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1796 In Science
The year 1796 in science and technology involved some significant events. Astronomy * Pierre-Simon Laplace publishes ''Exposition du système du monde'', his work on astronomy (mainly celestial mechanics) following Isaac Newton, Newton and Joseph Louis Lagrange, Lagrange. He develops an analytical theory of tides, deduces the mass of the Moon, improves the calculation of cosmic orbits, and predicts that Saturn's rings will be found to rotate. Most notably, he propounds the modern nebular hypothesis, independently outlined by Immanuel Kant, Kant. Chemistry * Rev. James Parker (cement maker), James Parker is granted a patent in Kingdom of Great Britain, Britain for Roman cement ("A certain Cement or Terras to be used in Aquatic and other Buildings and Stucco Work"). Exploration * June 21 – Mungo Park (explorer), Mungo Park becomes the first European to reach the Niger River. Mathematics * This is a productive year for the German people, German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heptadecagon
In geometry, a heptadecagon, septadecagon or 17-gon is a seventeen-sided polygon. Regular heptadecagon A '' regular heptadecagon'' is represented by the Schläfli symbol . Construction As 17 is a Fermat prime, the regular heptadecagon is a constructible polygon (that is, one that can be constructed using a compass and unmarked straightedge): this was shown by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1796 at the age of 19.Arthur Jones, Sidney A. Morris, Kenneth R. Pearson, ''Abstract Algebra and Famous Impossibilities'', Springer, 1991, p. 178./ref> This proof represented the first progress in regular polygon construction in over 2000 years. Gauss's proof relies firstly on the fact that constructibility is equivalent to expressibility of the trigonometric functions of the common angle in terms of arithmetic operations and square root extractions, and secondly on his proof that this can be done if the odd prime factors of N, the number of sides of the regular polygon, are distinct Fermat prime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making it the only human disease to be eradicated. The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of ulcers in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days, the skin rash turned into the characteristic fluid-filled blisters with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was spread between people or via contaminated objects. Prevention was achieved mainly through the smallpox vaccine. Once the disease had developed, certain antiviral medication may have helped. The risk of death was about 30%, with higher rates among babies. Often, those who survived had extensive scarring of their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner, (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was a British physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines, and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms ''vaccine'' and ''vaccination'' are derived from ''Variolae vaccinae'' ('pustules of the cow'), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the title of his ''Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox'', in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox. In the West, Jenner is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have saved "more lives than any other man". In Jenner's time, smallpox killed around 10% of global population, with the number as high as 20% in towns and cities where infection spread more easily. In 1821, he was appointed physician to King George IV of the United Kingdom, George IV, and was also made mayor of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Berkeley and justice of the peace. A member of the Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrien-Marie Legendre
Adrien-Marie Legendre (; ; 18 September 1752 – 9 January 1833) was a French mathematician who made numerous contributions to mathematics. Well-known and important concepts such as the Legendre polynomials and Legendre transformation are named after him. Life Adrien-Marie Legendre was born in Paris on 18 September 1752 to a wealthy family. He received his education at the Collège Mazarin in Paris, and defended his thesis in physics and mathematics in 1770. He taught at the École Militaire in Paris from 1775 to 1780 and at the École Normale Supérieure, École Normale from 1795. At the same time, he was associated with the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1782, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin Academy awarded Legendre a prize for his treatise on projectiles in resistant media. This treatise also brought him to the attention of Lagrange. The ''Académie des sciences'' made Legendre an adjoint member in 1783 and an associate in 1785. In 1789, he was elected a Fellow of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finite Field
In mathematics, a finite field or Galois field (so-named in honor of Évariste Galois) is a field that contains a finite number of elements. As with any field, a finite field is a set on which the operations of multiplication, addition, subtraction and division are defined and satisfy certain basic rules. The most common examples of finite fields are given by the integers mod when is a prime number. The ''order'' of a finite field is its number of elements, which is either a prime number or a prime power. For every prime number and every positive integer there are fields of order p^k, all of which are isomorphic. Finite fields are fundamental in a number of areas of mathematics and computer science, including number theory, algebraic geometry, Galois theory, finite geometry, cryptography and coding theory. Properties A finite field is a finite set which is a field; this means that multiplication, addition, subtraction and division (excluding division by zero) are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coefficient
