A Mathematical Visit

Hello reader:

In September 11, I visited my former high school teacher Mr Grosinger. The purpose of the visit was to catch up in our current projects and to learn how to drive standard transmission (stick). In my visit I meet Mr. Yoav Benari, who is my teachers girlfriend's dad. He is a very interesting man. Dr. Benari received both an undergraduate and graduate degree from Princeton University. One thing we spoke about was my visit to the Math Museum. I explained about the Catalan number. In response, he talked about the mathematical constant pi, and Archimedes. 

Before I go in detail about Archimedes, Mr. Benari has a blog called FinancialGauge. In this blog, he analysis the financial market as well as understanding current market development.

To continue with Archimedes. He was a Greek mathematician, physicist, inventor and astronomer. His discoveries were admirable. Some of the most admirable to me are as followed:

1. Archimedes' Principle which states " Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object." By dividing different shapes into small strips he determined centers of gravity and buoyancy.  

2. Claw of archimedes. the claw was a weapon design to defend the city of Syracuse. The weapon consists of a crank-like arm, which lifted ships out of the water and possibly sinking it.

3. Personally the one I enjoy reading the most about was about Pi. He developed the first method for calculating the value of Pi with greater precision then those of which had already existed. The reason why I enjoyed searching for Pi was because Mr. Benari asked me an interesting rhetorical question:  how can we precisely determine the value of a circles circumference or area when Pi itself is an irrational number. Hopefully, that question will motivate you to look for an answer. 

As a final note, in the museum I was asked how many mathematicians did I know of. I had a very sad answer... The same answer I had when Mr. Benari asked me if I knew who Archimedes was, I just didn't know. This triggered something, my question is: Why are we only taught the very important mathematical equations that have helped the progression of not only math but science as well, yet we are not taught about the great minds who came up with them, or why? 

Therefore let me ask you, how many mathematicians can you mention with their respective theory or what they are known for?

If you are lost, here are a few suggestions: Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Gauss, Riemann, Euclid, Pythagoras of Samos.