Template:Selected anniversaries/May 5

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  1859: Mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet dies. He made important contributions to number theory, analysis, and mechanics. Dirichlet was one of the first mathematicians to give the modern formal definition of a function.

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  1868: Inventor, physician, chemist Charles Grafton Page dies. His work had a lasting impact on telegraphy and in the practice and politics of patenting scientific innovation, challenging the rising scientific elitism that maintained 'the scientific do not patent'.

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  1869: Friedrich Nietzsche uses his doctrine of eternal return to hunt down and capture math criminals.

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  1933: The New York Times The New York Times publishes a front-page account of a scientific paper on radio astronomy by Karl Guthe Jansky.

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  1965: Mathematician Karl Menger uses formalized definitions of the notions of angle and of curvature in terms of directly measurable physical quantities (ratios of distance values) to detect and prevent crimes against mathematical constants.

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  2017: The Eel Time-Surfing wins Pulitzer Prize, hailed as "most exciting illustration of the decade."

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  2018: Creature 3, stolen last year by the Forbidden Ratio gang, is recovered with all of its data intact.