March 10, 2017 Friday
Bedtime Story
Franciscus Vieta - The Alan Turing of Sixteenth Century
So let us get back to Franciscus Vieta.
Now our Vieta happened to be in Paris on that fateful August day
of 1572 when the St. Bartholomew massacre took place.
Being with the nobility of the Protestant he was caught in the
deadly religious politics and was accused by the Catholics of being a
sympathizer of the Protestant Cause.
Little did they understand that like me, he was indifferent to
religious matters.
Well, let me correct that; I am not indifferent to religious
matters and functions, I abhor them in the most spiteful way possible.
While I am lucky not to be involved in any form of politics, Vieta
was not so since he had a tendency to get himself involved in high-end political
intrigues of his time. (Yes, very strange mathematician indeed!)
That is the reason why I claim that he was a very divergent from
most mathematicians since he was very well versed and extremely adept in
survival skills of upper league politics.
So much so that much like Alan Turing, Vieta too served as a
code-breaker to not one but two kings Henry III and Henry IV.
For the first king, he deciphered the secret letters of the
Catholic League and the other enemies of the king.
For the second one, he discovered the key to the Spanish cipher
(which had more than 500 characters) allowing the King to read all the letters
that fell in their hands.
To understand this, I must tell you that Spain was harboring and
supporting the members of the tenacious Catholic League against France and
Henry IV.
One of the secret letters that he deciphered for Henry IV was a
plot by a head of the Catholic League based in Spain to overthrow the king of
France.
The plot obviously failed and this made Vieta very popular with
his King.
On the other hand the King of Spain was so flabbergasted with the
whole episode that he accused Vieta of black magic and usage of sorcery in
warfare.
Well, let me not pursue politics any further and show how Vieta,
in such times of political turmoil and religious upheavals carried out his
mathematical work.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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