One of my favorite mathematicians is Blaise Pascal.
One of my favorite mathematicians is Blaise Pascal. He worked with triangles and pressure and created a computationial Tax machine machine. So before 1640.
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
And Blaise Pascal is now honoured by the SI unit of pressure being the Pascal (Pa).
Though it seems to me a rather back-handed compliment because the Pa is such a tiny unit (= a force of 1 newton applied to an area of 1 square metre) that you need hundreds of thousands of them for any day-to-day mechanical tasks like inflating tyres.
1Bar = 1 X 10^5 Pa.
Ironically though, the pascal is a million times too large for Acoustics - that has to use the µPa (micropascal) as its base unit.
20µPa is the faintest sound the fully healthy human ear can detect, so is used as 0 deciBels for air-borne sound pressure measurement. Convert that to Bar to compare it with ordinary air pressure and the millibars used in weather forecasts, and the result, showing the organ's sensitivity, is staggering.
(1 Bar is near enough Standard Atmospheric Pressure, at mean sea-level, 20ºC. Underwater sound measuring uses 1µPa as its 0dB base level.)
+++
I don't have particular favourite mathematicians but I am in awe of them. Some examples -
Newton and Liebnitz (independently but contemporaneously): Infinitesimal Calculus;
Dodgson: did not invent, but very much developed, Matrices (when not pseudonymously writing children's fantasy novels!);
Boole: Boolean Logic - now used in digital programming and circuit design;
Euclid and Pythagoras: Classical Greek developers of Geometry.
Maxwell: his work led to the development of radio communications.
Watt: an Engineer not Mathematician as such, but he devised the Horsepower as a unit of Power (not of energy), and the modern equivalent is named after him. (1HP = 746W where 1W = 1 joule of energy converted per second.
Joule: pioneering French scientist who identified the conversion of energy, which in his classic experiment was from kinetic to heat. In the heat-engine, as in Watt's professional developing of successful steam-engines, the energy conversion is heat to kinetic, and the mathematics become very deep indeed.
Napier: invented Logarithms. These vastly simplified difficult multiplication, division and arithmetical-power problems prior to the electronic calculator. Though no longer routine calculation tools apart from logarithmic graph scales, logarithms to bases 10 and a constant called e control many science and engineering applications. E.g. the physics of any heat engine involve log laws. The Decibel scale for acoustic and electrical powers and intensities, the Richter seismic scale, and stellar brightness Magnitude scale, are logarithmic.
Other people recognised by their names and adopted as such, mainly unaltered, by the Systéme Internationale are:
Kelvin - for temperature,
Hertz - frequency,
Weber and Tesla - respectively, magnetic flux and its density;
- and for electrical units:
Ampere - current ,
Volt - (after Volta) potential difference,
Farad - (after Faraday) capacitance,
Henry - inductance,
Ohm - resistance,
Coulomb - charge,
Siemens - conductance.
Curiously, Radioactivity has no units or scales carrying personal names.
NB: the people's names are spelt as normal with capital letters; the units are all lower-case in full but the abbreviation is capital, perhaps for algebraic clarity. E.g. James Watt, 1kW but one thousand watts.
The Degree Celsius, named after its Swiss inventor, is the permitted, everyday unit of temperature. It is the same "size" of degree as the Kelvin but with a different 0 base temperature. The Reamur and Fahrenheit scales were both named after their inventors, but the ºR is long obsolete, the ºF nearly so.
(Strictly the other Degree, that of angle is another, permitted unit. The SI "official" units are the Radian for planar and Steradian for spherical, angles - and not named after anyone.)
Then of course are all those who do not have units named after them but are honoured by the practical equations or values they discovered.
E.g., taken randomly from a Physics text-book:
The Faraday Constant ( in electricity),
Young's Modulus of Elasticity (a physical property of a material)
Stefan's Law (in thermodynamics),
Poisseuille's Formula (in fluid dynamics),
Archimede's Principle (relates an object's weight in air to it in liquid: bouyancy)
Though it seems to me a rather back-handed compliment because the Pa is such a tiny unit (= a force of 1 newton applied to an area of 1 square metre) that you need hundreds of thousands of them for any day-to-day mechanical tasks like inflating tyres.
1Bar = 1 X 10^5 Pa.
Ironically though, the pascal is a million times too large for Acoustics - that has to use the µPa (micropascal) as its base unit.
20µPa is the faintest sound the fully healthy human ear can detect, so is used as 0 deciBels for air-borne sound pressure measurement. Convert that to Bar to compare it with ordinary air pressure and the millibars used in weather forecasts, and the result, showing the organ's sensitivity, is staggering.
(1 Bar is near enough Standard Atmospheric Pressure, at mean sea-level, 20ºC. Underwater sound measuring uses 1µPa as its 0dB base level.)
+++
I don't have particular favourite mathematicians but I am in awe of them. Some examples -
Newton and Liebnitz (independently but contemporaneously): Infinitesimal Calculus;
Dodgson: did not invent, but very much developed, Matrices (when not pseudonymously writing children's fantasy novels!);
Boole: Boolean Logic - now used in digital programming and circuit design;
Euclid and Pythagoras: Classical Greek developers of Geometry.
Maxwell: his work led to the development of radio communications.
Watt: an Engineer not Mathematician as such, but he devised the Horsepower as a unit of Power (not of energy), and the modern equivalent is named after him. (1HP = 746W where 1W = 1 joule of energy converted per second.
Joule: pioneering French scientist who identified the conversion of energy, which in his classic experiment was from kinetic to heat. In the heat-engine, as in Watt's professional developing of successful steam-engines, the energy conversion is heat to kinetic, and the mathematics become very deep indeed.
Napier: invented Logarithms. These vastly simplified difficult multiplication, division and arithmetical-power problems prior to the electronic calculator. Though no longer routine calculation tools apart from logarithmic graph scales, logarithms to bases 10 and a constant called e control many science and engineering applications. E.g. the physics of any heat engine involve log laws. The Decibel scale for acoustic and electrical powers and intensities, the Richter seismic scale, and stellar brightness Magnitude scale, are logarithmic.
Other people recognised by their names and adopted as such, mainly unaltered, by the Systéme Internationale are:
Kelvin - for temperature,
Hertz - frequency,
Weber and Tesla - respectively, magnetic flux and its density;
- and for electrical units:
Ampere - current ,
Volt - (after Volta) potential difference,
Farad - (after Faraday) capacitance,
Henry - inductance,
Ohm - resistance,
Coulomb - charge,
Siemens - conductance.
Curiously, Radioactivity has no units or scales carrying personal names.
NB: the people's names are spelt as normal with capital letters; the units are all lower-case in full but the abbreviation is capital, perhaps for algebraic clarity. E.g. James Watt, 1kW but one thousand watts.
The Degree Celsius, named after its Swiss inventor, is the permitted, everyday unit of temperature. It is the same "size" of degree as the Kelvin but with a different 0 base temperature. The Reamur and Fahrenheit scales were both named after their inventors, but the ºR is long obsolete, the ºF nearly so.
(Strictly the other Degree, that of angle is another, permitted unit. The SI "official" units are the Radian for planar and Steradian for spherical, angles - and not named after anyone.)
Then of course are all those who do not have units named after them but are honoured by the practical equations or values they discovered.
E.g., taken randomly from a Physics text-book:
The Faraday Constant ( in electricity),
Young's Modulus of Elasticity (a physical property of a material)
Stefan's Law (in thermodynamics),
Poisseuille's Formula (in fluid dynamics),
Archimede's Principle (relates an object's weight in air to it in liquid: bouyancy)