all tags

history-of-mathematics

86 notes carry this tag — 3 mocs, 51 claims, 1 observation, 4 entitys, 10 questions, 16 captures, 1 essay. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

Essays

• 
  tails up
  essay draft 2026-07-30 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, notation, transmission

Everything else

• Locate and directly read Zhang, Glassman, et al.'s 2026 'How Notations Evolve' to confirm its quotes and recover its URL/DOI
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-09-11 · history-of-notation, hci, sourcing, verification, history-of-mathematics
• Cajori's own 1928 text hedges the Leibniz-prestige explanation for "=" and credits both Newton and Leibniz's use of Recorde's symbol, where Zhang et al.'s citation sharpens it to Leibniz alone
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-09-11 · history-of-notation, history-of-mathematics, sourcing, citation-fidelity, equality-symbol
• Blind mathematicians' working methods and private notations
  topic map 2026-09-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, braille-mathematics
• Why do blind mathematicians' private notation systems seem not to transmit between them, while their methods and mentorship do?
  capture promoted 2026-09-08 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, notation, transmission
• Do Schoenberg's 1946 B-spline papers actually use 'graduation' in its actuarial sense, or is the insurance-origin story a later gloss?
  capture promoted 2026-08-29 · schoenberg, b-spline, splines, graduation, actuarial-science
• 'Graduation' already named a specific, decades-old actuarial mortality-table-smoothing technique before Schoenberg's 1946 papers
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-08-29 · graduation, actuarial-science, whittaker-henderson-smoothing, history-of-mathematics, schoenberg
• Schoenberg names 'accepted actuarial practice' as the direct source of his own 'ordinary' vs. 'smoothing' interpolation-formula distinction
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-29 · schoenberg, b-spline, splines, graduation, actuarial-science
• Schoenberg's 1946 papers explicitly frame themselves as continuing a named actuarial literature on osculatory interpolation, crediting W. A. Jenkins (1926) and T. N. E. Greville (1944) as direct predecessors
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-29 · schoenberg, b-spline, splines, graduation, actuarial-science
• Schoenberg's 1946 Part A paper glosses 'graduation' as a direct synonym for 'smoothing' in its own title
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-29 · schoenberg, b-spline, splines, graduation, actuarial-science
• Knowing who wins without knowing how — three quarters of a century of 'solving' Hex that keeps establishing a winner without ever handing over the strategy
  topic map 2026-08-27 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, david-gale, strategy-stealing
• Does Olli Lehto's Mathematics Without Borders, read directly, confirm the Paris 1978 luncheon quote attributing 'second-rate mathematician' to Pontryagin?
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-08-25 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• Lehto reports an unnamed Soviet academician's account that a board of mathematicians, not state authorities, recommended against Margulis's travel permit
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-25 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• A November 1979 Moscow protocol, signed by Vinogradov and Olech, records Vinogradov and Pontryagin accusing IMU consultative committees of being influenced by 'Zionist' propaganda
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-25 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• What title did K. Chandrasekharan hold when he overruled Pontryagin at the May 1978 Paris IMU Executive Committee luncheon?
  question answered 2026-08-25 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, fields-medal, institutions, verification
• Does Novikov's memoir (and independent sources) confirm Pontryagin's role in blocking Margulis's 1978 Fields Medal travel and the '1/24' reply, verbatim?
  capture promoted Tier 2 2026-08-24 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• Margulis's exclusion from the 1978 ICM Fields Medal ceremony, and Jacques Tits's public lament, are confirmed independently of Novikov's memoir
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-08-24 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• Pontryagin personally opposed Margulis's 1978 Fields Medal at the IMU Executive Committee level — a mechanism distinct from the Soviet National Committee travel vote
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-24 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• Does Olli Lehto's Mathematics Without Borders, read directly, confirm the Paris 1978 luncheon quote attributing 'second-rate mathematician' to Pontryagin?
  question answered 2026-08-24 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, verification
• Can 1979 Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group Document No. 112 ('Discrimination against Jews entering the university') be located and read, to confirm it — not 'Intellectual Genocide' — is the true source of the Mekh-mat 47-vs-40 admission table?
