Mathematical celebrity stories

Su Yu 1902 was born in a mountain village in Pingyang County, Zhejiang Province in September. Although the family is poor, his parents scrimp and save, and they have to work hard to pay for his education. When he was in junior high school, he was not interested in mathematics. He thinks mathematics is too simple, and he will understand it as soon as he learns it. It can be measured that a later math class influenced his life.

That was when Su was in the third grade. He was studying in No.60 Middle School in Zhejiang Province. Teacher Yang teaches mathematics. He has just returned from studying in Tokyo. In the first class, Mr. Yang didn't talk about math, but told stories. He said: "In today's world, the law of the jungle, the world powers rely on their ships to build guns and gain benefits, and all want to eat and carve up China. The danger of China's national subjugation and extinction is imminent, so we must revitalize science, develop industry and save the nation. Every student here has a responsibility to' rise and fall in the world'. " He quoted and described the great role of mathematics in the development of modern science and technology. The last sentence of this class is: "In order to save the country and survive, we must revitalize science. Mathematics is the pioneer of science. In order to develop science, we must learn math well. "I don't know how many lessons Sue took in her life, but this lesson will never be forgotten.

Teacher Yang's class deeply touched him and injected new stimulants into his mind. Reading is not only to get rid of personal difficulties, but to save the suffering people in China; Reading is not only to find a way out for individuals, but to seek a new life for the Chinese nation. That night, Sue tossed and turned and stayed up all night. Under the influence of Teacher Yang, Su's interest shifted from literature to mathematics, and since then, she has set the motto "Never forget to save the country when reading, and never forget to save the country when reading". I am fascinated by mathematics. No matter it is the heat of winter or the snowy night in first frost, Sue only knows reading, thinking, solving problems and calculating, and has worked out tens of thousands of math exercises in four years. Now Wenzhou No.1 Middle School (that is, the provincial No.10 Middle School at that time) still treasures a Su's geometry exercise book, which is written with a brush and has fine workmanship. When I graduated from high school, my grades in all subjects were above 90.

/kloc-At the age of 0/7, Su went to Japan to study, and won the first place in Tokyo Technical School, where she studied eagerly. The belief of winning glory for our country drove Su to enter the field of mathematics research earlier. At the same time, he has written more than 30 papers, and made great achievements in differential geometry, and obtained the doctor of science degree in 193 1. Before receiving her doctorate, Su was a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics of Imperial University of Japan. Just as a Japanese university was preparing to hire him as an associate professor with a high salary, Su decided to return to China to teach with his ancestors. After the professor of Zhejiang University returned to Suzhou, his life was very hard. In the face of difficulties, Su's answer is, "Suffering is nothing, I am willing, because I have chosen the right road, which is a patriotic and bright road!" "

This is the patriotism of the older generation of mathematicians.

The epitaph of a mathematician

Some mathematicians devoted themselves to mathematics before their death, and after their death, they carved symbols representing their life achievements on tombstones.

Archimedes, an ancient Greek scholar, died at the hands of Roman enemy soldiers who attacked Sicily. ), people carved the figure of the ball in the cylinder on his tombstone to commemorate his discovery that the volume and surface area of the ball are two-thirds of that of the circumscribed cylinder. After discovering the regular practice of regular heptagon, German mathematician Gauss gave up the original intention of studying literature, devoted himself to mathematics, and even made many great contributions to mathematics. Even in his will, he suggested building a tombstone with a regular 17 prism as the base.

/kloc-Rudolph, a German mathematician in the 6th century, spent his whole life calculating pi to 35 decimal places, which was later called Rudolph number. After his death, someone else carved this number on his tombstone. Jacques Bernoulli, a Swiss mathematician, studied the spiral (known as the thread of life) before his death. After his death, a logarithmic spiral was carved on the tombstone, and the inscription also read: "Although I have changed, I am the same as before." This is a pun, which not only describes the spiral nature, but also symbolizes his love for mathematics.

