October 11

Are You Sure ... (October 11, 2020)

Dorothea Lange (26 May 1895 – 11 October 1965) was a documentary photographer and photojournalist, remembered for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

• ... that mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (10 April 1651 – 11 October 1708) invented the Tschirnhaus transformation, by which certain intermediate terms are removed from a given algebraic equation?

• ... that mathematician Anne Penfold Street (11 October 1932 – 28 December 2016) was one of Australia's leading mathematicians; that her work on sum-free sets became a standard reference for its subject matter; that she helped found several important organizations in combinatorics, and supported young students with interest in mathematics?

• ... that Dial U for Unspoofable is a film noir encryption mystery starring Niles Cartouchian as mathematician Kurt Gödel?

• ... that mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra (3 May 1860 – 11 October 1940) joined the opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in 1922; that in 1931 Volterra was one of only 12 out of 1,250 professors who refused to take a mandatory oath of loyalty; and that Volterra wrote: "Empires die, but Euclid’s theorems keep their youth forever."?

Screenshot: Are You Sure (October 11, 2020)

On This Day in History and Fiction

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  1708: Mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus dies. He invented the Tschirnhaus transformation, by which certain intermediate terms are removed from a given algebraic equation.

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  1889: Physicist and brewer James Prescott Joule dies. He studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work.

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  1932: Mathematician Anne Penfold Street born. She will specialize in combinatorics, authoring several textbooks; her work on sum-free sets will become a standard reference for its subject matter.

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  1940: Mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra dies. He was one of the founders of functional analysis, making contributions to mathematical biology and integral equations.

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  1965: Documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange dies. Lange is remembered for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

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  1996: Mathematician and acadaemic Edwin Spanier dies. Spanier contributed to algebraic topology, co-inventing Spanier–Whitehead duality and Alexander–Spanier cohomology; he also wrote what was for a long time the standard textbook on algebraic topology.