Mathematics

Daniel Bernoulli was born on January 29th 1700. He came from a long line of mathematicians. His father Johann was head of mathematics at Groningen University in the Netherlands. The family was prone to bitter rivalry: something he was to suffer when he became estranged from his father some 30 years later.

At the age of five, the Bernoulli family returned home to Basel in Switzerland, so that Johann's wife could be with her ailing father. Some years earlier Johann had applied to become professor of mathematics at Basel University, but this was denied him because his elder brother, Jakob had deliberately schemed to prevent him getting the post. Later Jakob got the professorship. En route to Basel, Johann learned that Jakob had just died of tuberculosis. He later recalled rather shamelessly that " ... I could succeed to my brother's position." He set about lobbying for the vacant position and in less than two months he got his way.

1642 Pascal's calculator
At age 19, Blaise Pascal (France) constructs the first mechanical calculator and offers it for sale. The machine is capable of adding and subtracting.
[Oxford Reference English Dictionary (1996): under "Pascal" and "Appendix 2 - Chronology of Scientific Developments"]
1647: Leibniz
1674 Leibniz's machine
Gottfried Leibniz (Germany) designs a machine for multiplication and division.
[Oxford Reference English Dictionary (1996): under "Leibniz" and "Appendix 2 - Chronology of Scientific Developments"]

A major contribution to Western thought was the publication in 1543 of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, libri VI (Eng. trans., On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1952; Latin reprint, 1965) by Copernicus, Polish astronomer, who is noted for the Copernican theory of the heavens. By attributing to the Earth a daily motion around its own axis and a yearly motion around the stationary Sun, Copernicus developed an idea that had far-reaching implications for the rise of modern science. Henceforth, the Earth could no longer be considered the centre of the cosmos; rather, as one celestial body among many, it became subject to mathematical description.

John Knopfmacher- A Mathematical Biography
Compiled by Doron Lubinsky
John Peter Louis Knopfmacher was born in Johannesburg in 1937. He
attended primary school at Yeoville Boy's School, and high school
at Athlone Boys' High. He majored in Mathematics and Applied
Mathematics in his B.Sc. at Witwatersrand University, scoring
firsts in both, followed by firsts in two successive honours
degrees in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. In recognition of
his academic merit, he was awarded the Rusterholz Memorial Scholarship
for his M.Sc. and then the J.H. Hofmeyr Postgraduate Scholarship to
complete his Ph.D.

The 1930s saw the flowering of a unique mathematical community at Princeton University with the construction of a luxurious new building Fine Hall (now Jones Hall) dedicated to the mathematician and Dean Harry Fine and designed to facilitate a real community of mathematicians engaged in research and closely linked with mathematical physicists in the attached Palmer physics laboratory to which it was connected and shared a joint math-physics library. This community was unlike any other in America before that time and perhaps afterwards, and had important consequences for American mathematics. With the planning and founding of the Institute for Advanced Study at the beginning of the decade, originally having only a mathematics department, which then shared Fine Hall with the university mathematics department as a single institute during the period 1933 to 1939, starting with three of the university's leading mathematicians joined by Einstein and Gödel and attracting many visitors, a very exciting environment developed which many students and faculty were loath to leave.

Mathematicians
Adams, John Frank (1930-1989)
Davenport, Harold (1901-1969)
Eddington, Arthur Stanley (1882-1944)
Forsyth, Andrew Russell (1858-1942)
Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1877-1974)
Herman, Robert Alfred (1861-1927)
Jourdain, Philip Edward Bertrand (1879-1919)
Littlewood, John Edensor (1885-1977)
Neville, Eric Harold (1889-1961)
Peacock, George (1791-1858)
Ramanujan, Srinivasa (1887-1920)

The Soroban - the traditional Japanese "natural calculating divice" - has unique advantages in the digital age. Soroban is the name given to the traditional Japanese abacus, or calculating frame, which is increasingly being seen as a valuable mathematical tool for a technological age.
It is now certain that Soroban -teaching helps children to develop an active approach to learning, and greatly increased their powers of mental calculation. Development of logical thought processes and powers of concentration flow from the pleasurable disciplines involved in Soroban study.

Bibliography
Published Papers
Books
Conference Papers

This site contains HTML-versions of some original documents related to the early history of calculators.
For more information on the history of calculators, see Erez Kaplan's Calculating Machines, the pre-HP section of Dave Hicks' Museum of HP Calculators, James Redin's Vintage Calculators and Andrew Davie's Slide Rule Trading Post (and their lists of links).
If you are interested in the more recent history of computers, check out the document collections of Ed Thelen and the Computer History Museum.

V.G Sprindzuk was a famous authority on the theory of Diophantine equations, Diophantine approximation and transcendental Number Theory. An alumnus of the Belorussian State University (1954-1959, where he was an undergraduate) and of the State University of Vilnius (1959-1962, where he undertook his postgraduate studies), he obtained his PhD in 1963, and his DSc degree in 1965. In 1969 he was made a full professor and a member of the Editorial Board of the Vesti of the Akademija Nauk BSSR (Mathematics). The following year he joined the Editorial Board of Acta Arithmetica, and in 1986 Prof. Sprindzuk became an Academician of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences.