Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
Surely there is not a bit of ribbing going on here Craig. 
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Right on cue, Steven !

Me ?? .. Rib mathematicians ??? … Never !!! …
Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
I wonder if the series goes deep enough to include.
(a) The greatest mathematician of all time who actually never existed Nicholas Bourbaki.
(b) Why mathematicians are terrified by the letter Z. (Unfortunately very true.  )
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Well, I haven't come across Nicolas_Bourbaki in the series … sounds like yet-just-another-cult-of-extremist-mathematicians to me, eh ?
But more seriously, very interesting ! … I was also unaware of the contributions of Gauss, the (various) Bernoullis, and before that, the contributions from India to trigonometry, infinity and negative numbers (by mainly Brahmagupta - also an astronomer).
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī from the Middle East, came up with solutions to linear and quadratic equations (in about 825 AD) and it took until the 12th Century for Europe/England to catch up with his work .. these works also gave rise to the term 'Algebra' …. amazing and yet still fairly obscure stuff !
There are many more little known facts, (from our Western civilisation perspective), presented in the Series, which makes it all the more fascinating.
Incredible stuff !
Cheers