Don't make me regret this ...
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@ColinTheMathmo
Sir Christopher Wren is another well-known historical figure whose mathematical connections are almost unheard of amongst the population at large.A certain someone will give me another funny look if I don't mention Mary Somerville.
On that note, I created some resources for @mathsweek.scot that aim to help people explore some Scottish mathematical figures: https://mathsweek.scot/schools/learning-resources/finn-finity-meets
@ColinTheMathmo
People interested in this thread might also be interested in the fact that the British Society for the History of Mathematics' _Research in Progress_ meeting is in Oxford next Saturday (7th March). Booking is technically closed, but there is a waitlist: https://bshm.ac.uk/event/research-in-progress/There are quite a few figures mentioned in a certain book which I know you have access to
In that I've tried to draw attention to some (as you've put it elsewhere) non-(white dead dudes), but as you've also said elsewhere, I'm the product of a similar educational system which almost exclusively presented old white dead dudes. -
Don't make me regret this ...
I'm thinking of making a timeline of characters and events from history that school children might know of and be interested in. Most timelines you find are overly complex, or overly simplistic.
Who and what would you include?
I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s.
1/n
In no expert but this is a good idea so I thought I'd contribute in a tiny way
* The women who did much of the crystallography for the discovery of DNA but didn't receive the credit that Crick and Watson did
* The cowpox-chickenpox person. It's a cool story that I still remember from childhood.
* Was it Archimedes who was killed for challenging prevailing notions of finiteness ? Or was he the one killed protecting his diagrams?
* Sophie Germain and how she pretended to be male for so long.
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@ColinTheMathmo Colin, I teach a course at my institution called “Hi(dden)story of Mathematics” and I would be happy to share the outline of my course (and even some notes) and you could adapt some of it for your purposes.
The course is divided into units.
Unit 1 relates to ways in which our ancestors counted. We discussed the Babylonian (base 60) enumeration system, the Roman numerals, the Maya numerals (base 20), the Inca quipu (knot counting) and yupana (Inca abacus/calculator) the enumeration system of the ancient people of India, how it was adapted by the Arabs and the abacus and the Chinese counting rods.
Unit 2 relates to how ancient cultures develop ways to measure time (why does a circle have 360 degrees) along with storytelling exploring the significance/mysticism surrounding the numbers 7 and 12 (twelve tribes in Israel, twelve disciples of Jesus, twelve gods living in Olympus, twelve animals running the race for the jade emperor, twelve sons of Ishmael) why 13 is unlucky in Europe but not elsewhere, and how 13 is a sacred number instead for the Maya and the Egyptians for example. We also discuss the Maya calendar, the Jewish calendar and discuss how to convert between dates in those calendars and the Gregorian one.
Unit 3 relates to the origins on combinatorics and we discuss Acharya Pingala’s rules for enumerating verse structures in Sanskrit and realize Pingala described the binary enumerating system, the binomial coefficients and the Fibonacci numbers all based on verse structure of poetry. We connect this discovery (which happened in 400 BCE) to Fibonacci’s liber abaci and Blaise Pascal’s triangle and have a discussion on why we call them today Pascal’s triangle and Fibonacci numbers instead of Pingala’s triangle and numbers. In the end we decide that we should call them the Fibonacci-Pingala numbers and the Pascal-Pingala triangle (this eventually gets further renamed to Khayam-Pascal-Pingala triangle)
I will continue later…
@mathematicalsynesthesia That would definitely be a resource to access ... thank you.
My objectives are to create context and starting points, not to include potentially vast amounts of material. There is so much.
So. Much.
But certainly to names, context, and connections would be interesting.
