replied that he needed some work and financial support. Rao consented and sent him to Madras. He continued

his mathematical research with Rao's financial aid taking care of his daily needs. Ramanujan, with the help of V. Ramaswamy Aiyer, had his work published in the Journal of Indian Mathematical Society.[42] One of the first problems he posed in the journal was:

He waited for a solution to be offered in three issues, over six months, but failed to receive any. At the end, Ramanujan supplied the solution to the problem himself. On page 105 of his first notebook, he formulated an equation that could be used to solve the infinitely nested radicals problem.

Using this equation, the answer to the question posed in the Journal was simply 3.[43] Ramanujan wrote his first formal paper for the Journal on the properties of Bernoulli numbers. One property he discovered was that the denominators (sequence A027642 in OEIS) of the fractions of Bernoulli numbers were always divisible by six. He also devised a method of calculating Bn based on previous Bernoulli numbers. One of these methods went as follows: It will be observed that if n is even but not equal to zero, (i) Bn is a fraction and the numerator of in its lowest terms is a prime number,

(ii) the denominator of Bn contains each of the factors 2 and 3 once and only once, (iii) is an integer and consequently is an odd integer.

In his 17page paper, "Some Properties of Bernoulli's Numbers", Ramanujan gave three proofs, two corollaries and three conjectures.[44] Ramanujan's writing initially had many flaws. AsJournal editor M. T. Narayana Iyengar noted: Mr. Ramanujan's methods were so terse and novel and his presentation so lacking in clearness and precision, that the ordinary [mathematical reader], unaccustomed to such intellectual gymnastics, could hardly follow him.[45] Ramanujan later wrote another paper and also continued to provide problems in the Journal.[46] In early 1912, he got a temporary job in the Madras Accountant General's office, with a salary of 20 rupees per month. He lasted for only a few weeks.[47] Toward the end of that assignment he applied for a position under the Chief Accountant of the Madras Port Trust. In a letter dated 9 February 1912, Ramanujan wrote:

Sir, I understand there is a clerkship vacant in your office, and I beg to apply for the same. I have passed the Matriculation Examination and studied up to the F.A. but was prevented from pursuing my studies further owing to several untoward circumstances. I have, however, been devoting all my time to Mathematics and developing the subject. I can say I am quite confident I can do justice to my work if I am appointed to the post. I therefore beg to request that you will be good enough to confer the appointment on me.[48] Attached to his application was a recommendation from E. W. Middlemast, a mathematics professor at the Presidency College, who wrote that Ramanujan was "a young man of quite exceptional capacity in Mathematics".[49] Three weeks after he had applied, on 1 March, Ramanujan learned that he had been accepted as a Class III, Grade IV accounting clerk, making 30 rupees per month.[50] At his office, Ramanujan easily and quickly completed the work he was given, so he spent his spare time doing mathematical research. Ramanujan's boss, Sir Francis Spring, and S. Narayana Iyer, a colleague who was also treasurer of the Indian Mathematical Society, encouraged Ramanujan in his mathematical pursuits.

[edit]Contacting

English mathematicians

Spring, Narayana Iyer, Ramachandra Rao and E. W. Middlemast tried to present Ramanujan's work to British mathematicians. One mathematician, M. J. M. Hill of University College London, commented that Ramanujan's papers were riddled with holes.[51] He said that although Ramanujan had "a taste for mathematics, and some ability", he lacked the educational background and foundation needed to be accepted by mathematicians.[52] Although Hill did not offer to take Ramanujan on as a student, he did give thorough and serious professional advice on his work. With the help of friends, Ramanujan drafted letters to leading mathematicians at Cambridge University.[53] The first two professors, H. F. Baker and E. W. Hobson, returned Ramanujan's papers without comment.[54] On 16 January 1913, Ramanujan wrote to G. H. Hardy. Coming from an unknown mathematician, the nine pages of mathematical wonder made Hardy initially view Ramanujan's manuscripts as a possible "fraud".[55] Hardy recognized some of Ramanujan's formulae but others "seemed scarcely possible to believe".[56] One of the theorems Hardy found so incredible was found on the bottom of page three (valid for 0 < a < b + 1/2):

