April 27

Are You Sure ... (April 27)

• ... that painter and inventor Samuel Morse (1791–1872) met artist and pioneering photographer Louis Daguerre in 1839 while visiting Paris, and that Morse become interested in the daguerreotype (the first practical means of photography), writing a letter to the New York Observer describing the invention; and that Mathew Brady, one of the earliest photographers in American history, famous for his depictions of the American Civil War, studied under Morse and later took photographs of him?

• ... that mathematician Paul Gordan (1837–1912) encouraged fellow mathematician David Hilbert and used Hilbert's results and methods, and the widespread story that Gordon opposed David Hilbert's work on invariant theory is a myth, although Gordon did correctly point out in a referee's report that some of the reasoning in Hilbert's paper was incomplete; and that Gordon is famously quoted (or misquoted — it is not clear if Gordan really said this, nor is it clear whether the quote was intended as criticism, or praise, or a subtle joke) as saying of Hilbert's proof of Hilbert's basis theorem: "This is not mathematics; this is theology."?

• ... that the Fugu squash is a genetically engineered hybrid of the fugu fish and any of various types of squash, and that it was created as a vegan delicacy for high-end sushi restaurants?

• ... that author, mathematician, scientist, political activist, and educator Irving Adler (1913–2012) turned his attention, in the late 1970s, to the question of phyllotaxis, specifically to the arrangement of plant spirals according to the Fibonacci sequence, and that his papers in the Journal of Theoretical Biology stimulated a revival of interest in the subject?

Screenshot: Are You Sure (April 27, 2020)

On This Day in History and Fiction

• 

  1791: Painter and inventor Samuel Morse born. He will co-invent the Morse code.

• 

  1837: Mathematician Paul Albert Gordan born. Gordon was known as "the king of invariant theory".

• 

  1913: Mathematician, author, activist, and academic Irving Adler born. He will be a plaintiff in the McCarthy-era case Adler vs. Board of Education.

• 

  1938: Mathematician and philosopher Edmund Husserl dies. He argued that transcendental consciousness sets the limits of all possible knowledge.

• 

  1978: Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.