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Interesting history of mathematics
1. The Origin of Irrational Numbers in Interesting Mathematical History Stories In 500 BC, hippasus, a disciple of the Pythagorean School in ancient Greece, discovered an amazing fact: the diagonal of a square is not commensurable with the length of one side (if the side length of a square is 1, the length of the diagonal is not rational. This incommensurability is quite different from the Pythagorean school's philosophy of "everything is a number" (referring to rational numbers). This makes school leaders panic and angry, thinking that it will shake their dominant position in the academic world. Hebesos was imprisoned, tortured in various ways, and finally punished for sinking the ship. What is the essence of incommensurability? For a long time, it has been controversial and there is no correct explanation. The ratio of two incommensurable degrees has always been regarded as an irrational number. /kloc-Leonardo da Vinci, a famous Italian painter in the 0/5th century, called it an "irrational number", and Kepler, a German astronomer in the 0/7th century, called it an "indescribable number". However, the truth can't be drowned after all. It is "unreasonable" for Pythagoras school to obliterate the truth. People named the incommensurable measure "irrational number" to commemorate the respectable scholar Hibsos who devoted himself to the truth-this is the origin of "irrational number", which led to the first mathematical crisis.

2. What's interesting about mathematics? History of Mathematics 1 mathematician's epitaph (1) Swiss mathematician Jacob worked hard and studied spirals. After his death, his tombstone was engraved with a logarithmic spiral, and the inscription also said, "Although I have changed, I am the same as before."

This is a pun, which not only depicts the nature of spiral, but also symbolizes his love for mathematics. 2 mathematician's epitaph (2)/kloc-Rudolph, a German mathematician in the 6th century, spent his whole life calculating pi to 35 decimal places.

Later, people called it Rudolph, and after his death, others carved this number on his tombstone. Chen Jingrun, a great computational mathematician, worked it out completely with a pen and wrote more than 200 pages of proof papers. Zu Chongzhi's calculation range of pi should be 24,576 polygons inscribed in a circle, and at least 130 times of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root operations should be repeated; Rudolph, a German mathematician, has been calculating pi to 35 decimal places all his life. Leonard Eliel, an academician of Petersburg Academy of Sciences, spent forty years in solving the three-body problem (the sun, the earth and the moon), and all the calculations occupied 490 pages.

The invention and use of computers finally liberated mathematicians from tedious calculations. 4 Euler's blindness When Euler was completely blind, he still fought against the darkness with amazing perseverance and studied with memory and mental arithmetic until his death.

Euler's memory and mental arithmetic are rare. He can repeat the contents of his notes when he was young, and he can recite advanced mathematics like the back of his hand. On one occasion, two students of Euler added up the 17 terms of a very complicated convergence series, and when they reached the 50th place, the difference was one unit.

In order to determine who is right, Euler calculated all the calculations himself and finally found out the mistakes. Einstein and Relativity Einstein once explained his special theory of relativity to people in popular language.

Once, a group of students surrounded Einstein and asked him to explain the theory of relativity. Einstein thought for a moment and said humorously, "Let me make an analogy. For example, if you sit on the stove and bake something, and sit under the green tree in the park and have a love affair with a girl, which time do you think is longer? " The student replied, "of course, I feel like I've been sitting on the stove for a long time." Einstein smiled and said, "This is the content of relativity."

This story vividly illustrates the relativity of time and space. 6 Liu Hui's contribution and position. Liu Hui's work not only had a far-reaching impact on the development of ancient mathematics in China, but also affected the development of ancient mathematics in China 1000 years. It is one of the models of oriental mathematics, and it is a supplement to ancient western mathematics represented by Greek Euclid's Elements. In view of Liu Hui's great contribution, many books call him "Newton in the history of Chinese mathematics".

Yang Hui, a mathematician in the Southern Song Dynasty, is the author of Nine Chapters of Arithmetic. His research work is mainly in computing technology. He reclassified nine chapters of arithmetic into nine categories: multiplication, division, combination, interchange, equation and Pythagoras.

Yang Hui attaches great importance to the popularization and development of mathematics education, and his "Calculation Outline for Beginners" is an important document in the history of Chinese mathematics. Poincare is an outstanding mathematician, French mathematician and physicist, who has made important contributions to almost all branches of mathematics.

He studied automorphism function in his early days, and later became a pioneer of topology, astronomer, probability scientist, philosopher, academician of French Academy and president of French Academy of Sciences. Poincare published 500 papers in his life.

There are about 30 books, covering almost all fields of mathematics and many important fields such as theoretical physics and astrophysics. Poincare is recognized as the leading mathematician at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, and the last person who has a comprehensive understanding of mathematics and its applications.

Plato, the founder of mathematicians, was a famous philosopher in ancient Greece. His philosophical thoughts have influenced the development of European philosophy and even the whole culture, especially his epistemology, mathematical philosophy and mathematical education thoughts have played an indelible role in the formation of science and the development of mathematics. Plato school, which takes academy as the core of teaching activities, advocates strict definition and logical proof, which is helpful to the scientific mathematics.

Plato also first put forward the idea of universal education. Plato did not make outstanding achievements in mathematics, but he won the reputation of "the founder of mathematicians". Abel Abel, a talented mathematician, is recognized as one of the founders of elliptic function theory and an advocate of strict analysis.

The addition theorem of elliptic function and the discovery of biperiodicity have also made great contributions to the strict theory of commutative groups and binomial series and the summation of series. However, Abel was not appreciated by the authorities at that time, which led to poverty and illness and died young.

Abel integral, Abel integral equation, Abel function, Abel group, Abel series, Abel partial sum formula, Abel convergence criterion, Abel additivity-these are the best memorials to Abel.

3. Interesting mathematical story Achilles is a Greek hero in the epic Iliad. One day he met a turtle, and the turtle laughed at him and said, "Everyone says hello, but I don't think you can catch up with me in the race." Achilles smiled and said, "How is that possible? Even if I run slower, my speed is 10 times of yours. How can we catch up? " The tortoise said, "well, let's assume that you are 100 meters away from me, and your speed is 10 times of mine." Now you are chasing me, but when you run to my present position, that is, when you run 100 meters, I have already run forward 10 meters. When you catch up with this position again, I will run110 meters ... In short, you can only approach me infinitely, but you will never catch up with me. " What Achilles listens to makes sense. At that time, Zhang Er puzzled. This is a question of pursuing progress. Achilles raced with the tortoise. After the tortoise ran out for some time, Achilles began to chase it, but when he arrived, he was caught up. There are infinite starting points. According to the logic of this paradox, Scud Achilles can't catch up with the tortoise. In fact, everyone knows that Achilles can catch up with the tortoise, and it is far more than that. Even if this race repeats endlessly, Achilles can't surpass the tortoise. Zeno's paradox says that Achilles can't outrun the tortoise, not that Achilles can't outrun the tortoise. But Achilles could not surpass the tortoise under the restriction of the rules of the game. One day in the story of 1796, a young man began to do the math problem left by his tutor. The first two questions were successfully completed. There is only the third problem left: draw a positive 17 polygon with a ruler. The young man racked his brains, but made no progress. Difficulties aroused his fighting spirit. He finally finished the problem. The tutor saw it. You solved the math problem left over from more than two thousand years! "It turned out that the tutor handed the note on this topic to the students because of mistakes. Whenever I recall, the young man always said, "If someone told me that this is a math problem with a history of more than 2,000 years, I might never have the confidence to solve it. "This young man is the prince of mathematics gauss. Three people went to stay. 30 yuan a night, each of the three people paid 10, making up 30 yuan for the boss. Later, the boss said that 25 yuan was enough for today's discount, so he took out the 5 yuan and asked the waiter to return it to them. The waiter secretly hid 2 yuan's money, and then distributed the rest of 3 yuan's money to three people, each at 1 yuan. In this way, everyone paid 10 yuan at first, and now it is returned to 65438+. That is 10- 1=9, each person only spent 9 yuan money, three people each 9 yuan, 3×9 = 27 yuan+2 yuan =29 yuan hidden by the waiter, where did the one yuan go? .

4. The Origin of Irrational Numbers in Interesting Mathematical History Stories In 500 BC, hippasus, a disciple of the Pythagorean School in ancient Greece, discovered an amazing fact: the diagonal of a square is not commensurable with the length of one side (if the side length of a square is 1, the diagonal length is not rational). This incommensurability is related to Pythagoras school.

This development surprised and angered the leaders of this school, thinking that it would shake their dominant position in academic circles. Furong was imprisoned and tortured in every way, and finally she was sent to the shipwreck and died.

What is the essence of incommensurability? For a long time, people have been arguing endlessly without a correct explanation. The ratio of two incommensurable degrees has always been considered unreasonable. /kloc-Leonardo da Vinci, a famous Italian painter in the 0/5th century, called it an "irrational number", and Kepler, a German astronomer in the 0/7th century, called it an "indescribable number".

However, the truth cannot be submerged after all, and it is "unreasonable" for Bishop to obliterate the truth. People named the incommensurable measure "irrational number" to commemorate the respectable scholar Hibsos who devoted himself to the truth-this is the origin of "irrational number", which led to the first mathematical crisis.