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@ColinTheMathmo
People interested in this thread might also be interested in the fact that the British Society for the History of Mathematics' _Research in Progress_ meeting is in Oxford next Saturday (7th March). Booking is technically closed, but there is a waitlist: https://bshm.ac.uk/event/research-in-progress/There are quite a few figures mentioned in a certain book which I know you have access to
In that I've tried to draw attention to some (as you've put it elsewhere) non-(white dead dudes), but as you've also said elsewhere, I'm the product of a similar educational system which almost exclusively presented old white dead dudes.@ColinTheMathmo
Also, there exists a fledgling network for people interested in the history of maths (and the maths of history) and exploring how each might enrich the other in educational settings: https://historyand.mathsy.space/ -
This list has mostly (but not entirely!) exactly them, but here are a few.
Which of your favourites are missing? In particular, what major historical events would school children know, to allow these to be put into some sort of historical context?
And yes, I am thinking of asking some school kids for "Famous Things".
Galileo
Nelson (Trafalgar)
Wellington (Waterloo)
Newton
Macchiavelli
Shakespeare
Pythagoras
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Archimedes
Al-Khwarizmi
Ibn Al-Haytham
Babbage
Turing
Omar Khayyam
Jabir Ibn Haiyan
Ramanujan2/n
@ColinTheMathmo How about Florence Nightingale - for her statistics.
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Marie Curie
Rosalind Franklin
Ada Lovelace
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Jocelyn Bell Burnell3/n
@ColinTheMathmo Noether?
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@e7_87 I'd like to have "Well known characters" included to help some people make the cross-connections.
Knowing that X was at the same time as Y can be a useful connection.
Example: Knowing that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle, and that Aristotle was in Plato's Academy, is a nice connection.
Oh I had set a difficult/impossible task for myself...
I limited the scope to the 20th century.
I HAVE TO say Math as a historical intellectual field, was not fair enough to women. It is hard to find 'famous/iconic' discoveries by females in 20th century, EXCEPT Emmy Noether's work. I read on the wikipedia articles on "Hilbert's 23 problems", and all main contributors/pushers have been males. [*] On the other hand, I guess because CS had been a green field, there were less "traditions" and "restrictions", many pioneers in CS were/are females and some are trans (Lynn Conway). REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science
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So, since I got some training in physics, I tried to identify the important events. I choose 4 important Physics events in 20th century which female scientists involved heavily:1. Radioactivity - Marie Curie and Pierre Curie got the Nobel Prize in 1903
2. parity non-conservation in weak interaction - the experimental physicist Ms Chien-Shiung Wu proved Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang's theory, lead to the two males' Nobel Prize in 1957
3. Discovery of Dark Matter - Vera Rubin found the first evidence around 1970
4. Nuclear Weapons / Manhattan Project - Maria Goeppert Mayer, a Nobel Prize winner(1963, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"), had involved in the project.
I would like to list five events, maybe someone could help.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_science[*]: correction:https://mathstodon.xyz/@antoinechambertloir/116154031088146836
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@e7_87 I'd like to have "Well known characters" included to help some people make the cross-connections.
Knowing that X was at the same time as Y can be a useful connection.
Example: Knowing that Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle, and that Aristotle was in Plato's Academy, is a nice connection.
"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas" - Marie Curie
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@ColinTheMathmo
Also, there exists a fledgling network for people interested in the history of maths (and the maths of history) and exploring how each might enrich the other in educational settings: https://historyand.mathsy.space/@TeaKayB I think this is important ... but to offer a counter-point ...
I *hated* it in school when the history of maths was brought up, and I *hated* it when people tried to "make it relevant".
So it's worth noting that such drives will engage some who might otherwise be excluded, but will also turn some people off the subject.
Finding the right balance will be hard.
Not having the resources is a crime.
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To some extent, I'd like people in general, children in particular, to hear of someone, then be able to put them into context.
I think this is an impossible task, so in some senses I'm looking to see why and how it's impossible, perhaps then to decrease the scope and ambition, possibly to make something useful.
Eventually.
4/n, n=4
@ColinTheMathmo check out "Women Who Count" about 29 African American mathematicians. Shelly Jones is a friend of mine in Connecticut.
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Oh I had set a difficult/impossible task for myself...
I limited the scope to the 20th century.