Zu Chongzhi (AD 429-500) was born in Laiyuan County, Hebei Province during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. He read many books on astronomy and mathematics since childhood, studied hard and practiced hard, and finally made him an outstanding mathematician and astronomer in ancient China.

Zu Chongzhi's outstanding achievement in mathematics is about the calculation of pi. Before the Qin and Han Dynasties, people used "the diameter of three weeks a week" as pi, which was called "Gubi". Later, it was found that the error of Gubi was too large, and the pi should be "the diameter of a circle is greater than the diameter of three weeks". However, there are different opinions on how much is left. Until the Three Kingdoms period, Liu Hui put forward a scientific method to calculate pi-"secant" which approximated the circumference of a circle with the circumference inscribed by a regular polygon. Liu Hui calculated the circle inscribed with a 96-sided polygon and got π=3. 14, and pointed out that the more sides inscribed with a regular polygon, the more accurate the π value obtained. On the basis of predecessors' achievements, Zu Chongzhi devoted himself to research and repeated calculations. It is found that π is between 3. 14 15926 and 3. 14 15927, and the approximate value in the form of π fraction is obtained as the reduction rate and density rate, where the six decimal places are 3. 14 1929. There's no way to check now. If he tries to find it according to Liu Hui's secant method, he must work out 16384 polygons inscribed in the circle. How much time and labor it takes! It is obvious that his perseverance and wisdom in academic research are admirable. It has been more than 1000 years since foreign mathematicians obtained the same result in the secrecy rate calculated by Zu Chongzhi. In order to commemorate Zu Chongzhi's outstanding contribution, some mathematicians abroad suggested that π = be called "ancestral rate".

Zu Chongzhi exhibited famous works at that time and insisted on seeking truth from facts. He compared and analyzed a large number of materials calculated by himself, found serious mistakes in the past calendars, and dared to improve them. At the age of 33, he successfully compiled the Daming Calendar, which opened a new era in calendar history.

Zu Chongzhi and his son Zuxuan (also a famous mathematician in China) solved the calculation of the volume of a sphere with ingenious methods. They adopted a principle at that time: "If the power supply potential is the same, the products should not be different." That is to say, two solids located between two parallel planes are cut by any plane parallel to these two planes. If the areas of two sections are always equal, then the volumes of two solids are equal. This principle is based on the following points. However, it was discovered by Karl Marx more than 1000 years ago. In order to commemorate the great contribution of grandfather and son in discovering this principle, everyone also called this principle "the ancestor principle".

The story of mathematician gauss

Gauss 1777~ 1855 was born in Brunswick, north-central Germany. His grandfather is a farmer, his father is a mason, his mother is a mason's daughter, and he has a very clever brother, Uncle Gauss. He takes good care of Gauss and occasionally gives him some guidance, while his father can be said to be a "lout" who thinks that only strength can make money, and learning this kind of work is useless to the poor.

Gauss showed great talent very early, and at the age of three, he could point out the mistakes in his father's book. At the age of seven, I entered a primary school and took classes in a dilapidated classroom. Teachers are not good to students and often think that teaching in the backcountry is a talent. When Gauss was ten years old, his teacher took the famous "from one to one hundred" exam and finally discovered Gauss's talent. Knowing that his ability was not enough to teach Gauss, he bought a deep math book from Hamburg and showed it to Gauss. At the same time, Gauss is familiar with bartels, a teaching assistant who is almost ten years older than him. bartels's ability is much higher than that of the teacher. Later, he became a university professor, giving Professor Gauss more and deeper mathematics.

Teachers and teaching assistants went to visit Gauss's father and asked him to let Gauss receive higher education. But Gauss's father thought that his son should be a plasterer like him, and there was no money for Gauss to continue his studies. The final conclusion is-find a rich and powerful person to be his backer, although I don't know where to find it. After this visit, Gauss got rid of weaving every night and discussed mathematics with Bater every day, but soon there was nothing to teach Gauss in Bater.