  capture promoted 2026-08-22 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Verifying Nash's Hex strategy-stealing proof against primary sources: a conjectural mechanism and the Princeton circle, beyond what the vault already has
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-08-22 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, piet-hein, david-gale
• A 1981 CSCE Congressional survey, drawn from Lyudmila Alekseeva's own Moscow Helsinki Group materials, independently corroborates Document No. 112's subject as Jewish discrimination in Moscow University entrance exams
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-22 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Nash's 1952 RAND report speculates an unproven "dualization"-type pairing strategy for Hex, distinct from his existence proof
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-22 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, strategy-stealing, non-constructive-proof
• Nash's report and a hex-history page in Hayward's course webspace jointly place Hex's 1948 Princeton reintroduction within a circle: Nash, David Gale, John Milnor, and Robert Enderton
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-22 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, david-gale, john-milnor
• Verify Nash's Hex strategy-stealing proof (non-constructive; PSPACE-hard to construct) against a math-history primary or scholarly secondary
  capture promoted 2026-08-21 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, strategy-stealing, non-constructive-proof
• Determining the winner of a Hex position is PSPACE-complete (Even & Tarjan 1976; Reisch 1981)
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-21 · hex, game-theory, pspace-complete, computational-complexity, history-of-mathematics
• Kanevskii & Senderov's 1980 samizdat report 'Intellectual Genocide' survives only as a 2005 reconstructed English translation; the Russian original remains unpublished
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, mekh-mat
• Intellectual Genocide's 1980 MFTI admission figures (53/39 non-Jewish, 32/4 Jewish) match A. Shen's 1994 reproduction of them exactly
  claim budding Tier 1 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Intellectual Genocide's MIFI Group 1 admitted count (36) conflicts with Shen's 1994 table (26); the primary document's own internal arithmetic favors its own 36
  claim budding Tier 1 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• The Mekh-mat 47-vs-40 admission table is not contained in 'Intellectual Genocide' (1980); its likelier documentary origin is the 1979 Moscow Helsinki Group's Document No. 112
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Nash's own 1952 RAND report confirms his Hex first-player-win proof was a non-constructive contradiction argument, with the winning strategy left unknown
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-21 · hex, game-theory, john-nash, strategy-stealing, non-constructive-proof
• Deniable by design — how Mekh-mat's entrance-exam discrimination was engineered to leave no basis for appeal, and why the case for it rests on convergent testimony rather than the one number everyone quotes
  topic map 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Can 1979 Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group Document No. 112 ('Discrimination against Jews entering the university') be located and read, to confirm it — not 'Intellectual Genocide' — is the true source of the Mekh-mat 47-vs-40 admission table?
  question open 2026-08-21 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, mekh-mat
• Do primary/scholarly sources confirm that Mekh-mat's 'coffin problems' were deliberately unsolvable problems used to fail Jewish applicants?
  capture promoted 2026-08-20 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Tanya Khovanova's 1975 Soviet Olympiad team was recruited to solve a collected list of Mekh-mat 'coffin problems' for coaching Jewish applicants
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-20 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Mark Saul's 1999 Notices of the AMS account narrates Edward Frenkel's 1984 Mekh-mat rejection in detail, including a referral to the 'Kerosinka' institute
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-20 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, institutions
• Can B.I. Kanevskii & V.A. Senderov's 1980 samizdat report 'Intellectual Genocide' be located and read directly, to verify the Mekh-mat/MIFI/MFTI admission-rate figures Shen reproduces?
  question open 2026-08-20 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, mekh-mat
• Do Tier 1–2 sources confirm that Ibn al-Banna's Talkhīṣ contains lattice multiplication, and that the 12th-c. Lilavati-commentary 'Kapat-sandhi' is the same method?
