Mathematics
- Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet publishes Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions, using mathematical analysis concepts to tackle an algebraic problem and thus creating the branch of analytic number theory. In proving the theorem, he introduces the Dirichlet characters and L-functions. He also notes the difference between the absolute and conditional convergence of series and its impact in what will later be called the Riemann series theorem.
- Bernard Bolzano publishes Wissenschaftslehre.
- William Rowan Hamilton treats complex numbers as ordered pairs of real numbers.
- Simeon Poisson's lectures on probability and decision theory are published.
- Pierre Wantzel proves that several ancient geometric problems (including doubling the cube and trisecting the angle) are impossible to solve using only compass and straightedge.
Read more about this topic: 1837 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)