Mathematics
- July 11 – Keuffel and Esser manufacture the last slide rule in the United States.
- Imre Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations: the Logic of Mathematical Discovery is published posthumously.
- The four color theorem is proved by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, the first major theorem to be proved using a computer.
Read more about this topic: 1976 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“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)
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)