Hardy was also impressed by some of Ramanujan's other work relating to infinite series:

The first result had already been determined by a mathematician named Bauer. The second one was new to Hardy, and was derived from a class of functions called a hypergeometric series which had first been researched by Leonhard Euler and Carl Friedrich Gauss. Compared to Ramanujan's work on integrals, Hardy found these results "much more intriguing".[57]After he saw Ramanujan's theorems on continued fractions on the last page of the manuscripts, Hardy commented that the "[theorems] defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before".[58] He figured that Ramanujan's theorems "must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them".[58] Hardy asked a colleague, J. E. Littlewood, to take a look at the papers. Littlewood was amazed by the mathematical genius of Ramanujan. After discussing the papers with Littlewood, Hardy concluded that the letters were "certainly the most remarkable I have received" and commented that Ramanujan was "a mathematician of the highest quality, a man of altogether exceptional originality and power".[59] One colleague, E. H. Neville, later commented that "not one [theorem] could have been set in the most advanced mathematical examination in the world".[60] On 8 February 1913, Hardy wrote a letter to Ramanujan, expressing his interest for his work. Hardy also added that it was "essential that I should see proofs of some of your assertions".[61] Before his letter arrived in Madras during the third week of February, Hardy contacted the Indian Office to plan for Ramanujan's trip to Cambridge. Secretary Arthur Davies of the Advisory Committee for Indian Students met with Ramanujan to discuss the overseas trip.[62] In accordance with his Brahmin upbringing, Ramanujan refused to leave his country to "go to a foreign land".[63] Meanwhile, Ramanujan sent a letter packed with theorems to Hardy, writing, "I have found a friend in you who views my labour sympathetically."[64] To supplement Hardy's endorsement, a former mathematical lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, Gilbert Walker, looked at Ramanujan's work and expressed amazement, urging him to spend time at Cambridge.[65] As a result of Walker's endorsement, B. Hanumantha Rao, a mathematics professor at an engineering college, invited Ramanujan's colleague Narayana Iyer to a meeting of the Board of Studies in

Mathematics to discuss "what we can do for S. Ramanujan".[66] The board agreed to grant Ramanujan a research scholarship of 75 rupees per month for the next two years at the University of Madras.[67] While he was engaged as a research student, Ramanujan continued to submit papers to the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. In one instance, Narayana Iyer submitted some theorems of Ramanujan on summation of series to the above mathematical journal adding The following theorem is due to S. Ramanujan, the mathematics student of Madras University. Later in November, British Professor Edward B. Ross of Madras Christian College, whom Ramanujan had met few years ago, stormed into his class one day with his eyes glowing, asking his students, Does Ramanujan know Polish? The reason was that in one paper, Ramanujan had anticipated the work of a Polish mathematician whose paper had just arrived by the days mail.[68] In his quarterly papers, Ramanujan drew up theorems to make definite integrals more easily solvable. Working off Giuliano Frullani's 1821 integral theorem, Ramanujan formulated generalizations that could be made to evaluate formerly unyielding integrals.[69] Hardy's correspondence with Ramanujan soured after Ramanujan refused to come to England. Hardy enlisted a colleague lecturing in Madras, E. H. Neville, to mentor and bring Ramanujan to England.[70] Neville asked Ramanujan why he would not go to Cambridge. Ramanujan apparently had now accepted the proposal; as Neville put it, "Ramanujan needed no converting and that his parents' opposition had been withdrawn".[60] Apparently, Ramanujan's mother had a vivid dream in which the family Goddess Namagiri commanded her "to stand no longer between her son and the fulfillment of his life's purpose".[60]

