Joseph Fourier's Anticipation of Linear Programming

The name of Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) is largely associated with the mathematical analysis of heat diffusion and methods of solving partial differential equations by means of Fourier series, Fourier integrals and the calculus of differential operators. But his interests in mathematics encompassed other fields also, and one of his achievements was to create singlehanded a basic theory of linear programming.     

Interactive graphics as an aid in the understanding of Fourier series

This note describes an interactive graphics package, devised by the author, which may assist the student in his understanding of Fourier series, and in particular the convergence of such series to the represented function. The student must still carry out his mathematical analysis to determine the Fourier coefficients and suitably code into FORTRAN. The level of programming required is usually attained early in an undergraduate course. The ideas and graphical display are illustrated by examples.     

Ky Fan (1914�C2010), he spent every waking moment thinking about mathematics

This survey article on Dr. Ky Fan summarizes his versatile achievements and fundamental contributions in the fields of topological groups, nonlinear and convex analysis, operator theory, linear algebra and matrix theory, mathematical programming, and approximation theory, etc., and as well reveals Fan’s exemplary mathematical formation opening up the beauty of pure mathematics, with natural conditions, concise statements and elegant proofs. This article contains a brief biography of Dr. Fan and epitomizes his life. He was not only a great mathematician, but also a very serious teacher known to be extremely strict to his students. He loved his motherland and made generous donations for promoting mathematical development in China. He devoted his life to mathematics, continued his research and published papers till 85 years old.     

Pure mathematics applied in early twentieth-century America: The case of T.H. Gronwall,consulting mathematician

Thomas Hakon Gronwall (1877–1932) was a Swedish-American mathematician with a broad range of interests in mathematical analysis, physics, and engineering. Though he was primarly known for his results in pure mathematics, his career as a “consulting mathematician” in America from 1912 to his death in 1932 provides a backdrop against which one can discuss contemporary issues involved in the increasing application of mathematics to engineering, industrial, and scientific problems. This paper attempts a summary of his major mathematical contributions to industrial, governmental, and academic institutions while relating his often difficult life during these years.     

Contributions of Lo Yang to Value Distribution Theory

Professor Lo Yang is a world famous mathematician of our country. He made a lot of outstanding achievements in the value distribution theory of function theory, which are highly rated and widely quoted by domestic and foreign scholars. He also did a lot of work to develop Chinese mathematics. It can be said that Professor Yang is one of the mathematicians who made main influences on the mathematical development in modern China. This paper briefly introduces Professor Yang’s life, mainly discusses his academic achievement and influence, and briefly describes his contributions to the Chinese mathematics community.     

The Paul A M Dirac papers at Florida State University: a search for informal mathematical investigations

The research discussed in this article is an archival study of pages of mathematical work produced by the physicist Paul A M Dirac. The pages, referred to as the ‘shoebox papers’, are thought to date back at least to Dirac's time as a student at the University of Cambridge in the 1920s. Florida State University, where the research was conducted and where Dirac worked for the last fourteen years of his life, received the entirety of his papers after his death in 1984. The research so far has identified major themes that recur throughout the collection of papers, including an interest in combinatorics and their relation to algebra problems. Due to Dirac's importance as a physicist and a possible relation to combinatorics work by Leibniz, the collection may have significant implications for the history of mathematics.     

Cristoforo Borri and the epistemological status of mathematics in seventeenth-century Portugal

This paper argues that the epistemological promotion of mathematics by the Jesuit Cristoforo Borri, while he was teaching at the Coimbra Jesuit College in the late 1620s, played a decisive role in the updating of cosmological ideas in 17th-century Portugal. The paper focuses on Borri's position on the celebrated quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum and on his understanding of the classification of sciences. It argues that by conferring on mathematics the status of Aristotelian causal science, Borri made it possible to integrate mathematical data into the philosophical debate, particularly with regard to the new cosmology.     

Some mathematical aspects of the political business cycle

Under the hypothesis of a myopic electorate, vote-loss-minimizing behavior by the party in power, subject to a dynamic inflation-unemployment relation, is shown to generate an attractive, stable electoral policy cycle. The model presented is derived, with some improvements, from the analogous models of MacRae and Nordhaus. Furthermore, an attempt is made to specify the mathematical aspects of the problem by the Poincaré mapping.This work was realized within the activities of CNR, Gruppo Nazionale Analisi Funzionale (GNAFA). The author wishes to thank Professor M. D. Intriligator for his many comments, suggestions, and critique.     

