February 23, 2018 Friday
Bedtime Story
Back to Bernoulli Brothers - Jacob and Johann (1680s)
The great mathematician Leonhard Euler got
Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, the younger brother of Jacob
Bernoulli.
In 1720s Johann Bernoulli had profound
influence on the mind and thinking of young Euler.
Upon his return from his six years of
travels, Jacob joined the University in Basel and began to teach mechanics (and
not pure mathematics).
It was in this period that be begun to do
serious mathematical work on his own and the results that he got in this period
would become the subject of his future masterpiece Ars Conjectandi.
Ars Conjectandi (Latin for “The Art of Conjecturing”)
is the magnum opus of Jacob Bernoulli that was published eight years
posthumously in 1713 by Nicolaus Bernoulli, his nephew and one of the many
prominent mathematicians that this family is known for.
After merely five year of teaching, in 1687
Jacob was appointed the professor of mathematics in the University of Basel.
The University of Basel today is one of the
oldest surviving universities that was first established in 1460 under the Holy
Roman Empire.
Jacob during his time had also become a mentor
to his talented brother Johann Bernoulli and they both delved deep into the
foundations, ideas and theories of Leibniz calculus, becoming not only its
fierce proponents but decidedly siding with Leibniz in the infamous
Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy.
Where do you think they studied calculus
from?
Back then not a single published book had
calculus in it; moreover book printing was a costly affair back then.
Bear in mind that in Europe the first
movable type printing system was introduced only in 1450.
You may not know what it means to publish
anything on a movable type printing system as most of you would have never
typed on a mechanical typing machine (the type-writer) and perhaps had seen one
ages ago.
Movable-type printing is a system of
printing and typography that uses mobile components to print out the elements
that comprises any document, most common being letters and punctuation marks.
The movable pieces were metallic and were
made by casting from matrices struck by letter punches.
It was Johannes Gutenburg, a goldsmith who
was familiar with the techniques of punchcutting more in relation to creation
of coins from moulds than about letters, decided to convert his knowledge of
punchcutting of gold coins to production of punched cut metallic letters.
Somewhere between 1436 and 1450 this
Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany started to work on the little idea of his
on copper matrix or mould of casting letters.
For this he developed a device that is
called hand mould on whose details I could go to but then it will be another
long diversion into the principles of mechanical engineering that will take us
very far away from our principle subject.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
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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