Related papers: Christopher Clavius astronomer and mathematician
Following Columbus' voyages to the Americas, Castilian (Spanish) and Portuguese rulers engaged in heated geopolitical competition, which was eventually reconciled through a number of treaties that divided the world into two unequal…
The art of advertising one's scientific achievements, of which Galileo was an early master, is a trademark of successful modern science. Dedicated believers and mystics of science, such as Kepler, are less popular. Yet, an alleged rigorous…
The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens refined Archimedes' celebrated geometrical computation of $\pi$ to its highest point. Yet the rich content of his beautiful treatise \emph{De circuli magnitudine inventa} (1654) has apparently never…
This study examines the potential of using math-themed postage stamps in mathematics lessons as a tool to engage students and integrate the subject with history, art, and culture. Since the first mathematical stamps appeared in the early…
The sphericity of the form of the Earth was questioned around the year 1687, primarily, by Isaac Newton who deduced from his theory of universal gravitation that the Earth has the form of a spheroid flattened at the poles and elongated at…
In this paper, we examine the evolution of a specific mathematical problem, i.e. the nine-point conic, a generalisation of the nine-point circle due to Steiner. We will follow this evolution from Steiner to the Neapolitan school (Trudi and…
The Scientific Revolution sweeping through seventeenth-century Europe led to unprecedented intellectual and scientific insights and high-profile technological developments. Combined with a significant worldwide increase in naval commerce,…
Two books, the "De Architectura" by Vitruvius and the "Naturalis Historia" by Pliny the Elder, give us a portrait of the Materials Science, that is, the knowledge of materials, in Rome at the beginning of the Empire. Here, I am reporting…
This essay demonstrates the key role of Astronomy in Botticelli's "Venus and Mars-NG915" painting, to date only very partially understood. Worthwhile coincidences among the principles of the Ficinian philosophy, the historical characters…
We re-evaluate the great Leibniz-Newton calculus debate, exactly three hundred years after it culminated, in 1712. We reflect upon the concept of invention, and to what extent there were indeed two independent inventors of this new…
The great meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome was built in 1701/1702 with the scope of measuring the obliquity of the Earth's orbit in the following eight centuries, upon the will of Pope Clement XI. During the…
We show how the birth of perspective painting in the Italian Renaissance led to a new way of interpreting space that resulted in the creation of projective geometry. Unlike other works on this subject, we explicitly show how the craft of…
It is widely believed that the advance of science in the Islamic world after the mid-fifteenth century A.D. suffered a decline. For the purpose of examining this belief, a manuscript by Qasim ali al-Qayini (ca. A.D.1685) was chosen based on…
Residues to a given modulus have been introduced to mathematics by Carl Friedrich Gauss with the definition of congruence in the `Disquisitiones Arithmeticae'. Their extraordinary properties provide the basis for a change of paradigm in…
This paper was written as part of a book entitled: "Questions of Modern Cosmology - Galileo's Legacy" which is a celebrative book dedicated to Galileo Galilei. The book is published in 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, since it is…
Most if not all of today's revolutionary technologies have a common foundation, namely the intelligent use of information. It is clear that computers play a central role: but the contribution of mathematics, though less visible, is no less…
A number of elite thinkers in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries pursued an agenda which historian Paolo Rossi calls the "quest for a universal language," a quest which was deeply interwoven with the emergence of the scientific…
It is difficult for the common sense to admit that an object dropped from the top of the mast of a ship moving at a constant velocity falls down at the bottom of the mast because it keeps inside the horizontal movement of the ship. This…
For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables. The immersive sky simulator of the twentieth century, the…
Gravity plays an important part in the experiments and discoveries of the modern world. But how was it discovered? Surely Newton and Einstein were not the only people to observe it and account for it. It had been a long path before the full…