1788, Gauss entered higher education institutions despite his father's opposition. After reading Gauss's homework, the math teacher told him not to take any more math classes, and his Latin soon surpassed the whole class.

179 1 year, Gauss finally found a patron-the Duke of Brunswick, and promised to help him as much as possible. Gauss's father had no reason to object. The following year, Gauss entered Brunswick College. This year, Gauss was fifteen years old. There, Gauss began to study advanced mathematics. Independent discovery of the general form of binomial theorem, quadratic reciprocity law in number theory, prime number theorem and arithmetic geometric average.

1795 gauss enters gottingen (g? Ttingen) university, because he is very talented in language and mathematics, so for some time he has been worried about whether to specialize in classical Chinese or mathematics in the future. At the age of 1796 and 17, Gauss got an extremely important result in the history of mathematics. It was the theory and method of drawing regular heptagon ruler that made him embark on the road of mathematics.

Mathematicians in the Greek era already knew how to make a positive polygon of 2m×3n×5p with a ruler, where m is a positive integer and n and p can only be 0 or 1. However, for two thousand years, no one knew the regular drawing of regular heptagon, nonagon and decagon. Gauss proved that:

If and only if n is one of the following two forms, you can draw a regular n polygon with a ruler:

1、n = 2k，k = 2，3，…

2, n = 2k × (product of several different Fermat prime numbers), k = 0, 1, 2, …

Fermat prime number is a prime number in the form of Fk = 22k. For example, F0 = 3, F 1 = 5, F2 = 17, F3 = 257 and F4 = 65537 are all prime numbers. Gauss has used algebra to solve geometric problems for more than 2000 years. He also regarded it as a masterpiece of his life and told him to carve the regular heptagon on his tombstone. But later, his tombstone was not engraved with a heptagon, but with a 17 star, because the sculptor in charge of carving thought that a heptagon was too similar to a circle, so people would be confused.

1799, Gauss submitted his doctoral thesis and proved an important theorem of algebra:

Any polynomial has (complex) roots. This result is called "Basic Theorem of Algebra".

In fact, many mathematicians think that the proof of this result was given before Gauss, but none of them is rigorous. Gauss pointed out the shortcomings of previous proofs one by one, and then put forward his own opinions. In his life, he gave four different proofs.

180 1 year. At the age of 24, Gauss published "Problem Arithmetic AE" written in Latin. There were eight chapters originally, but he had to print seven chapters because of lack of money.

This book is all about number theory except the basic theorem of algebra in Chapter 7. It can be said that it is the first systematic work on number theory, and Gauss introduced the concept of "congruence" for the first time. "Quadratic reciprocity theorem" is also among them.

At the age of 24, Gauss gave up the study of pure mathematics and studied astronomy for several years.

At that time, the astronomical community was worried about the huge gap between Mars and Jupiter, and thought that there should be planets between Mars and Jupiter that had not been discovered. 180 1 year, Italian astronomer Piazi discovered a new star between Mars and Jupiter. It was named Cere. Now we know that it is one of the asteroid belts of Mars and Jupiter, but at that time, there was endless debate in the astronomical circles. Some people say it's a planet, others say it's a comet. We must continue to observe to judge, but Piazi can only observe its 9-degree orbit, and then it will disappear behind the sun. So it is impossible to know its orbit, and it is impossible to determine whether it is a planet or a comet.

Gauss became interested in this problem at this moment, and he decided to solve this elusive star trajectory problem. Gauss himself created a method to calculate the orbits of planets with only three observations. He can predict the position of the planets very accurately. Sure enough, Ceres appeared in the place predicted by Gauss. This method-although it was not announced at that time-was the "least square method".