[edit]Life

in England

Ramanujan boarded the S.S. Nevasa on 17 March 1914, and at 10 o'clock in the morning, the ship departed from Madras.[71] He arrived in London on 14 April, with E. H. Neville waiting for him with a car. Four days later, Neville took him to his house on Chesterton Road in Cambridge. Ramanujan immediately began his work with Littlewood and Hardy. After six weeks, Ramanujan moved out of Neville's house and took up residence on Whewell's Court, just a five-minute walk from Hardy's room.[72] Hardy and Ramanujan began to take a look at Ramanujan's notebooks. Hardy had already received 120 theorems from Ramanujan in the first two letters, but there were many more results and theorems to be found in the notebooks. Hardy saw that some were wrong, some had already been discovered, while the rest were new

breakthroughs.[73] Ramanujan left a deep impression on Hardy and Littlewood. Littlewood commented, "I can believe that he's at least a Jacobi",[74] while Hardy said he "can compare him only with [Leonhard] Euler or Jacobi."[75] Ramanujan spent nearly five years in Cambridge collaborating with Hardy and Littlewood and published a part of his findings there. Hardy and Ramanujan had highly contrasting personalities. Their collaboration was a clash of different cultures, beliefs and working styles. Hardy was an atheist and an apostle of proof and mathematical rigour, whereas Ramanujan was a deeply religious man and relied very strongly on his intuition. While in England, Hardy tried his best to fill the gaps in Ramanujan's education without interrupting his spell of inspiration. Ramanujan was awarded a B.A. degree by research (this degree was later renamed PhD) in March 1916 for his work on highly composite numbers, which was published as a paper in theJournal of the London Mathematical Society. The paper was over 50 pages with different properties of such numbers proven. Hardy remarked that this was one of the most unusual papers seen in mathematical research at that time and that Ramanujan showed extraordinary ingenuity in handling it. On 6 December 1917, he was elected to the London Mathematical Society. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, becoming the second Indian to do so, following Ardaseer Cursetjee in 1841, and he was the youngest Fellow in the entire history of the Royal Society.[76] He was elected "for his investigation in Elliptic functions and the Theory of Numbers." On 13 October 1918, he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.[77]

[edit]Illness

and return to India

Plagued by health problems throughout his life, living in a country far away from home, and obsessively involved with his mathematics, Ramanujan's health worsened in England, perhaps exacerbated by stress and by the scarcity of vegetarian food during the First World War. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and a severe vitamin deficiency and was confined to a sanatorium. Ramanujan returned to Kumbakonam, India in 1919 and died soon thereafter at the age of 32. His widow, S. Janaki Ammal, lived in Chennai (formerly Madras) until her death in 1994.[78] A 1994 analysis of Ramanujan's medical records and symptoms by Dr. D.A.B. Young concluded that it was much more likely he had hepatic amoebiasis, a parasitic infection of the liver widespread in Madras, where Ramanujan had spent time. He had two

episodes of dysentery before he left India. When not properly treated dysentery can lie dormant for years and lead to hepatic amoebiasis,[3] a difficult disease to diagnose, but once diagnosed readily cured.[3]

[edit]Personality

and spiritual life

Ramanujan has been described as a person with a somewhat shy and quiet disposition, a dignified man with pleasant manners.[79] He lived a rather Spartan life while at Cambridge. Ramanujan's first Indian biographers describe him as rigorously orthodox. Ramanujan credited his acumen to his family Goddess, Namagiri of Namakkal. He looked to her for inspiration in his work,[80] and claimed to dream of blood drops that symbolised her male consort, Narasimha, after which he would receive visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes.[81] He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."[82][83] Hardy cites Ramanujan as remarking that all religions seemed equally true to him.[84] Hardy further argued that Ramanujan's religiousness had been romanticized by Westerners and overstatedin reference to his belief, not practiceby Indian biographers. At the same time, he remarked on Ramanujan's strict observance of vegetarianism.