I HAVE TO say Math as a historical intellectual field, was not fair enough to women. It is hard to find 'famous/iconic' discoveries by females in 20th century, EXCEPT Emmy Noether's work. I read on the wikipedia articles on "Hilbert's 23 problems", and all main contributors/pushers have been males. [*] On the other hand, I guess because CS had been a green field, there were less "traditions" and "restrictions", many pioneers in CS were/are females and some are trans (Lynn Conway). REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science
---
So, since I got some training in physics, I tried to identify the important events. I choose 4 important Physics events in 20th century which female scientists involved heavily:1. Radioactivity - Marie Curie and Pierre Curie got the Nobel Prize in 1903
2. parity non-conservation in weak interaction - the experimental physicist Ms Chien-Shiung Wu proved Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang's theory, lead to the two males' Nobel Prize in 1957
3. Discovery of Dark Matter - Vera Rubin found the first evidence around 1970
4. Nuclear Weapons / Manhattan Project - Maria Goeppert Mayer, a Nobel Prize winner(1963, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"), had involved in the project.
I would like to list five events, maybe someone could help.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_science[*]: correction:https://mathstodon.xyz/@antoinechambertloir/116154031088146836
@e7_87 This is all important, and I'm making notes because I *will* return to this, but it's not my original objective.
Kids have heard of Newton ... when was he? What was happening at the time?
Kids have heard of, say, Alexander the Great. Or Mozart. Who might Mozart have met? Or Beethoven?
I'm trying to leverage off from names and events they will know to create connections with maths (specifically) and science in general.
There are books and books and books to be written here. I'm not the one to write them, but getting connections is a start.
1/n
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@e7_87 This is all important, and I'm making notes because I *will* return to this, but it's not my original objective.
Kids have heard of Newton ... when was he? What was happening at the time?
Kids have heard of, say, Alexander the Great. Or Mozart. Who might Mozart have met? Or Beethoven?
I'm trying to leverage off from names and events they will know to create connections with maths (specifically) and science in general.
There are books and books and books to be written here. I'm not the one to write them, but getting connections is a start.
1/n
@e7_87 I also need to make sure I don't get distracted (too much) from the book I am trying to write ... so ...
Yeah.
I'll find somewhere public to keep my notes.
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@ColinTheMathmo this thread contains three brilliant stories and if you include the mathematics it is amazing
@ColinTheMathmo Hermann Weyl wrote an obituary and a memorial both delivered in the US for Emmy, details of both are in Weyl's Levels of Infinity, an essay collection.
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Oh I had set a difficult/impossible task for myself...
I limited the scope to the 20th century.
I HAVE TO say Math as a historical intellectual field, was not fair enough to women. It is hard to find 'famous/iconic' discoveries by females in 20th century, EXCEPT Emmy Noether's work. I read on the wikipedia articles on "Hilbert's 23 problems", and all main contributors/pushers have been males. [*] On the other hand, I guess because CS had been a green field, there were less "traditions" and "restrictions", many pioneers in CS were/are females and some are trans (Lynn Conway). REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science
---
So, since I got some training in physics, I tried to identify the important events. I choose 4 important Physics events in 20th century which female scientists involved heavily:1. Radioactivity - Marie Curie and Pierre Curie got the Nobel Prize in 1903
2. parity non-conservation in weak interaction - the experimental physicist Ms Chien-Shiung Wu proved Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang's theory, lead to the two males' Nobel Prize in 1957
3. Discovery of Dark Matter - Vera Rubin found the first evidence around 1970
4. Nuclear Weapons / Manhattan Project - Maria Goeppert Mayer, a Nobel Prize winner(1963, "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"), had involved in the project.
I would like to list five events, maybe someone could help.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_science[*]: correction:https://mathstodon.xyz/@antoinechambertloir/116154031088146836
@e7_87 @ColinTheMathmo for Hilbert's 10th problem, the rôle of Julia Robinson is largely underestimated.