  capture promoted 2026-08-13 · history-of-mathematics, lattice-multiplication, islamic-golden-age, transmission-of-knowledge, verification
• The most detailed modern study of Ibn al-Banna's Talkhīṣ commentarial tradition never mentions lattice, gelosia, or shabakh multiplication
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-13 · history-of-mathematics, lattice-multiplication, islamic-golden-age, ibn-al-banna, verification
• The earliest published manuscript evidence for gelosia-grid multiplication in the Ibn al-Banna tradition belongs to Ibn Ghāzī's 15th/16th-century commentary, not Ibn al-Banna's own 13th-century Talkhīṣ
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-13 · history-of-mathematics, lattice-multiplication, islamic-golden-age, ibn-al-banna, verification
• The Kapat-sandhi/gelosia identification in a Lilavati commentary is stated plainly only by a Tier 3 source in this vault's search
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-08-13 · history-of-mathematics, lattice-multiplication, transmission-of-knowledge, verification
• Gale's 1979 proof that the Brouwer fixed-point theorem implies Hex's no-draw property is based on a suggestion from John Stallings, modified by Michael Todd
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-07 · hex, topology, brouwer-fixed-point-theorem, david-gale, john-stallings
• Gale's 1979 proof that Hex's no-draw property implies the Brouwer fixed-point theorem uses a covering argument on an arbitrarily fine Hex board
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-08-07 · hex, topology, brouwer-fixed-point-theorem, david-gale, topological-combinatorics
• The exact sentence(s) in Gale (1979) stating the Hex/Brouwer fixed-point equivalence
  capture promoted Tier 1 2026-08-03 · hex, topology, brouwer-fixed-point-theorem, david-gale, topological-combinatorics
• Condorcet's 1785 jury theorem: majority-vote accuracy rises with group size only if voters decide independently
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-08-02 · condorcet, voting-theory, epistemics, independence, jury-theorem
• What fraction of Leonhard Euler's output actually came after he went blind? Two Tier-2 sources conflict ('half of his output' vs '≈a third in the first seven years') — new findings on the figure's origin and an unresolved denominator
  capture promoted 2026-08-01 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• The 'half of Euler's output came after blindness' figure traces to Ferdinand Rudio's 1883 centenary lecture, not an independent modern tally
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-08-01 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• The 'seven years' cited in different accounts of Euler's post-blindness output describe two different seven-year spans
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-08-01 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• Euler's total lifetime work count has no single agreed figure across sources — reported totals range from 560 to 866
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-08-01 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• Raphson's 1715 History of Fluxions used Newton's own papers and correspondence to assert his priority over Leibniz
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-31 · historiography, history-of-mathematics, priority-dispute, newton, leibniz
• John Wallis's 1685 history of algebra used Mabillon-style documentary evidence to rule for Harriot over Descartes in a priority dispute
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-31 · diplomatics, mabillon, historiography, history-of-mathematics, priority-dispute
• Gale (1979) proved that 'Hex cannot end in a draw' is mathematically equivalent to the Brouwer fixed-point theorem
  claim budding Tier 1 2026-07-12 · hex, topology, brouwer-fixed-point-theorem, david-gale, topological-combinatorics
• Halley computed age-scaled annuity prices in his 1693 paper, yet the British government kept selling annuities at a single flat price for decades
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-12 · actuarial-history, mortality-tables, edmond-halley, annuities, history-of-mathematics
• Halley's 1693 Breslau paper produced the first life table built on population data and founded the pricing of annuities on lives
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-12 · actuarial-history, mortality-tables, edmond-halley, history-of-mathematics, insurance
• Louis Antoine explained his working method in person to the younger blind mathematician Bernard Morin — a documented counter-example to the claim that blind mathematicians' methods never transmit between them
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, topology, transmission
• The Bézier curve was invented at two rival French carmakers — de Casteljau first — and Citroën's secrecy, not mathematical priority, decided whose name it got
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-07-11 · typography, bezier-curves, computer-graphics, automotive-cad, history-of-mathematics
• James Dodson designed the first age-scaled life-assurance premiums, the basis of the Society for Equitable Assurances (Equitable Life, founded 1762)
  claim budding Tier 4 2026-07-11 · actuarial-history, insurance, mortality-tables, exclusion-driven-innovation, institutional-history
• James Dodson was refused admission to the Amicable Society because he was over its entry-age cap of 45
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-11 · actuarial-history, insurance, exclusion-driven-innovation, institutional-history, history-of-mathematics
• Leonhard Euler produced a large share of his roughly 850 works after going blind — but the exact fraction is unsettled, with two Tier-2 sources giving conflicting figures
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• Lattice ('gelosia') multiplication's paper trail runs India (12th-c. Lilavati commentary) → Islamic Maghreb (Ibn al-Banna, late 13th c.) → Renaissance Italy
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, calculating-instruments, transmission-of-knowledge, islamic-golden-age, translation-history
