March 21

Are You Sure ... (March 21)

• ... that famed mathematician and physicist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, known for the Fourier series, Fourier analysis, the Fourier transform, and Fourier's law of conduction, is also generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect?

• ... that the Ranger 9 lunar probe was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact?

• ... that mathematician Thierry Aubin's fundamental contributions to the theory of the Yamabe equation led, in conjunction with results of Neil Trudinger and Richard Schoen, to a proof of the Yamabe Conjecture: every compact Riemannian manifold can be conformally rescaled to produce a manifold of constant scalar curvature?

Screenshot: Are You Sure (March 21, 2020)

On This Day in History and Fiction

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  1768: Mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier born. Fourier will initiate the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations.

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  1884: Mathematician George David Birkhoff born. Birkhoff will become one of the most important leaders in American mathematics of his generation.

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  1924: Physicist Harry Lehmann born. Lehmann will contribute to the LSZ reduction formula and the Källén–Lehmann spectral representation.

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  1928: Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

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  1965: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.