Charles Peirce's place in philosophy

Peirce's publications on the method of scientific investigation (as distinct from his work in formal logic and mathematics) are his most important and valuable contributions to philosophy. His views on this subject are superior in clarity and cogency to his voluminous writings on metaphysics and cosmology. He subscribed to a fallibilistic conception of knowledge that is poles apart from a wholesale skepticism; his formulations of the conditions for meaningful discourse and of the pragmatic maxim, though not free from difficulties, have been fruitful sources of much subsequent philosophical and scientific analyses; and his classification of and discussions of types of argument or reasoning employed in scientific inquiry continue to be valuable and insightful clarifications of this important subject. In contrast to his account of scientific method, Peirce's evolutionary theory of ultimate reality, though marked by originality and ingenious speculation, has little merit as a contribution to genuine knowledge.     

Die Habilitation von John von Neumann an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin: Urteile über einen ungarisch-jüdischen Mathematiker in Deutschland im Jahr 1927

The mathematician John von Neumann was born in Hungary but principally received his scientific education and socialization in the German science system. He received his Habilitation from the Friedrich-Wilhelms–Universität in Berlin in 1927, where he lectured as a Privatdozent until his emigration to the USA. This article aims at making a contribution to this early part of Neumann’s scientific biography by analyzing in detail the procedure that led to his Habilitation as well as the beginnings of Neumann’s research on functional analysis. An analysis of the relevant sources shows that in Berlin in the year 1927 Neumann was not yet regarded as the outstanding mathematical genius of the 20th century. Furthermore it will be seen that Neumann had great difficulties in developing the fundamental concepts for his path breaking work in spectral theory and only managed to do so with the support of the Berlin mathematician Erhard Schmidt.     

Boscovich's geometrical principle of continuity,and the “mysteries of the infinity”

In this paper we give a detailed account of Boscovich's geometrical principle of continuity. We also compare his ideas with those of his forerunners and successors, in order to cast some light on his possible sources of inspiration and to underline the elements of novelty in his approach to the subject.     

E.W. Chittenden and the early history of general topology

E.W. Chittenden's work and its influence on the early history of general topology are examined. Particular attention is given to his work in metrization theory and its role in the background of the Aleksandrov-Uryson Metrization Theorem. A recounting of Professor Chittenden's career, a list of his students and his publications and a chronology in the early history of General Topology are also included.     

Polylogarithms,functional equations and more: The elusive essays of William Spence (1777–1815)

The little-known Scottish mathematician William Spence was an able analyst, one of the first in Britain to be conversant with recent continental advances, and having original views. His major work on “logarithmic transcendents” gives the first detailed account of polylogarithms and related functions. A theory of algebraic equations was published just after his early death; and further essays, edited by John Herschel, were published posthumously. The most substantial of these concern an extension of his work on “logarithmic transcendents”, and the general solution of linear differential and difference equations. But awareness of Spence?s works was long delayed by their supposed unavailability. Spence?s life, the story of his “lost” publications, and a summary of all his essays are here described.     

Own-company stockholding and work effort preferences of an unconstrained executive

We develop a framework for analyzing an executive’s own-company stockholding and work effort preferences. The executive, characterized by risk aversion and work effectiveness parameters, invests his personal wealth without constraint in the financial market, including the stock of his own company whose value he can directly influence with work effort. The executive’s utility-maximizing personal investment and work effort strategy is derived in closed form, and a utility indifference rationale is applied to determine his required compensation. Being unconstrained by performance contracting, the executive’s work effort strategy establishes a base case for theoretical or empirical assessment of the benefits or otherwise of constraining executives with performance contracting.     

Jean van Heijenoort’s Contributions to Proof Theory and Its History

Jean van Heijenoort was best known for his editorial work in the history of mathematical logic. I survey his contributions to model-theoretic proof theory, and in particular to the falsifiability tree method. This work of van Heijenoort??s is not widely known, and much of it remains unpublished. A complete list of van Heijenoort??s unpublished writings on tableaux methods and related work in proof theory is appended.     

Johann Heinrich Lambert,mathematician and scientist, 1728 – 1777

1977 is the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Johann Heinrich Lambert, a little known but nonetheless intriguing figure in 18th century science. In the general histories of science and mathematics Lambert's contributions are often described piecemeal, with each discovery and invention usually divorced both from the method by which he arrived at it and from the totality of his intellectual endeavour. To the student of optics he is remembered for his cosine law in photometry, to the astronomer for his work on comets, to the meteorologist for his design of a gut hygrometer, and to the mathematician for his work on non-Euclidean geometry and his demonstration of the irrationality of π and e. There is no doubt that each of these contributions had a definite importance of its own; but it is not the aim of the present article to enumerate in this way the high points of Lambert's scientific and mathematical work, rather to describe it for once as a unified whole, and to relate it to the contemporary intellectual outlook.     

A short biography of Paul A. M. Dirac and historical development of Dirac delta function

This paper deals with a short biography of Paul Dirac, his first celebrated work on quantum mechanics, his first formal systematic use of the Dirac delta function and his famous work on quantum electrodynamics and quantum statistics. Included are his first discovery of the Dirac relativistic wave equation, existence of positron and the intrinsic spin and helicity of electrons. Special attention is given to Dirac’s original visionary work on the existence of the magnetic monopole, and on his Large Number Hypothesis that led to the conclusion that physical quantities universally considered as constant of nature are not really constants, but they vary with cosmological time. Some concluding remarks with personal reminiscence are added in the end of the paper.     

