April 14
Are You Sure ... (April 14)
• ... that cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius created the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, and that Ortelius was among to imagine that the continents were joined together before drifting to their present positions?
• ... that mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christiaan Huygens (14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and made contributed to the science of dynamics?
• ... that mathematician and theorist Tatyana Afanasyeva (19 November 1876 – Leiden, 14 April 1964) contributed to statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics, and to mathematical education in the Netherlands?
• ... that Christiaan Huygens wrote, in a private letter to Pope Alexander VII: "proposals to flood the Sistine chapel "are equally useless to Science and Art alike."?
On This Day in History and Fiction
1126: Polymath Ibn Rushd (Averoess) born. He will write on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, politics, music theory, geography, mathematics, and the mediæval sciences of medicine, astronomy, physics, and celestial mechanics.
1527: Cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius born. Ortelius will create the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. He will also be one of the first to imagine that the continents were joined together before drifting to their present positions.
1629: Mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christiaan Huygens born. He will be a leading scientist of his time.
1659: Proposals to flood the Sistine chapel "are equally useless to Science and Art alike," writes Christiaan Huygens in a private letter to Pope Alexander VII.
1935: Mathematician Emmy Noether dies. She made landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.
1964: Mathematician and theorist Tatyana Afanasyeva dies. She contributed to statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics, and to mathematical education in the Netherlands.