Student Difficulties with Accessing and Using Mathematical Knowledge

This article examines the issue of why students fail to activate and use mathematical knowledge during problem solving when it is known that they possess the required knowledge. This issue is explored by analyzing problem-solving attempts of a high-achieving student and a low-achieving student in the domain of plane geometry. On the basis of these data and other literature, three major sources of mathematical knowledge-access difficulties are identified that might be considered by classroom teachers, including a student's (1) dispositional state, (2) management of the problem-solving process, and (3) state of organization of his or her mathematical knowledge. It is argued that teaching practices that place emphasis on careful management of problem-solving activity could help students activate and extend the use of mathematical knowledge acquired in lesson activities.     

Brian Hartley, 1939-94

Brian Hartley began his algebraic career as one of Philip Hall'sresearch students in Cambridge. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1964,spent two post-doctoral years in the USA and, on his returnto the United Kingdom, accepted a lectureship in the newly establishedMathematics Department at Warwick University; there he was promotedto a readership in 1973. He was appointed to a chair of puremathematics at the University of Manchester in 1977 and wasHead of the Mathematics Department there from 1982–4.He was elected to the London Mathematical Society in 1968 andserved on Council from 1987–9. He won an EPSRC SeniorResearch Fellowship, but died on 8 October 1994, a few daysafter taking it up. He travelled widely and took a lively interestin other cultures and languages. His intellectual energy, enthusiasmfor algebra, direct manner and dry sense of humour endearedhim to the many mathematical friends he made around the world.He was devoted to mathematics and gave generously of his timeand energy in support of younger colleagues.     

How mathematical impossibility changed welfare economics: A history of Arrow's impossibility theorem

During the 20th century, impossibility theorems have become an important part of mathematics. Arrow's impossibility theorem (1950) stands out as one of the first impossibility theorems outside of pure mathematics. It states that it is impossible to design a welfare function (or a voting method) that satisfies some rather innocent looking requirements. Arrow's theorem became the starting point of social choice theory that has had a great impact on welfare economics. This paper will analyze the history of Arrow's impossibility theorem in its mathematical and economic contexts. It will be argued that Arrow made a radical change of the mathematical model of welfare economics by connecting it to the theory of voting and that this change was preconditioned by his deep knowledge of the modern axiomatic approach to mathematics and logic.     

Life and work of George Salmon (1819--1904)

George Salmon achieved prominence both as a mathematician and theologian during the nineteenth century. He was one of the originators, with Cayley and Sylvester, of invariant theory in the 1850s, and published a series of four textbooks on geometric topics which incorporate many of his discoveries. These works in their several editions were pre-eminent in the mathematical literature for fifty years and more, and were translated into most major European languages. I present here a brief survey of Salmon's life and work, drawing on some less familiar sources and revealing aspects of his work and character that are not mentioned in the standard biographical sources. The essay is an extended version of a lecture given by the author at Trinity College Dublin on 6 April 2005.     

Cauchy and the infinitely small

We consider Cauchy's use of the infinitely small in his textbooks. He never examined fully his concept of variables with limit zero, and he sometimes argued as if he were using actual infinitesimals. Occasionally he adopted an epsilon-delta approach. The author argues that historical evaluations of mathematical analysis may and should be made in the light of both standard and non-standard analysis. From this point of view, Cauchy's move toward founding analysis entirely on the standard real number system does not seem to have been inevitable. Some historical observations by the founder of non-standard analysis, Abraham Robinson, are extended, and in one case contested. It is shown that some of Cauchy's alleged errors are explained if he is admitted to have been thinking of actual infinitesimals and infinitely large integers. Cauchy's definitions of differential in his textbooks are examined, and the author shows that the earlier of his two definitions of total differential works well, but the later does not.     

On the absolute Cesàro summability of Fourier series of functions of Lebesgue classL v and some related problems in the theory of Fourier constants

Summary The author studies certain aspects of a problem on Fourier constants which emerges out of his attempt at proving a recent result ofTsuchikura on the absolute Cesàro summability of Fourier series by means of a technique that exploits properties of Fourier costants. He proves,inter alia, the Fourier-power series analogue of aconjecture on Fourier constants, which he has raised in this paper.     