[edit]Mathematical

achievements

In mathematics, there is a distinction between having an insight and having a proof. Ramanujan's talent suggested a plethora of formulae that could then be investigated in depth later. It is said that Ramanujan's discoveries are unusually rich and that there is often more to them than initially meets the eye. As a by-product, new directions of research were opened up. Examples of the most interesting of these formulae include the intriguing infinite series for , one of which is given below

This result is based on the negative fundamental discriminant d = 458 with class number h(d) = 2 (note that 571358 = 26390 and that 9801=9999; 396=499) and is related to the fact that

Compare to Heegner numbers, which have class number 1 and yield similar formulae. Ramanujan's series for converges extraordinarily rapidly

(exponentially) and forms the basis of some of the fastest algorithms currently used to calculate . Truncating the sum to the first term also gives the approximation places. One of his remarkable capabilities was the rapid solution for problems. He was sharing a room with P. C. Mahalanobis who had a problem, "Imagine that you are on a street with houses marked 1 through n. There is a house in between (x) such that the sum of the house numbers to left of it equals the sum of the house numbers to its right. If n is between 50 and 500, what are n and x?" This is a bivariate problem with multiple solutions. Ramanujan thought about it and gave the answer with a twist: He gave a continued fraction. The unusual part was that it was the solution to the whole class of problems. Mahalanobis was astounded and asked how he did it. "It is simple. The minute I heard the problem, I knew that the answer was a continued fraction. Which continued fraction, I asked myself. Then the answer came to my mind", Ramanujan replied.[85][86] His intuition also led him to derive some previously unknown identities, such as for , which is correct to six decimal

for all , where

(z) is the gamma function. Expanding into series of

0

powers and equating coefficients of identities for the hyperbolic secant.

, and

gives some deep

In 1918, Hardy and Ramanujan studied the partition function P(n) extensively and gave a non-convergent asymptotic series that permits exact computation of the number of partitions of an integer. Hans Rademacher, in 1937, was able to refine their formula to find an exact convergent series solution to this problem. Ramanujan and Hardy's work in this area gave rise to a powerful new method for finding asymptotic formulae, called the circle method.[87] He discovered mock theta functions in the last year of his life. For many years these functions were a mystery, but they are now known to be the holomorphic parts of harmonic weakMaass forms.

[edit]The

Ramanujan conjecture

Main article: RamanujanPetersson conjecture Although there are numerous statements that could bear the name Ramanujan conjecture, there is one statement that was very influential on later work. In particular, the connection of this conjecture with conjectures of Andr Weil in algebraic geometry opened up new areas of research. That Ramanujan conjecture is an assertion on the size of the tau function, which has as generating function the discriminant modular form (q), a typical cusp form in the theory of modular forms. It was finally proven in 1973, as a consequence of Pierre Deligne's proof of theWeil conjectures. The reduction step involved is complicated. Deligne won a Fields Medal in 1978 for his work on Weil conjectures.[88]

[edit]Ramanujan's

notebooks

Further information: Ramanujan's lost notebook While still in India, Ramanujan recorded the bulk of his results in four notebooks of loose leaf paper. These results were mostly written up without any derivations. This is probably the origin of the misperception that Ramanujan was unable to prove his results and simply thought up the final result directly. Mathematician Bruce C. Berndt, in his review of these notebooks and Ramanujan's work, says that Ramanujan most certainly was able to make the proofs of most of his results, but chose not to. This style of working may have been for several reasons. Since paper was very expensive, Ramanujan would do most of his work and perhaps his proofs on slate, and then transfer just the results to paper. Using a slate was common for mathematics students in India at the time. He was also quite likely to have been influenced by the style of G. S. Carr's book, which stated results without proofs. Finally, it is possible that Ramanujan considered his workings to be for his personal interest alone; and therefore only recorded the results.[89] The first notebook has 351 pages with 16 somewhat organized chapters and some unorganized material. The second notebook has 256 pages in 21 chapters and 100 unorganized pages, with the third notebook containing 33 unorganized pages. The results in his notebooks inspired numerous papers by later mathematicians trying to prove what he had

found. Hardy himself created papers exploring material from Ramanujan's work as did G. N. Watson, B. M. Wilson, and Bruce Berndt.[89] A fourth notebook with 87 unorganized pages, the so-called "lost notebook", was rediscovered in 1976 by George Andrews.[3]

[edit]Ramanujan-Hardy

number 1729

A common anecdote about Ramanujan relates to the number 1729. Hardy arrived at Ramanujan's residence in a cab numbered 1729. Hardy commented that the number 1729 seemed to be uninteresting. Ramanujan is said to have stated on the spot that it was actually a very interesting number mathematically, being the smallest natural number representable in two different ways as a sum of two cubes:

Generalizations of this idea have created the notion of "taxicab numbers". Coincidentally, 1729 is also a Carmichael Number.