5. What's interesting about mathematics? The epitaph of mathematicians in the history of mathematics 1 (1)

Swiss mathematician Jacob worked hard and studied spirals before his death. After his death, his tombstone was engraved with a logarithmic spiral, and the inscription also said, "Although I have changed, I am the same as before." This is a pun, which not only depicts the nature of spiral, but also symbolizes his love for mathematics.

2 mathematician's epitaph (2)

/kloc-Rudolph, a German mathematician in the 6th century, spent his whole life calculating pi to 35 decimal places. Later, people called it Rudolph, and after his death, others carved this number on his tombstone.

3 amazing calculation

Mathematician Chen Jingrun calculated completely with a pen and wrote more than 200 pages of proof papers; Zu Chongzhi's calculation range of pi should be 24,576 polygons inscribed in a circle, and at least 130 times of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root operations should be repeated; Rudolph, a German mathematician, has been calculating pi to 35 decimal places all his life. Leonard Eliel, an academician of Petersburg Academy of Sciences, spent forty years in solving the three-body problem (the sun, the earth and the moon), and all the calculations occupied 490 pages. The invention and use of computers finally liberated mathematicians from tedious calculations.

4 Euler blindness

When Euler was completely blind, he still fought against the darkness with amazing perseverance and studied with memory and mental arithmetic until his death. Euler's memory and mental arithmetic are rare. He can repeat the contents of his notes when he was young, and he can recite advanced mathematics like the back of his hand. On one occasion, two students of Euler added up the 17 terms of a very complicated convergence series, and when they reached the 50th place, the difference was one unit. In order to determine who is right, Euler calculated all the calculations himself and finally found out the mistakes.

Einstein and Relativity

Einstein once explained his special theory of relativity to people in popular language. Once, a group of students surrounded Einstein and asked him to explain the theory of relativity. Einstein thought for a moment and said humorously, "Let me make an analogy. For example, if you sit on the stove and bake something, and sit under the green tree in the park and have a love affair with a girl, which time do you think is longer? " The student replied, "of course, I feel like I've been sitting on the stove for a long time." Einstein smiled and said, "This is the content of relativity." This story vividly illustrates the relativity of time and space.

6 Liu Hui's contribution and position

Liu Hui's work not only had a far-reaching impact on the development of ancient mathematics in China, but also influenced nine chapters of arithmetic in the world, leading the development of ancient mathematics in China for more than 1000 years. Liu Hui is one of the models of oriental mathematics and a supplement to ancient western mathematics represented by Greek Euclid's Elements of Geometry. In view of Liu Hui's great contribution, many books call him "Newton in the history of Chinese mathematics".

7 Yang Hui

Mathematician of Southern Song Dynasty, author of Nine Chapters of Arithmetic Detailed Explanation, etc. His research work is mainly in computing technology. He reclassified nine chapters of arithmetic into nine categories: multiplication, division, combination, interchange, equation and Pythagoras. Yang Hui attaches great importance to the popularization and development of mathematics education, and his "Calculation Outline for Beginners" is an important document in the history of Chinese mathematics.

Eight top mathematicians

French mathematician and physicist Poincare made important contributions to almost all branches of mathematics. He studied automorphism function in his early days, and later became a pioneer of topology, astronomer, probability scientist, philosopher, academician of French Academy and president of French Academy of Sciences. Poincare published 500 papers in his life. There are about 30 books, covering almost all fields of mathematics and many important fields such as theoretical physics and astrophysics. Poincare is recognized as the leading mathematician at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, and the last person who has a comprehensive understanding of mathematics and its applications.

The founder of mathematicians

Plato, a famous ancient Greek philosopher, influenced the development of European philosophy and even the whole culture, especially his epistemology, mathematical philosophy and mathematical education thought played an indelible role in the formation of science and the development of mathematics. Plato school, which takes academy as the core of teaching activities, advocates strict definition and logical proof, which is helpful to the scientific mathematics. Plato also first put forward the idea of universal education. Plato did not make outstanding achievements in mathematics, but he won the reputation of "the founder of mathematicians"

10 gifted mathematician Abel

Abel, recognized as one of the founders of elliptic function theory, is an advocate of strict analysis. The addition theorem of elliptic function and the discovery of biperiodicity have also made great contributions to the strict theory of commutative groups and binomial series and the summation of series. However, Abel was not appreciated by the authorities at that time, which led to poverty and illness and died young. Abel integral, Abel integral equation, Abel function, Abel group, Abel series, Abel partial sum formula, Abel convergence criterion, Abel additivity-these are the best memorials to Abel.