Preface

<正>Professor Roger Temam is a world renowned applied mathematician. His first major contribution to science is his thesis (these d'etat) worked under the direction of the late Professor Jacque-Louis Lions on fractional step methods and their application to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (independently studied by Alexander Chorin).     

John Reynolds of the Mint: A mathematician in the service of king and commonwealth

In his youth, John Reynolds showed a talent for arithmetic and was destined for a career as a mathematician at the Tower Mint in London. He became skilled in the algorithms needed to determine the correct relationship between the weight and purity of coins and their values. This was a matter of national importance, and his work came to the attention of King James I, who reigned from 1603 to 1625, and his chief ministers, including Robert Cecil and Francis Bacon. It seemed that John might attain high office himself, but the murky administration of the early Stuart period cast its shadow over his career. Nevertheless, for the next forty years he continued to play a major part in the nation's affairs. He produced books of tables for the valuation of coins in the commercial world, and for the highly technical work of the assayers. Also, he was actively involved in the production of standard measures and instruments used by the excise officers. His life and works illustrate how mathematical ideas were employed by the English government in the period of the early Stuart kings and the Commonwealth.     

An application of Neustadt's abstract maximum principle to probability kinematics

An important class of problems in philosophy can be formulated as mathematical programming problems in an infinite-dimensional vector space. One such problem is that of probability kinematics: the study of how an individual ought to adjust his degree-of-belief function in response to new information. Much work has recently been done to establish maximum principles for these generalized programming problems (Refs. 3–4). Perhaps, the most general treatment of the problem presented to date is that by Neustadt (Ref. 1). In this paper, the problem of probability kinematics is formulated as a generalized mathematical programming problem and necessary conditions for the optimal revised degree-of-belief function are derived from an abstract maximum principle contained in Neustadt's paper.This work was supported by the National Research Council of Canada.The author is grateful to G. J. Lastman and J. A. Baker of the University of Waterloo for numerous suggestions made for improvement of this paper. The problem of probability kinematics was brought to the author's attention by W. L. Harper of the University of Western Ontario.     

The astronomical work of Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855)

Gauss's interest in astronomy dates from his student-days in Göttingen, and was stimulated by his reading of Franz Xavier von Zach's Monatliche Correspondenz… where he first read about Giuseppe Piazzi's discovery of the minor planet Ceres on 1 January 1801. He quickly produced a theory of orbital motion which enabled that faint star-like object to be rediscovered by von Zach and others after it emerged from the rays of the Sun. Von Zach continued to supply him with the observations of contemporary European astronomers from which he was able to improve his theory to such an extent that he could detect the effects of planetary perturbations in distorting the orbit from an elliptical form. To cope with the complexities which these introduced into the calculations of Ceres and more especially the other minor planet Pallas, discovered by Wilhelm Olbers in 1802, Gauss developed a new and more rigorous numerical approach by making use of his mathematical theory of interpolation and his method of least-squares analysis, which was embodied in his famous Theoria motus of 1809. His laborious researches on the theory of Pallas's motion, in which he enlisted the help of several former students, provided the framework of a new mathematical formulation of the problem whose solution can now be easily effected thanks to modern computational techniques.Up to the time of his appointment as Director of the Göttingen Observatory in 1807, Gauss had little opportunity for engaging himself in practical astronomical work. His first systematic observations were concerned with re-establishing the latitude of of that observatory, which had been well-determined by Tobias Mayer more than fifty years earlier. However, he found a small but not negligible discrepancy between results obtained independently from stellar and solar observations, as well as irregularities among later measurements of polar altitudes (made at the new observatory completed in 1816), which he was never able to explain, despite repeated attempts to do so using different instruments and observational techniques. Similar anomalies were also detected by a number of other astronomers at around this time. These may have been associated--at any rate, partially--with the phenomenon identified later in the century as a “variation of latitude” due to minor periodic fluctuations in the Earth's axis of rotation produced by meteorological and geological factors.     

A proportional view: The mathematics of James Glenie (1750–1817)

The mathematical work of James Glenie (1750–1817) was published at irregular intervals during a turbulent life. His ideas, mostly deriving from his time as an Assistant in Mathematics at St Andrews University in Scotland, were developed intermittently over a period of thirty-seven years. His mathematical achievements, underestimated by previous historians, were deeply rooted in Euclidean geometry and his own generalized theory of proportion. Among them are many new geometrical constructions and proofs, a novel demonstration of the binomial theorem, and an alternative approach to the differential calculus.