Mathematician Stamps

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  • Babbage Charles

Born: 26 Dec 1791 in London, England
Died: 18 Oct 1871 in London, England



Babbage was responsible for the invention of an early antecedent of the modern computer, the analytical engine. There was much interest in calculating devices in his time, but the technology to make the analytical engine work was not yet available. In 1834, he designed the Analytical Engine, the precursor of the computer. He was unable to obtain funding for it from the government, who thought it would be worthless.

Biography


  • Banach Stefan

Born: 30 March 1892 in Krakow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland)
Died: 31 Aug 1945 in Lvov, (now Ukraine)




  • Banachiewicz Tadeusz (1882-1953)




Banachiewicz is known from his astronomic activities working as astronomer and mathematician at the Cracow University. He developed the “Cracow Calculus” a special Matrix-algebra applied in astronomy in the trajectory calculations (Banachiewicz-Olbers calculation of parabolic trajectories).



  • Beg Ulugh Mohammed Targai (1394-1449)


Tartar prince, ruler of Turkestan, mathematician, astronomer, author . The son of Shah Rukh and Gawhar Shad born at Sultaniyya in Central Asia on March 22, 1394. He made Samarkand the center of Muslim civilization. He enriched it with a monastery with the highest dome in the world which was finished in 1420 (823). In 1424 (828) he built a madrasa, or institution of higher learning, in which astronomy was the most important subject. A theologian, he specialized in the study of the Kur'an which he could repeat by heart according to all seven readings. As a historian he wrote Ulus-i arba'-i Cingizi (History of the Four Sons of the House of Cingizi), which since has been lost. A learned mathematician, he could solve the most difficult problems in geometry. But he was above all an astronomer. Four years after his madrasa came into existence, Ulugh Beg erected a three-story observatory. While the observatory was destroyed, its precise location was located in 1908 by the archaeologist, V. L. Vyatkin. The main instrument of the observatory was a Fakhri sextant which was used in determining the basic constants of astronomy: the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, the point of the vernal equinox, the length of the tropical year, and other constants arising from observation of the sun. When he found that Ptolemy's computations did not agree with his own observations he compiled Zidj-i Djadid Sultani a collection comprising diverse computations and eras; the knowledge of time; the course of the stars; and the position of the fixed stars. It is unclear if this work was in Arabic, Persian or Turkish, but an English translation of one of the versions was published in 1917. After a brief reign as ruler of Turkestan from 1447 he was defeated and slain by a rebellious son in 1449.
Biography



  • Bernoulli Jacob (1654-1705)


Jakob Bernoulli was a member of the distinguished Swiss family of mathematicians which, together with Euler, brought fame to the city of Basel in the 17th century. He worked closely with Leibniz on the foundations of his calculus, and is here remembered on a Swiss stamp for his Law of Large Numbers, first published in 1713 in his Ars conjectandi, a milestone in probability theory.


  • Bessel Friedrich Wilhelm (1784 – 1846) Germany



Biography

Bessel was an astronomer and mathematician known best for the functions bearing his name; Bessel was the first to measure the parallax of a star (Cygni 61) in 1838, thus making it possible to calculate its distance. Observing the motions of the stars Sirius and Procyon, he deduced that each was orbiting around another, dark star. These dark stars were later found to be white dwarfs. The Bessel functions of order 0 and 1, J0 and J1, are shown on this German stamp. See: Eric W. Weisstein. "Bessel Function of the First Kind." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BesselFunctionoftheFirstKind.html



  • Bjerknes Vilhelm (1862-1951)



Bjerknes was born in Oslo, the son of a professor who specialized in hydrodynamics. He is best known as the founder and inspirer of the Bergen school of frontal meteorology, but before that period he had already made a number of important original contributions, including the circulation theorems, the construction of contour charts of isobaric surfaces, and the introduction of absolute units of pressure.

At the age of 20 he had already published original papers. Throughout his working life he made many contributions to pure hydrodynamics in addition to his work in meteorology. In 1893 he received a professorship at Stockholm, and there he developed his circulation theorems. He was not at first interested in geophysics, but his ideas found a receptive audience in the atmospheric and oceanographic communities.

He first considered the solenoids formed by the isobaric-isosteric surfaces, which become significant when the horizontal temperature gradient is large, in relation to such problems as the vertical circulation of sea-breezes. Some years afterwards he brought in the earth's rotation. An important proposition included in these theorems is that when the area of a quasi-horizontal slab of air contracts, the circulation round its periphery is changed by the addition of cyclonic rotation, with the reverse effect when the area expands. In co-operation with Sandstrom he proposed the millibar as the best unit of pressure and afterwards pressed for its general adoption. In 1907 he went to Oslo and some years later published a book on Dynamical meteorology and hydrography. This included a discussion of the topography of isobaric surfaces and it was shown that what is now called the geostrophic wind derived from the height contours of an isobaric surface is independent of density, so that the same scale can be used for any surface.

From 1912 till 1917 he occupied a chair at Leipzig where H. U. Sverdrup was one of his assistants. The war intervened and most of his students were called up. He then accepted a special appointment at the Geophysical Institute, Bergen, arising from the difficult forecasting situation in Norway due to lack of information in war time.

The idea that depressions originate as waves on a sloping surface of discontinuity appears to date from the Leipzig period, when Bjerknes was interested in the earlier work of Helmholtz. He introduced the terms barotropic and baroclinic into meteorology. He was primarily a mathematical physicist and was inspired by the vision of precise methods of forecasting based on computations, as he emphasized in his inaugural address at Leipzig and on other occasions.

He returned to Oslo in 1926 and lived there for the rest of his life though he resigned from his professorship in 1932. While there he completed his great work on Physical hydrodynamics with applications to dynamical meteorology with J. Bjerknes (his son), Bergeron and Solberg as co-authors, which was published in 1933. This was followed in 1934 by a book on solar hydrodynamics. He died at Oslo on 9 April 1951 at the age of 89.

Sources:

Obituary in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol 77, No. 333, July 1951

Friedman, Robert Marc. Appropriating the Weather. Cornell University Press. Ithaca and London, 1989, 251p


  • Bolyai Farkas (1775-1856)




  • Bolyai Janos (1802-1860)


    Bolyai was a gifted young Hungarian mathematician who also gave thought to Euclid's geometry and came up with another system of non-Euclidean geometry while still in his twenties. He did not publish this, however, because through his father Farkas Bolyai, a friend of Gauss's, he heard that Gauss had "been there, done that", so to speak, without actually publishing. This claim by the great Prince of Mathematics was enough to discourage young Janos, but his treatise was nevertheless published later by his father in 1832


  • Bolzano Bernardus (Bernhard) Placidus Johann Nepomuk


October 5 1781 - December 18, 1848.



Bolzano, born in Prague, worked in the fields of logic, geometry and the theory of real numbers. His father was an art dealer and both parents were very pious Christians. Coming from such a religious household, Bernard grew up with a high moral code and a belief in holding to his principles. It was this background that attracted him to the Church and the priestly life. Bolzano entered the University of Prague in 1796, where he studied philosophy, mathematics and physics. After graduation, he joined the theology department at the university and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1804. Despite his dedication to the Church, he did not give up his mathematical interests and was at one time recommended for the chair of the mathematics department.


The year 1805 started a struggle that would dominate the rest of his life. In a political move, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire set up a chair in the philosophy of religion at each university. The empire was comprised of many different ethic groups that were prone to nationalistic movements for independence. Spurred by the "free thinking" of the recent French Revolution, these movements were becoming a serious problem to holding the empire together. The creation of the chair was part of a greater plan to support the Catholic Church. The authorities considered the Church to be conservative and hoped it would control the liberal thinking of the time. Bolzano was appointed to the position at the University of Prague.


For the next 14 years, Bolzano taught at the university, lecturing mainly on ethics, social questions and the links between mathematics and philosophy. He was very popular with both the student body, who appreciated his straightforward expression of his beliefs, and his fellow professors, who recognized his intelligence. In 1818, he became Dean of the philosophy department. However, the Austro-Hungarian authorities became displeased with his liberal views. In 1819, he was suspended from his professorship, forbidden to publish and put under police surveillance. Bolzano refused to back down. However, despite the backing of the Church, he was unable to get his job back. In 1824, after refusing to sign an official "recantation" of his nationalistic views, he resigned his seat.


After leaving the university, he moved to the small village of Techobuz , where he stayed until 1842. He then returned to Prague to continue his philosophical and mathematical studies. Bolzano had many new mathematical and logical ideas during his lifetime; however, because he was prohibited from publishing by the government, most of his writings existed only in manuscript. They were not published until 1962.


His work attacked mainly three subjects: geometry, the theory of real numbers and logic. In geometry, he attempted to handle the problem of Euclid's parallel postulate. He found several problems in Euclid's reasoning but was unable to solve them because he lacked the proper mathematical tool of topology which had not yet been invented. He did establish definitions for basic geometric concepts and was the first person to state the Jordan curve theorem, that a simple closed curve divides a plane into two parts. In the theory of real numbers, he tried to find its foundation and reconcile infinite quantities. Although he did not succeed, he did come up with some important discoveries including the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem, a modern definition of a continuous function and the non- differentiable Bolzano function. In addition, he recognized some of the paradoxical qualities of infinite sets, a breakthrough which he did not pursue and would be later stated by Cantor.


Biography


  • Bougainville Louis Antoine de

Born: 11 Nov 1729 in Paris, France
Died: 31 Aug 1811 in Paris, France




    Biography

    Louis Antoine de Bougainville, the first French officer to circumnavigate the globe, charted a number of islands in the Pacific which he called the Isles de Navigatieurs, May 3 to May 5, 1768. These islands are present-day American Samoa. As he sailed out of the group he saw Upolu in independent Samoa through a thick fog which prevented him from recording it and two other islands accurately.


  • Buffon Georges Comte de


Born: 7 Sept 1707 in Montbard, Côte d'Or, France
Died: 16 April 1788 in Paris, France


Proposed the Buffon's Needle Problem, which asks the probability that a needle of length l will fall on a line when a piece of paper is ruled with parallel lines a distance d apart.


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