In mathematics, a coefficient is a multiplicative factor in some term of a polynomial, a series, or an expression; it is usually a number, but may be any expression (including variables such as , and ). When the coefficients are themselves variables, they may also be called parameters. For example, the polynomial 2x^2-x+3 has coefficients 2, −1, and 3, and the powers of the variable x in the polynomial ax^2+bx+c have coefficient parameters a, b, and c. The constant coefficient is the coefficient not attached to variables in an expression. For example, the constant coefficients of the expressions above are the number 3 and the parameter ''c'', respectively. The coefficient attached to the highest degree of the variable in a polynomial is referred to as the leading coefficient. For example, in the expressions above, the leading coefficients are 2 and ''a'', respectively. Terminology and definition In mathematics, a coefficient is a multiplicative factor in some term of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynomial
In mathematics, a polynomial is an expression consisting of indeterminates (also called variables) and coefficients, that involves only the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and positive-integer powers of variables. An example of a polynomial of a single indeterminate is . An example with three indeterminates is . Polynomials appear in many areas of mathematics and science. For example, they are used to form polynomial equations, which encode a wide range of problems, from elementary word problems to complicated scientific problems; they are used to define polynomial functions, which appear in settings ranging from basic chemistry and physics to economics and social science; they are used in calculus and numerical analysis to approximate other functions. In advanced mathematics, polynomials are used to construct polynomial rings and algebraic varieties, which are central concepts in algebra and algebraic geometry. Etymology The word ''polynomial'' join ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eureka (word)
Archimedes exclaiming ''Eureka''. In his excitement, he forgets to dress and runs nude in the streets straight out of his bath ''Eureka'' ( grc, εὕρηκα) is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is a transliteration of an exclamation attributed to Ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes. Etymology "Eureka" comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα ''heúrēka'', meaning "I have found (it)", which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb εὑρίσκω ''heurískō'' "I find". It is closely related to ''heuristic'', which refers to experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery. Pronunciation The accent of the English word is on the second syllable, following Latin rules of accent, which require that a penult (next-to-last syllable) must be accented if it contains a long vowel. In the Greek pronunciation, the first syllable has a high pitch accent, because the Ancient Gree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triangular Numbers
A triangular number or triangle number counts objects arranged in an equilateral triangle. Triangular numbers are a type of figurate number, other examples being square numbers and cube numbers. The th triangular number is the number of dots in the triangular arrangement with dots on each side, and is equal to the sum of the natural numbers from 1 to . The sequence of triangular numbers, starting with the 0th triangular number, is (This sequence is included in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences .) Formula The triangular numbers are given by the following explicit formulas: T_n= \sum_^n k = 1+2+3+ \dotsb +n = \frac = , where \textstyle is a binomial coefficient. It represents the number of distinct pairs that can be selected from objects, and it is read aloud as " plus one choose two". The first equation can be illustrated using a visual proof. For every triangular number T_n, imagine a "half-square" arrangement of objects corresponding to the triangular numb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, or , involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a product (2 × 2) in which both numbers are smaller than 4. Primes are central in number theory because of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every natural number greater than 1 is either a prime itself or can be factorized as a product of primes that is unique up to their order. The property of being prime is called primality. A simple but slow method of checking the primality of a given number n, called trial division, tests whether n is a multiple of any integer between 2 and \sqrt. Faster algorithms include the Miller–Rabin primality test, which is fast but has a small chance of error, and the AKS primality test, which always pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Number Theorem
In mathematics, the prime number theorem (PNT) describes the asymptotic distribution of the prime numbers among the positive integers. It formalizes the intuitive idea that primes become less common as they become larger by precisely quantifying the rate at which this occurs. The theorem was proved independently by Jacques Hadamard and Charles Jean de la Vallée Poussin in 1896 using ideas introduced by Bernhard Riemann (in particular, the Riemann zeta function). The first such distribution found is , where is the prime-counting function (the number of primes less than or equal to ''N'') and is the natural logarithm of . This means that for large enough , the probability that a random integer not greater than is prime is very close to . Consequently, a random integer with at most digits (for large enough ) is about half as likely to be prime as a random integer with at most digits. For example, among the positive integers of at most 1000 digits, about one in 2300 is prime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
