相关论文: European Longitude Prizes. IV. Thomas Axe's Imposs…
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 late-sixteenth century witnessed a major expansion of Dutch shipping activity from northern European waters to the Indian Ocean and beyond. At a time when the Renaissance had just arrived on the North Sea's shores, scientist-scholars,…
Despite frequent references in modern reviews to a seventeenth-century Venetian longitude prize, only a single, circumstantial reference to the alleged prize is known from contemporary sources. Edward Harrison's scathing assessment of the…
The mid-17th century saw unprecedented scientific progress. With the Middle Ages well and truly over, the Scientific Revolution had begun. However, scientific advancement does not always proceed along well-planned trajectories. Chance…
Longitude determination at sea gained increasing commercial importance in the late Middle Ages, spawned by a commensurate increase in long-distance merchant shipping activity. Prior to the successful development of an accurate marine…
High-level Chinese cartographic developments predate European innovations by several centuries. Whereas European cartographic progress -- and in particular the search for a practical solution to the perennial "longitude problem" at sea --…
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,…
The students are introduced to navigation in general and the longitude problem in particular. A few videos provide insight into scientific and historical facts related to the issue. Then, the students learn in two steps how longitude can be…
Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, long-haul oceanic voyages of exploration and discovery routinely carried astronomical tent observatories to support land-based longitude determinations using heavy and cumbersome…
Astronomy is not in the list of natural sciences aimed at by the Nobel awards. In spite of that, there were, throughout the 1930s until the early 1950s, effective moves by important scientists to distinguish Hubble with the Prize. A short…
In 1979, James B.~Saxe published an extended summary on the complexity of the Distance Geometry Problem in the proceedings of the 17th Allerton Conference. Many of the proofs in his paper are sketches, and even the whole proofs do not have…
In the 17th Century, the Dutch Republic played an important role in the scientific revolution. Much of the correspondence among contemporary scientists and their associates is now digitally available through the ePistolarium webtool,…
Voyages of exploration often included astronomers among their crew to aid with maritime navigation. William Dawes, a British Marine who had been trained in practical astronomy, was assigned to the "First Fleet", a convoy of eleven ships…
The use of the observed positions of celestial bodies to determine the location of a navigator and to direct vessels, was an aspiration of ancient seafarers. Various peoples, in the Mediterranean as much as in the Indian Ocean, in China as…
After 2009 many governments implemented austerity measures, often restricting science funding. Did such restrictions further skew grant income towards elite scientists and universities? And did increased competition for funding undermine…
Duality principle for approximation of geometrical objects (also known as Eudoxus exhaustion method) was extended and perfected by Archimedes in his famous tractate "Measurement of circle". The main idea of the approximation method by…
This is an article for a general mathematical audience on the author's work, joint with Terence Tao, establishing that there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes. It is based on several one hour lectures, chiefly given at…
The evolution and maintenance of cooperation fascinated researchers for several decades. Recently, theoretical models and experimental evidence show that costly punishment may facilitate cooperation in human societies, but may not be used…
On 13 May 1787, a convict fleet of 11 ships left Portsmouth, England, on a 24,000 km, 8-month-long voyage to New South Wales. The voyage would take the "First Fleet" under Captain Arthur Phillip via Tenerife (Canary Islands), the port of…
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding…