Mathematics
- May/June - Russell's paradox: Bertrand Russell shows that Georg Cantor's naive set theory leads to a contradiction.
- Élie Cartan develops the exterior derivative.
- Leonard Eugene Dickson publishes Linear groups with an exposition of the Galois field theory in Leipzig, advancing the classification of finite simple groups and listing almost all non-abelian simple groups having order less than one billion.
- Aleksandr Lyapunov proves the central limit theorem rigorously using characteristic functions.
Read more about this topic: 1901 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“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)
“... though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)