Mathematics
- July 11 – Keuffel and Esser manufacture the last slide rule in the United States.
- Imre Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations: the Logic of Mathematical Discovery is published posthumously.
- The four color theorem is proved by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, the first major theorem to be proved using a computer.
Read more about this topic: 1976 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“... 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)
“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)
“Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)