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:
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“... though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)
“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)