[edit]Other

mathematicians' views of Ramanujan

Ramanujan is generally hailed as an all-time great like Carl Friedrich Gauss, Leonhard Euler and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, for his natural mathematical genius.[90] Hardy quotes: "The limitations of his knowledge were as startling as its profundity. Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems... to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was... beyond that of any mathematician in the world, who had found for himself the functional equation of the zeta function and the dominant terms of many of the most famous problems in the analytic theory of numbers; and yet he had never heard of a doubly periodic function or of Cauchy's theorem, and had indeed but the vaguest idea of what a function of acomplex variable was...".[91] When asked about the methods employed by Ramanujan to arrive at his solutions, Hardy said that they were "arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account."[92] He also stated that he had "never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi."[92]

Quoting K. Srinivasa Rao,[93] "As for his place in the world of Mathematics, we quote Bruce C. Berndt: 'Paul Erd s has passed on to us Hardy's personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, J.E. Littlewood 30, David Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100.'" In his book Scientific Edge, noted physicist Jayant Narlikar spoke of "Srinivasa Ramanujan, discovered by the Cambridge mathematician Hardy, whose great mathematical findings were beginning to be appreciated from 1915 to 1919. His achievements were to be fully understood much later, well after his untimely death in 1920. For example, his work on the highly composite numbers (numbers with a large number of factors) started a whole new line of investigations in the theory of such numbers." During his lifelong mission in educating and propagating mathematics among the school children in India, Nigeria and elsewhere, P.K. Srinivasan has continually introduced Ramanujan's mathematical works.

[edit]Recognition
Ramanujan's home state of Tamil Nadu celebrates 22 December (Ramanujan's birthday) as 'State IT Day', memorializing both the man and his achievements, as a native of Tamil Nadu. A stamp picturing Ramanujan was released by the Government of India in 1962 the 75th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth commemorating his achievements in the field of number theory. Since the Centennial year of Srinivasa Ramanujan,every year Dec 22nd, is celebrated as Ramanujan Day by the Government Arts College, Kumbakonam where he had studied and later dropped out. It is celebrated by the Department Of Mathematics by organising one-, two-, or three-day seminar by inviting eminent scholars from universities/colleges, and participants are mainly students of Mathematics, research scholars, and professors from local colleges. It has been planned to celebrate the 125-th birthday in a grand manner by inviting the foreign Eminent Mathematical scholars of this century

viz., G E Andrews. and Bruce C Berndt, who are very familiar with the contributions and works of Ramanujan. Ever year, in Chennai (formerly Madras), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), every 22th December is a memorable day for Ramanujan. The Department of Mathematics celebrate this day by organising a National Symposium On Mathematical Methods and Applications (NSMMA) for one day by inviting Eminent scholars from India/Foreign countries. A prize for young mathematicians from developing countries has been created in the name of Ramanujan by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), in cooperation with theInternational Mathematical Union, who nominate members of the prize committee. The Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA), based in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India, has instituted the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize of $10,000 to be given annually to a mathematician not exceeding the age of 32 for outstanding contributions in an area of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan. The age limit refers to the years Ramanujan lived, having nevertheless still achieved many accomplishments. This prize has been awarded annually since 2005, at an international conference conducted by SASTRA in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan's hometown, around Ramanujan's birthday, December 22.

[edit]In

popular culture

An international feature film on Ramanujan's life was announced in 2006 as due to begin shooting in 2007. It was to be shot in Tamil Nadu state and Cambridge and be produced by an IndoBritish collaboration and co-directed by Stephen Fry and Dev Benegal.[94] A play, First Class Man by Alter Ego Productions,[95] was based on David Freeman's First Class Man. The play is centered around Ramanujan and his complex and dysfunctional relationship with Hardy.

Another film, based on the book The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel, is being made by Edward Pressman and Matthew Brown.[96]

In the film Good Will Hunting, the eponymous character is compared to Ramanujan.