• Lattice multiplication was renamed for a window grille in each culture that received it: Arabic 'shabakh' and Italian 'gelosia' both mean the same lattice grating
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, etymology, transmission-of-knowledge, translation-history, lattice-multiplication
• The medieval law of proof developed the concepts of uncertain reasoning yet refused to quantify them — no quarter-proofs, and its heirs still bar Bayesian math from court
  claim seedling Tier 1 2026-07-11 · legal-history, law-of-evidence, probability, history-of-mathematics, legal-epistemology
• Napier's bones (1617) is a physical implementation of pre-existing lattice ('gelosia') multiplication, not an original algorithm
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, calculating-instruments, napiers-bones, lattice-multiplication, tactile-computing
• Abraham Nemeth kept his braille math code secret until a colleague's unplanned request for a table of integrals forced its disclosure — a documented mechanism for why private notation stays private by default
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, braille-mathematics
• Lev Pontryagin used his seat on the Soviet National Committee of Mathematicians to help bar Grigory Margulis from traveling to the 1978 ICM to receive his Fields Medal
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, institutions
• Richard Price built the Northampton mortality table and Observations on Reversionary Payments (1771), the standard actuarial reference for roughly a century
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-11 · actuarial-history, insurance, mortality-tables, enlightenment, history-of-mathematics
• Norberto Salinas and Abraham Nemeth each independently invented a personal braille mathematics notation in the mid-20th century, extending the blind-mathematician pattern to more cases and countries
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, braille-mathematics
• Isaac Schoenberg developed spline theory as a WWII Army mathematician at the Ballistic Research Laboratory — the same lab that built ENIAC — not in actuarial work
  claim seedling Tier 2 2026-07-11 · splines, schoenberg, ballistic-research-laboratory, eniac, history-of-computing
• "Spline" was a shipbuilder's flexible lofting strip for centuries before it named a mathematical curve
  claim seedling Tier 3 2026-07-11 · splines, naval-architecture, craft-history, etymology, computer-graphics
• Do primary/scholarly sources confirm that Mekh-mat's 'coffin problems' were deliberately unsolvable problems used to fail Jewish applicants?
  question answered 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, verification
• What fraction of Leonhard Euler's output actually came after he went blind? Two Tier-2 sources conflict ('half of his output' vs '≈a third in the first seven years')
  question open 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, euler, quantitative
• Do Tier 1–2 sources confirm that Ibn al-Banna's Talkhīṣ contains lattice multiplication, and that the 12th-c. Lilavati-commentary 'Kapat-sandhi' is the same method?
  question open 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, lattice-multiplication, islamic-golden-age, translation-history, verification
• Does Novikov's memoir (and independent sources) confirm Pontryagin's role in blocking Margulis's 1978 Fields Medal travel and the '1/24' reply, verbatim?
  question open 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, fields-medal, verification
• Why do blind mathematicians' private notation systems seem not to transmit between them, while their methods and mentorship do?
  question open 2026-07-11 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, notation, transmission
• Capture: Is blind mathematicians' independent reinvention of private notation a real recurring pattern, and why is there no visible transmission between cases?
  capture promoted Tier 2 2026-07-10 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, pattern
• Napier's bones runs on 'gelosia' — a lattice-multiplication method whose India-to-Arab-Maghreb-to-Italy journey mirrors the vault's Kalila wa-Dimna transmission chain
  capture promoted 2026-07-09 · hop, history-of-mathematics, calculating-instruments, transmission-of-knowledge, islamic-golden-age
• Pontryagin — celebrated in the vault for doing topology blind — also used his Academy seat to help block Grigory Margulis's 1978 Fields Medal travel
  capture promoted Tier 2 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, soviet-union, antisemitism, academia, fields-medal
• Nicholas Saunderson's 1700s tactile 'Palpable Arithmetic' — blind mathematicians built their own computing devices centuries before assistive tech was a category
  capture promoted Tier 4 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, cross-time-bridge
• Blind mathematicians across centuries each devised a private system to do mathematics without sight — Saunderson (touch), Pontryagin (speech), Euler (memory)
  observation seedling Tier 4 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, cross-time-bridge
• Lev Pontryagin, blind from age 14, followed and produced mathematics through spoken symbol-glosses his mother invented (∪ read as 'tails up')
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, optimal-control, topology
• Nicholas Saunderson, blinded in infancy, built a tactile calculating device he called his 'palpable arithmetic'
  claim seedling Tier 4 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, tactile-computing
• Is blind mathematicians' independent reinvention of private notation a real recurring pattern, and why is there no visible transmission between cases?
  question open 2026-07-09 · history-of-mathematics, disability, blindness, assistive-technology, pattern
• Florian Cajori
  entity hub · history-of-mathematics, history-of-notation
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
  entity hub · history-of-mathematics, history-of-notation
• Isaac Newton
  entity hub · history-of-mathematics, history-of-notation
• Robert Recorde
  entity hub · history-of-mathematics, history-of-notation