The Mathematics Portal
Mathematics is the study of representing and reasoning about abstract objects (such as numbers, points, spaces, sets, structures, and games). Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered. (Full article...)
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- ... that the discovery of Descartes' theorem in geometry came from a too-difficult mathematics problem posed to a princess?
- ... that people in Madagascar perform algebra on tree seeds in order to tell the future?
- ... that owner Matthew Benham influenced both Brentford FC in the UK and FC Midtjylland in Denmark to use mathematical modelling to recruit undervalued football players?
- ... that two members of the French parliament were killed when a delayed-action German bomb exploded in the town hall at Bapaume on 25 March 1917?
- ... that a folded paper lantern shows that certain mathematical definitions of surface area are incorrect?
- ... that museum director Alena Aladava rebuilt the Belarusian national art collection in the aftermath of the Second World War?
- ... that the prologue to The Polymath was written by Martin Kemp, a leading expert on Leonardo da Vinci?
- ... that mathematics professor Ari Nagel has fathered more than a hundred children?
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- ...that a cyclic cellular automaton is a system of simple mathematical rules that can generate complex patterns mixing random chaos, blocks of color, and spirals?
- ...that a nonconvex polygon with three convex vertices is called a pseudotriangle?
- ...that the axiom of choice is logically independent of the other axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory?
- ...that the Pythagorean Theorem generalizes to any three similar shapes on the three sides of a right-angled triangle?
- ...that the orthocenter, circumcenter, centroid and the centre of the nine-point circle all lie on one line, the Euler line?
- ...that an arbitrary quadrilateral will tessellate?
- ...that it has not been proven whether or not every even integer greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes?
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Mathematics department in Göttingen where Hilbert worked from 1895 until his retirement in 1930 Image credit: Daniel Schwen |
David Hilbert (January 23, 1862, Wehlau, Prussia–February 14, 1943, Göttingen, Germany) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He established his reputation as a great mathematician and scientist by inventing or developing a broad range of ideas, such as invariant theory, the axiomization of geometry, and the notion of Hilbert space, one of the foundations of functional analysis. Hilbert and his students supplied significant portions of the mathematic infrastructure required for quantum mechanics and general relativity. He is one of the founders of proof theory, mathematical logic, and the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics, and warmly defended Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. A famous example of his world leadership in mathematics is his 1900 presentation of a set of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century. (Full article...)
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