Mathematics
- This year's French Academy of Sciences prize is based on a problem on the masting of ships: to calculate the number of masts to use and where in the ship to locate them. Pierre Bouguer gains the award for his paper On the masting of ships; and two other prizes, one for his dissertation On the best method of observing the altitude of stars at sea and the other for his paper On the best method of observing the variation of the compass at sea. The 19-year-old Euler enters for the prize with an essay written in 1726 and published in 1728.
Read more about this topic: 1727 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)