''Eadem mutata resurgo'' is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase that literally translates to "''Although changed, I arise the same''".

Background

The

word-for-word translation Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In translation theory, anothe ...

of the phrase is :"Same having-changed I-rise". :''Eadem mutata resurgo''. The sense is better rendered in English as "''I rise again changed but the same''".

Jakob Bernoulli's tombstone

The phrase was first known to be used by

Jakob Bernoulli Jacob Bernoulli (also known as James or Jacques; – 16 August 1705) was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus and sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leib ...

(1654-1705), a member of the famous Swiss mathematical family. He had studied logarithmic spirals during his life and directed for a spiral and the motto to appear on his tombstone in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

. Bernoulli was referring to the fact that the logarithmic spirals are self-similar, meaning that upon applying any similarity transformation to the spiral, the resulting spiral is congruent to the original untransformed one. The

logarithmic spiral A logarithmic spiral, equiangular spiral, or growth spiral is a self-similar spiral curve that often appears in nature. The first to describe a logarithmic spiral was Albrecht Dürer (1525) who called it an "eternal line" ("ewige Linie"). Mor ...

frequently appears in biology, such as with the curves of the

Nautilus The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in t ...

shell.

College motto

The

College of St Hild and St Bede A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a University system, constituent part of one. A college may be a academic degree, degree-awarding Tertiary education, tertiary educational institution, a part of a coll ...

at the

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

adopted this phrase for its motto; it hangs in the Vernon Arms (''the Vern''). It is also used as the motto of the Collège de 'pataphysique.

References

{{wiktionary, eadem, mutata, resurgo Latin words and phrases