{"title":"A determination of Catalan numbers in 18th century Italy by Giovanni Rizzetti (1675–1751)","authors":"Alessandro Belcastro, Giuseppina Fenaroli","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.07.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2023.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We discuss the probabilistic question faced by the Italian scholar Giovanni Rizzetti (1675–1751) and suggest this is a variant of what we refer to today as the “<em>ballot sequences</em>”, variant to which Catalan numbers offer a solution.</p><p>Rizzetti's search for a solution led him to produce an iterative rule which involved the consideration of Catalan numbers. Although coming up with these were not his final goal, the rule he elaborated allowed him to carry on calculating them as long as he wanted. As such, it is possible this was the first time such numbers were determined.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"64 ","pages":"Pages 34-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50190797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, fols. 395r and 686r–686v, refers to Leonardo Pisano volgarizzato, not to Giorgio Valla","authors":"Dominique Raynaud","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.06.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.06.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article aims at identifying the sources of fols. 395r and 686r-686v of the <em>Codex Atlanticus</em>. These anonymous folios, inserted in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, do not deal with the duplication of the cube proper, nor do they derive from Giorgio Valla's <em>De expetendis et fugiendis rebus</em><span> (1501), as has been claimed. They deal specifically with the extraction of the cube root by geometric methods. The analysis of the sources by the tracer method reveals that these fragments are taken from the </span><em>Practica geometrie</em> by Leonardo Fibonacci (1220) and, more precisely, from a <em>volgarizzamento</em> that appears in the <em>Praticha d'arismetrica</em> by Benedetto da Firenze (1463). Leonardo could have consulted this text in one of his two Florentine periods, around 1463-1482 or around 1503-1506.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"64 ","pages":"Pages 1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45659503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Julius Plücker – A path from geometry to optics","authors":"Michael Wiescher","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.06.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.06.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper evaluates possible reasons and motivations for 19<sup>th</sup><span> century geometer Julius Plücker's change in direction from his purely mathematical work to experimental physics. The author argues that this change did not happen suddenly in 1846 as is frequently suggested but rather, was a gradual change. This move took more than a decade and was triggered by Plücker's idea to apply his mathematical formalism to physical objects and phenomena, such as crystals and the trajectories of light in crystalline materials, a move which eventually led him to the newly discovered phenomena of diamagnetism.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"64 ","pages":"Pages 19-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42901203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Felix Klein's teaching of Galois theory","authors":"Henning Heller","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.05.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2023.05.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article concerns a lecture course on Galois theory held by Felix Klein in summer 1886 at the University of Göttingen. Klein's commitment to teaching the theory of equations from Galois's advanced point of view forms a remarkable exception within the European curriculum. Klein's heuristic methodology, in which mathematical theory is extracted from a gradually advancing set of examples, allowed him for an efficient introduction of the main principles of Galois theory. At the same time, the lecture was difficult to follow and its immediate success remains questionable. The lecture furthermore provided Klein the possibility to further advertise his so-called <em>Hypergalois</em> vision for algebra, and prepared further lecture courses in that field. Through the commissioned lecture notes and Klein's engagement in the faculty, it also provided the means for a period of stability in the teaching of algebra at the University of Göttingen.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"63 ","pages":"Pages 21-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41712321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poncelet's discovery of homology","authors":"Christopher Baltus","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2022.12.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2022.12.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span><em>Homology</em></span> was among the concepts introduced in Jean Victor Poncelet's 1822 <em>Traité des Propriétés Projectives des Figures</em>. Homology is a projective transformation which has an axis, a line of fixed points. The <em>Traité</em> develops a straightedge construction of points under <em>homology</em>, essentially that found in work on perspective drawing and by Phillipe de la Hire, 1673. However, Poncelet's very distinct path to homology was through <em>similitude</em><span>, where the radical axis of a pair of circles became the axis of homology. We end with Poncelet's application of homology involving the focus of a conic section.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"63 ","pages":"Pages 1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43236570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}