1802, he accurately predicted the position of the asteroid II Pallas Athena. At this time, his reputation spread far and wide, and honor rolled in. Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg elected him as an academician. Olbers, the astronomer who discovered pallas, asked him to be the director of the G? ttingen Observatory. He didn't agree immediately and didn't go to Gottingen until 1807.

1809, he wrote two volumes on the motion of celestial bodies. The first volume contains differential equations, circular spine parts and elliptical orbits. The second volume shows how to estimate the orbits of planets. Most of Gauss's contributions to astronomy were before 18 17, but he kept observing until he was seventy years old. Although doing the work of the observatory, he took time out to do other research. In order to solve the differential force path of celestial motion by integral, he considered infinite series and studied its convergence. 18 12 years, he studied hypergeometric series, and wrote his research results into a monograph and presented them to the Royal Academy of Sciences in G? ttingen.

From 1820 to 1830, Gauss began to do geodesy in order to draw a map of Hanover Principality (where Gauss lived). He wrote a book about geodesy, and because of the need of geodesy, he invented the heliograph. In order to study the earth's surface, he began to study the geometric properties of some surfaces.

1827, he published "Problems General Circa Supericies Curva", which covered some "differential geometry" in university studies.

During the period from 1830 to 1840, Gauss and Withelm Weber, a young physicist 27 years younger than him, were engaged in magnetic research. Their cooperation is ideal: Weber did experiments and Gauss studied theories. Weber aroused Gauss's interest in physical problems, while Gauss used mathematical tools to deal with physical problems, which influenced Weber's thinking and working methods.

1833, Gauss pulled an 8,000-foot-long wire from his observatory, passed through the roofs of many people, and arrived at Weber's laboratory. Using Volt battery as power supply, he built the world's first telegraph.

1835, Gauss set up a geomagnetic observatory at the Observatory and organized the "Magnetism Association" to publish the research results, which promoted the research and measurement of geomagnetism in many parts of the world.

Gauss got an accurate geomagnetic theory. In order to obtain the proof of experimental data, his book General Theory of Geomagnetism was not published until 1839.

1840, he and Weber drew the world's first map of the earth's magnetic field, and determined the positions of the earth's magnetic south pole and magnetic north pole. 184 1 year, American scientists confirmed Gauss's theory and found the exact positions of the magnetic south pole and the magnetic north pole.

Gauss's attitude towards his work is to strive for perfection, and he is very strict with his own research results. He himself once said, "I would rather publish less, but I publish mature results." Many contemporary mathematicians asked him not to be too serious, and to write and publish the results, which is very helpful for the development of mathematics. One of the famous examples is about the development of non-Euclidean geometry. There are three founders of non-Euclidean geometry, namely Gauss, Lobachevski (1793 ~ 1856) and Bolyai (Boei, 1802 ~ 1860). Among them, Bolyai's father is a classmate of Gauss University. He tried to prove the parallel axiom. Although his father opposed him to continue this seemingly hopeless research, Bolyai Jr. was addicted to parallel axioms. Finally, non-Euclidean geometry is developed, and the research results are published in 1832 ~ 1833. Old Bolyai sent his son's grades to his old classmate Gauss, but he didn't expect Gauss to write back:

Praising it means praising myself. I can't praise him, because praising him means praising myself.

As early as several decades ago, Gauss had obtained the same result, but he was afraid that this result would not be accepted by the world and was not published.

The famous American mathematician Bell (E.T.Bell) once criticized Gauss in his book Mathematicians:

Only after Gauss's death did people know that he had foreseen some mathematics in the19th century, and had predicted that they would appear before 1800. If he can reveal what he knows, it is likely that mathematics will be half a century or even earlier than it is now. Abel and jacoby can start from where Gauss stayed, instead of spending their best efforts on discovering what Gauss knew at birth. Those creators of non-Euclidean geometry can apply their genius to other aspects.

1On the morning of February 23rd, 855, Gauss died peacefully in his sleep.