"Gomez", a short story by Cyril Kornbluth, describes the conflicted life of an untutored mathematical genius, clearly based on Ramanujan.

A Disappearing Number is a recent British stage production by the company Complicite that explores the relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan.

The character Amita Ramanujan on the television show Numb3rs is named after Ramanujan.

The novel The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt explores in fiction the events following Ramanujan's letter to Hardy.

An episode of Ancient Aliens produced by The History Channel mentions how Hardy met Ramanujan. It goes on to mention that Ramanujan's work has application today in String Theory and might contain insights into future applications in science including multiple dimensions, wormholes, levitation and more.

[edit]See

also

             

List of amateur mathematicians List of topics named after Srinivasa Ramanujan RamanujanPetersson conjecture 1729 (number) LandauRamanujan constant RamanujanSoldner constant Ramanujan summation Ramanujan theta function Ramanujan graph Ramanujan's tau function RogersRamanujan identities Ramanujan prime Ramanujan's constant Ramanujan's sum

Ramanujan modular functions

[edit]Notes
1. ^ C.P. Snow Foreword to "A Mathematician's Apology" byG.H. Hardy 2. ^ Berndt, Bruce C. (2001). Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. pp. 9. ISBN 0-8218-2624-7. 3. ^ a b c d Peterson, Doug. "Raiders of the Lost Notebook". UIUC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on May 17, 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-22. 4. ^ Berndt, Bruce C. (2005). Ramanujan's Notebooks Part V. SpringerLink. pp. 4. ISBN 0-387-94941-0. 5. ^ "Rediscovering Ramanujan". Frontline 16 (17): 650. August 1999. Retrieved 2007-06-23. 6. ^ Ono, Ken (JuneJuly 2006). "Honoring a Gift from Kumbakonam" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Mathematical Association of America) 53 (6): 650. Retrieved 2007-06-23. 7. ^ Alladi, Krishnaswami (1998). Analytic and Elementary Number Theory: A Tribute to Mathematical Legend Paul Erds. Norwell, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 6. ISBN 07923-8273-0. 8. ^ Kanigel, Robert (1991). The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 11. ISBN 0-684-19259-4. 9. ^ Kanigel (1991), p. 1718.

10. ^ Bruce C. Berndt; Robert Alexander Rankin (2001).Ramanujan: essays and surveys. AMS Bookstore. pp. 89.ISBN 0821826247, ISBN 978-0-8218-2624-9. 11. ^ Kanigel (1991), p12. 12. ^ Kanigel (1991), p13. 13. ^ Kanigel (1991), p19. 14. ^
a b

Kanigel (1991), p14.

15. ^ Kanigel (1991), p20.

16. ^ a b Kanigel (1991), p25. 17. ^ Hardy, G. H. (1999). Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. pp. 2.ISBN 0-82182023-0. 18. ^ Berndt, Bruce C.; Robert A. Rankin (2001). Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. pp. 9. ISBN 0-8218-2624-7. 19. ^ a b c Kanigel (1991), p27. 20. ^ Kanigel (1991), p39. 21. ^ A to Z of mathematicians by Tucker McElroy 2005 ISBN 0816053383 page 221 22. ^ a b Collected papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, Godfrey Harold Hardy, P. Ve katesvara Seshu Aiyar 2000 ISBN 0821820761 page xii 23. ^ Kanigel (1991), p90. 24. ^ Kanigel (1991), p28. 25. ^ Kanigel (1991), p45. 26. ^ Kanigel (1991), p47. 27. ^ Kanigel (1991), pp4849. 28. ^ Kanigel (1991), pp5556. 29. ^ Kanigel (1991), p71. 30. ^ Kanigel (1991), p72. 31. ^ Ramanujan, Srinivasa (1968). P. K. Srinivasan. ed.Ramanujan Memorial Number: Letters and Reminiscences. Madras: Muthialpet High School. Vol. 1, p100. 32. ^ Kanigel (1991), p73. 33. ^

been named the "Archimedes Movement," headed by former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.[67]