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The links between music and mathematics stretch back to Pythagoras and many leading mathematicians have studied the theory of music. Music and mathematics were pillars of the Quadrivium, the four-fold way that formed the basis of higher education for thousands of years. Music was a central theme for Johannes Kepler in his Harmonices Mundi – Harmony of the World, and René Descartes’ first work was a compendium of music.
Continue reading ‘Euler’s “Degree of Agreeableness” for Musical Chords’
When Frederick the Great was crowned King of Prussia in 1740 he immediately revived the Berlin Academy of Sciences and invited scholars from throughout Europe to Berlin. The most luminous of these was Leonhard Euler, who arrived at the academy in 1741. Euler was an outstanding genius, brilliant in both mathematics and physics. Yet, a myth persists that he failed spectacularly to solve a problem posed by Frederick. Euler is reputed to have bungled his mathematical analysis. In truth, there was much bungling, but the responsibility lay elsewhere. [TM122 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Sanssouci Palace, the summer home of Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
PHOTO: https://www.flickr.com/photos/b_hurwitz/4064337397/
Euclid showed by a deliciously simple argument that the number of primes is infinite. In a completely different manner, Euler confirmed the same result. Euler’s conclusion followed from his demonstration that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges:
Obviously, this could not happen if there were only finitely many primes.
Leonhard Euler considered a problem known as The Seven Bridges of Königsberg. It involves a walk around the city now known as Kaliningrad, in the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. Since Kaliningrad is out of the way for most of us, let’s have a look closer to home, at the bridges of Paris. [TM073: search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ]
The article in this week’s That’s Maths column in the Irish Times ( TM043 ) is about the mathematical curves called clothoids, used in the design of motorways.
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Many mathematicians spend their time proving results. The (very old) joke is that they are machines for turning coffee into theorems. A theorem is a statement that has been shown, by a sequence of irrefutable steps, to follow logically from a set of fundamental assumptions known as axioms.
These axioms themselves may be self-evident, or may simply be assumed to be true. Given this, the statement contained in a theorem is known with certainty to be true.
This week, That’s Maths in The Irish Times ( TM032 ) is about Euler’s Polyhedron Formula and its consequences.
Euler’s Polyhedron Formula
The highlight of the thirteenth and final book of Euclid’s Elements was the proof that there are just five “Platonic solids”. Recall that a regular polygon is a plane figure with all sides and angles equal, for example a square. By joining identical polygons together, we can form solid bodies called regular polyhedra. Continue reading ‘Euler’s Gem’