6. What's interesting about math? A statistician met a mathematician. Statisticians teased mathematicians and said, "Didn't you say that if X=Y and Y=Z, then X=Z! Then I think if you like a girl, then you will also like the boy that the girl likes! ? "The mathematician thought for a moment and asked," Then you put your left hand in a pot of 100 degree boiling water and your right hand in a pot of 0 degree ice water. " ! Because they are only 50 degrees on average! "Amy Nord, a German mathematician, has obtained a doctorate, but she is not qualified to teach, because she needs to write another paper before the professor will discuss whether to grant her the qualification as a lecturer.

Hilbert, a famous mathematician at that time, appreciated Amy's talent very much. He ran around asking for permission to be the first female lecturer at the University of G? ttingen, but there was still controversy at the professor meeting. A professor said excitedly, "How can a woman be a lecturer?" If she is allowed to be a lecturer, she will become a professor in the future and even enter the university Council.

Can women be allowed to enter the highest academic institutions of universities? Another professor said, "How do our soldiers feel when they come back from the battlefield and find themselves prostrating themselves at the feet of women to study?" Hilbert stood up and firmly refuted: "gentlemen, the gender of the candidate should never be an argument against her becoming a lecturer." After all, the university Council is not a bathing hall! " .

7. Von Neumann, one of the most outstanding mathematicians in the 20th century, such as interesting mathematical stories and mathematical history. As we all know, the electronic computer invented by 1946 has greatly promoted the progress of science and technology and social life. In view of von Neumann's key role in the invention of electronic computers, he is called "the father of computers" by westerners. From 19 1 1 to 192 1, von Neumann got ahead when he was studying in Lu Se Lun Middle School in Budapest, and was highly valued by teachers. Under the individual guidance of Mr. Fichte, von Neumann published his first mathematical paper in cooperation.

Galois was born in a town not far from Paris. His father is the headmaster of the school and has served as mayor for many years. The influence of family makes Galois always brave and fearless. 1823, 12-year-old galois left his parents to study in Paris. Not content with boring classroom indoctrination, he went to find the most difficult mathematics original research by himself. Some teachers also helped him a lot. Teachers' evaluation of him is "only suitable for working in the frontier field of mathematics".

Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Sicily, at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula in 287 BC. Father is a mathematician and astronomer. Archimedes had a good family upbringing since childhood. 1 1 years old, was sent to study in Alexandria, the cultural center of Greece. In this famous city known as the "Capital of Wisdom", Archimedes Job collected books and learned a lot of knowledge, and became a protege of Euclid students erato Sese and Cannon, studying geometric elements.

Zu Chongzhi's outstanding achievement in mathematics is about the calculation of pi. Before the Qin and Han Dynasties, people used "the diameter of three weeks a week" as pi, which was called "Gubi". Later, it was found that the error of Gubi was too large, and the pi should be "the diameter of a circle is greater than the diameter of three weeks". However, there are different opinions on how much is left. Until the Three Kingdoms period, Liu Hui put forward a scientific method to calculate pi-"secant" which approximated the circumference of a circle with the circumference inscribed by a regular polygon. Liu Hui calculated the circle inscribed with a 96-sided polygon and got π=3. 14, and pointed out that the more sides inscribed with a regular polygon, the more accurate the π value obtained. On the basis of predecessors' achievements, Zu Chongzhi devoted himself to research and repeated calculations. It is found that π is between 3. 14 15926 and 3. 14 15927, and the approximate value in the form of π fraction is obtained as the reduction rate and density rate, where the six decimal places are 3. 14 1929. There's no way to check now. If he tries to find it according to Liu Hui's secant method, he must work out 16384 polygons inscribed in the circle. How much time and labor it takes! It is obvious that his perseverance and wisdom in academic research are admirable. It has been more than 1000 years since foreign mathematicians obtained the same result in the secrecy rate calculated by Zu Chongzhi. In order to commemorate Zu Chongzhi's outstanding contribution, some mathematicians abroad suggested that π = be called "ancestral rate".

Born in 624 BC, Ju Lushi was the first famous mathematician in ancient Greece. He used to be a shrewd businessman. After he accumulated considerable wealth by selling olive oil, Cyrus devoted himself to scientific research and travel. He is diligent and studious, at the same time, he is not superstitious about the ancients, and he is brave in exploration, creation and positive thinking. His hometown is not too far from Egypt, so he often travels to Egypt. There, Ju Lushi learned about the rich mathematical knowledge accumulated by ancient Egyptians for thousands of years. When he traveled in Egypt, he calculated the height of the pyramids in a clever way, which made the ancient Egyptian king Amerasis admire him very much.