盖尔范德在整值整函数理论上的工作

本文基于原始文献,利用历史分析和比较的方法,首次研究了盖尔范德在整值整函数理论方面的工作及影响.他的工作奠定了该理论发展的重要方向.文章分析了其工作背景;研究了他的有关工作,揭示了其思想的演变过程;探讨了其工作的重要影响.     

The intellectual journey of Russell Ackoff: from OR apostle to OR apostate

Russell Ackoff has had a distinguished career in operational research both as an academic and practitioner. His influence on the development of the discipline in the US and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s was considerable. Yet during the 1970s Ackoff registered increasing disillusion with the course and conduct of OR on both sides of the Atlantic. His rejection of the established mathematical paradigm and appeal for a wider social and political remit for the discipline was writ large at the UK Operational Research Society's conference in 1978. This paper, stimulated by the author's research into the history of British OR, analyses the evolution of Ackoff's thought in order to explain the sources of his disillusion and the short and longer term reactions to his recantation.     

Peirce the logician

This paper traces the influence of the Boolean school, and more specifically of Peirce and his students, on the development of modern logic. In the 1890s it was Schröder's Algebra derLogik that represented the state of the art. This work mentions Frege, but the quantifier notation it adopts (a variant of the modern notation) is credited to Peirce and his students O. H. Mitchell and Christine Ladd-Franklin. This notation was widely adopted; both Zermelo and Löwenheim wrote famous papers in Peirce-Schröder notation. Even Whitehead (in 1908, in his Universal Algebra) fails to mention Frege, but cites the “suggestive papers” by Mitchell and Ladd-Franklin. (Russell credits Frege, with many things, but nowhere credits him with the quantifer; if the quantifiers in Principia were devised by Whitehead, they probably come from Peirce). The aim of this paper is not to detract from our appreciation of Frege's great work, but to emphasize that its influence came largely after 1900 (after Russell pointed out its significance). Although Frege discovered the quantifier in 1879 and Peirce's student Mitchell independently discovered it only in 1883, it was Mitchell's discovery (as modified and disseminated by Peirce) that made the quantifier part of logic. And neither Löwenheim's theorem nor Zermelo set-theory depended on Frege's work at all, but only on the work of the Boole-Peirce school.     

Sources of Information for Operational Research Studies

The information explosion and the wide-ranging interests of operational research workers cause severe problems in the finding of information relevant to their studies. This paper attempts to show how an operational research worker can set about finding information for himself on any aspect of his work and a hundred examples of sources of information likely to be useful are briefly described with special reference to the needs of British workers.     

Uncovering Ramanujan’s “Lost” Notebook: an oral history

Here we weave together interviews conducted by the author with three prominent figures in the world of Ramanujan??s mathematics, George Andrews, Bruce Berndt and Ken Ono. The article describes Andrews??s discovery of the ??lost?? notebook, Andrews and Berndt??s effort of proving and editing Ramanujan??s notes, and recent breakthroughs by Ono and others carrying certain important aspects of the Indian mathematician??s work into the future. Also presented are historical details related to Ramanujan and his mathematics, perspectives on the impact of his work in contemporary mathematics, and a number of interesting personal anecdotes from Andrews, Berndt and Ono.     

The difficult birth of stochastics: Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi (1713)

Jacob Bernoulli (1654–1705) did most of his research on the mathematics of uncertainty – or stochastics, as he came to call it – between 1684 and 1690. However, the Ars Conjectandi, in which he presented his insights (including the fundamental “Law of Large Numbers”), was printed only in 1713, eight years after his death. The paper studies the sources and the development of Bernoulli's ideas on probability, the reasons behind the delay in publishing and the circumstances under which his masterpiece eventually reached the public.     

The index of an Eisenstein ideal and multiplicity one

Mathematische Zeitschrift - Mazur’s fundamental work on the Eisenstein ideal of prime level has a variety of arithmetic applications. In this article, we generalize some of his work to...     

Peirce e dedekind: La definizione di insieme finito

Starting from Peirce's repeated claims of priority with respect to Dedekind's definition of finite set [R. Dedekin, Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1888), Definizione 64], this paper traces the history of Peirce's definition and its role in his research on the foundations of arithmetic. This brings to light some remarkable and neglected achievements of Peirce in this field. It also shows that his priority claims are unjustified, although understandable in terms of his desire for acknowledgment of his pioneering work on the foundations of arithmetic.     

Excitation of mixed surface waves

The excitation of surface waves of P and SV polarization in an elastic half space inhomogeneous in two coordinates is studied. Two essentially distinct, linear sources are considered. The local and reciprocity principles are used.Translated from Zapiski Nauchnykh Seminarov Leningradskogo Otdeleniya Matematicheskogo Instituta im. V. A. Steklova AN SSSR, Vol. 62, pp. 92–110, 1976.In conclusion, the author expresses his thanks to I. A. Molotkov for his attention to the work and for valuable suggestions.     

Mauro Picone,Sandro Faedo,and the numerical solution of partial differential equations in Italy (1928–1953)

In this paper we revisit the pioneering work on the numerical analysis of partial differential equations (PDEs) by two Italian mathematicians, Mauro Picone (1885–1977) and Sandro Faedo (1913–2001). We argue that while the development of constructive methods for the solution of PDEs was central to Picone’s vision of applied mathematics, his own work in this area had relatively little direct influence on the emerging field of modern numerical analysis. We contrast this with Picone’s influence through his students and collaborators, in particular on the work of Faedo which, while not the result of immediate applied concerns, turned out to be of lasting importance for the numerical analysis of time-dependentPDEs.