Story of Maths Part 3_Ong

The Story of Maths: The Frontiers of Space

            Piero della Francesca is a mathematician and artist of the early Renaissance period. In this video his work or painting called “The Flagellation of Christ” is featured. It is a very fascinating painting especially because it is a three-dimensional painting on a flat canvas. The size of the people and things in the foreground are different than the ones at the back and the floor tiles are painted in such a way that it looks like they are flat on the ground and you could step on it if you just walk straight to it.The details are near perfection that it looks almost real. It is wonderful how he applied mathematics in that piece of art.

I was shocked when I discovered the Rene Descartes was also actually a mercenary. I only knew that he is a famous mathematician but never thought of him as a soldier who is paid to fight. Descartes made a proposal to link geometry with algebra, something which was never thought of before.

Another mathematician, Pierre de Fermat, was known for his discovery of new patterns in numbers and theorems that have defeated mathematicians for centuries.One of his theorems is now the basis of our credit card transactions on the internet and is the reason why it is protected or safe.Sometimes we wonder how they come up with these things but actually the technology we have today all started from scribbles, dreams and sudden thoughts of mathematicians in the past.

Physics is what Isaac Newton is much known for but he is also a great mathematician. He made an innovative approach to calculus but he didn’t publish his discoveries but instead shared it with his circle of friends. After a while, Newton had a rival named Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz claims to have discovered calculus before Newton had. Leibniz is also one of the first who made practical counting machines that worked on the binary system just like the ones we use on our computers today.

Another thing that I’ve never heard before is a dynasty of mathematicians. The Bernoulli family was originally a family of merchants. They were fans of Leibniz and were also one of those who helped spread calculus to other people.The calculus of variation is an application of calculus by the Bernoulli’s. It is used to maximize profit, minimize energy use and optimize construction.

Carl Friedrich Gaussmay not be the first to discover imaginary number but he is the first to describe, picture it out, and show how imaginary numbers really worked. He questioned Euclid’s geometry about the world or space being flat but didn’t publish anything about it so that he wouldn’t get into trouble.

So many discoveries were done long ago in different ways. Some were even unpublished right away. To think that these discoveries just came to them so suddenly makes me wonder if it could happen to us too. Just wake up in the morning and have a new mathematical discovery or just sit around in the park until an idea comes up that could affect the whole world.