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@ColinTheMathmo Hermann Weyl wrote an obituary and a memorial both delivered in the US for Emmy, details of both are in Weyl's Levels of Infinity, an essay collection.
@ompaul My aim here is not to write a comprehensive biography and bibliography of all these people ... that would replicate existing work and take several lifetimes.
But aim is to help kids put into context names and events they've heard of, to help spark curiosity and reduce the compartmentalisation of subjects.
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@TeaKayB I think this is important ... but to offer a counter-point ...
I *hated* it in school when the history of maths was brought up, and I *hated* it when people tried to "make it relevant".
So it's worth noting that such drives will engage some who might otherwise be excluded, but will also turn some people off the subject.
Finding the right balance will be hard.
Not having the resources is a crime.
@ColinTheMathmo
Keep your eyes peeled for a paper about a project I did on this with a research partner just over a year ago. Currently in peer-review.I was/am similarly resistant to the "make it relevant" stuff, largely because it often feels contrived or bolted-on, precisely because we (as maths teachers) are told to do these things with little-to-no training or resources to enable us to do it properly.
Exhortations to "make it {fun, interesting, relevant}" strongly imply that these things are not intrinsic, and _that_ is where we lose people with contrived relevance and context.
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@ColinTheMathmo
Keep your eyes peeled for a paper about a project I did on this with a research partner just over a year ago. Currently in peer-review.I was/am similarly resistant to the "make it relevant" stuff, largely because it often feels contrived or bolted-on, precisely because we (as maths teachers) are told to do these things with little-to-no training or resources to enable us to do it properly.
Exhortations to "make it {fun, interesting, relevant}" strongly imply that these things are not intrinsic, and _that_ is where we lose people with contrived relevance and context.
@TeaKayB Part of the problem is that people making these exhortations were themselves badly served by the educational experience they suffered through.
It's complex, and I suspect we are in (near) complete agreement.
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@ColinTheMathmo
Keep your eyes peeled for a paper about a project I did on this with a research partner just over a year ago. Currently in peer-review.I was/am similarly resistant to the "make it relevant" stuff, largely because it often feels contrived or bolted-on, precisely because we (as maths teachers) are told to do these things with little-to-no training or resources to enable us to do it properly.
Exhortations to "make it {fun, interesting, relevant}" strongly imply that these things are not intrinsic, and _that_ is where we lose people with contrived relevance and context.
@ColinTheMathmo
This is partly why we decided to set up a network rather than producing a collection of resources; connecting people (including but not limited to teachers of mathematics and history) who are already interested and want to explore further to develop *themselves*, rather than firing some PowerPoint slides into the ether and saying 'break your lesson-flow and slot this script in'. -
@TeaKayB Part of the problem is that people making these exhortations were themselves badly served by the educational experience they suffered through.
It's complex, and I suspect we are in (near) complete agreement.
@ColinTheMathmo
Absolutely. I find with many 'arguments' about maths education, both sides are arguing the same point, but from slightly different angles and with differing understandings of seemingly common vocabulary. -
To some extent, I'd like people in general, children in particular, to hear of someone, then be able to put them into context.
I think this is an impossible task, so in some senses I'm looking to see why and how it's impossible, perhaps then to decrease the scope and ambition, possibly to make something useful.
Eventually.
4/n, n=4
@ColinTheMathmo
Beatrice Shilling (aeronautics)
Janet Taylor (astronomy, navigation)
Rosalind_Franklin
Valentina Tereshkova
Dorothy Hodgkin
Tu Youyou (pharmaceutical chemist)
Baroness Ingrid Daubechies (JPEG)
Grace Hopper
Gladys Mae West (GPS)
Emmy Noether (symmetry)
Mary Cartwright (chaos theory)
Annie Scott Dill Maunder
Caroline Herschel
Gerty Theresa Cori (glycogen)
Williamina Fleming (astronomy)
Alice Augusta Ball (chemistry)
Katherine Johnson (orbital mechanics)
