A remarkable French natural philosopher and mathematician who lived in the early eighteenth century, Émilie Du Châtalet, is generally remembered for her translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, but her work was much more than a simple translation: she added an extensive commentary in which she included new developments in mechanics, the most important being her formulation of the principle of conservation of energy [TM223 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘Émilie Du Châtelet and the Conservation of Energy’
. He realised that because of the Earth’s curvature the horizon, as viewed from a mountain-top, would appear to be below the horizontal direction. This direction is easily obtained as being orthogonal to the vertical, which is indicated by a plumb line.
of a real variable, we often have to find the values of 
for which the function is zero. A simple iterative method was devised by Isaac Newton and refined by Joseph Raphson. It is known either as Newton’s method or as the Newton-Raphson method. It usually produces highly accurate approximations to the roots of the equation 
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A fascinating parallel between a brilliant mathematician and an arch-villain of crime fiction is drawn in a forthcoming book – 
, which obviously does not converge, but alternates between 
and 
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and 
were known to mathematicians in India about 400 years before Taylor’s time.
ThatsMaths 
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