Title was too large to contain it all, but I'm just wondering if any of you know any cool stories about mathematicians and scientists discovering things/proofs. In calculus a few months back our professor told a pretty neat story but I had forgotten about it until studying for my exam today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fermat's Last Theorem is an interesting example of what I mean :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any others?

To disproove thousands of years of thinking that the universe revolved around the earth they made a pendulum with no external torque and swung it in a room and then watched as the pendulum went back and forth and they could see the world turning below it

I remember learning about the history of computers Blaise Pascal was a pretty smart man. He was the first to come up with something that can do what a calculator (earliest form of a computer) does.

My favorite story is of George Dantzig:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An event in Dantzig's life became the origin of a famous urban legend in 1939 while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote four examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the four problems were a homework assignment and wrote two of them down. According to Dantzig, the problems "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for two, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who had prepared one of Dantzig's solutions for publication in a mathematical journal. Years later another researcher, Abraham Wald, was preparing to publish a paper which arrived at a conclusion for the second problem, and included Dantzig as its co-author when he learned of the earlier solution.

 

 

 

Archimedes became a very popular figure as a result of his involvement in the defense of Syracuse against the Roman siege in the Second Punic War. He is reputed to have held the Romans at bay with war machines of his own design, to have been able to move a full-size ship complete with crew and cargo by pulling a single rope[1], and to have discovered the principles of density and buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' principle, while taking a bath. The story goes that he then took to the streets without any clothing, being so elated with his discovery that he forgot to dress, crying "Eureka!" ("I have found it!").

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, despite orders from the Roman general Marcellus that he was not to be harmed. The Greeks said that he was killed while drawing an equation in the sand; engrossed in his diagram and impatient with being interrupted, he is said to have muttered his famous last words before being slain by an enraged Roman soldier: ÃÆýÃâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅÃÆýÃâ÷ ÃÆýÃâüÃÆýÃâÿÃÆÃ

John Randolph Winckler (he's my great uncle : )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did active magnetospheric experiments that include introduction of ion clouds into the magnetosphere and injection of fast electrons along geomagnetic field lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aka, invented jet streams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a couple dozen pages about how great he is ^,^ http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309084768/html/356.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was going to say Fermat's but oh well >.<