Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Passing of Kyosito Ito - Farewell to a Modest Brilliant Mathematician
Does anyone remember our Mystery Mathematician from Feb 2008? None other than one of the greatest mathematicians of our era - Kyosito Ito.
Excerpts from a recent NYT article:
Kiyoshi Ito, a mathematician whose innovative models of random motion are used today in fields as diverse as finance and biology, died Nov. 10 at a hospital in Kyoto, Japan. He was 93.
Mr. Ito is known for his contributions to probability theory, the study of randomness. His work, starting in the 1940s, built on the earlier breakthroughs of Albert Einstein and Norbert Wiener. Mr. Ito’s mathematical framework for describing the evolution of random phenomena came to be known as the Ito Calculus.
“People all over realized that what Ito had done explained things that were unexplainable before,” said Daniel Stroock, a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Ito’s research was theoretical, but his models served as a tool kit for others, notably in finance. Robert C. Merton, a winner of the Nobel in economic science, said he found Mr. Ito’s model “a very useful tool” in his research on the evolution of stock prices in a portfolio and, later, in helping develop a theory for pricing stock options that is used on Wall Street today. Mr. Ito, he said, was “a very eminent mathematician.”Mr. Ito collected many professional honors and awards over the years. He was a foreign member of the national academies of science in the United States and France. He was awarded the Kyoto Prize, the Wolf Foundation Prize of Israel and the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize of Germany.
To demonstrate Professor Ito's humility, here are his own words from the article posted in MathNotations back in February of this year:
"When I first set forth stochastic differential equations, however, my paper did not attract attention. It was over ten years after my paper that other mathematicians began reading my "musical scores" and playing my "music" with their "instruments."
Farewell, Dr. Ito. You have enriched our lives and those of future generations...
Posted by Dave Marain at 7:04 PM 0 comments
Labels: dedication, famous mathematicians
Friday, August 15, 2008
PRINCE? NAH! 'E-ROI'! August MathAnagram Finally!
Better late than never...
This is definitely not one of my finest anagrams but it's the best I could do. Hopefully, the descendants of this eminent mathematician will forgive me.
As always, ignore the punctuation and I trust many of you will solve this 'rapidement'.
Please follow the usual procedures when submitting...
DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR ANSWER AS A REPLY TO THIS POST
- Remember to email me at dmarain at geeeemail dot com
- Pls use Mystery Mathematician August 2008 in the subject line!
(1) The name of the mathematician
(2) Some interesting info/anecdotes re said person
(3) Explain the code embedded in the anagram! (Not too exciting here this month)
(4) Your sources (links, etc.)
(5) Your full name and the name you want me to use when acknowledging your accomplishment
(6) If you're new, how you found MathNotations
(7) If new, your connection to mathematics
Posted by Dave Marain at 9:17 PM 0 comments
Labels: famous mathematicians, history of mathematics, mathanagram, mystery mathematician
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Mystery Math Idol Week of 12-17-07
Update: And the winner once again is...
Lynx!
Here's her contribution:
Jean le Rond d'Alembert is also famously known for incorrectly arguing in Croix ou Pile that the probability of a coin landing heads increased for every time that it came up tails. In gambling, the strategy of decreasing one's bet the more one wins and increasing one's bet the more one loses is therefore called the D'Alembert system. (WIkipedia)
From my reading of several biographies, it sonds as if he is another Cauchy - cantankerous, with many enemies and few friends.
My thoughts--
I've always associated D'Alembert with the Ratio Test for Infinite Series in Calculus but that's one of his minor accomplishments. He also solved the Wave Equation in Physics - not too shabby! On a personal note, his mom left him on the church steps when he was an infant. Later in life, when she wanted to reunite with him, he rejected her...
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Did you already notice I changed the image in the sidebar? Before I give a hint, I'll leave it up for another 12 hours as is.
Don't forget to email me at dmarain 'at' 'gee' mail dot com with your answer. As always, the name is not enough. Include a fascinating fact or anecdote about this famous individual and a reference or link that you used.
Posted by Dave Marain at 8:08 AM 0 comments
Labels: contest, famous mathematicians, history of mathematics
Friday, December 14, 2007
Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy?" A: Because he left a residue at every pole. Mystery Mathematician #3 Revealed!
What does that say about me that I am amused by that famous pun in the title of this post! Cauchy has always been a favorite of mine and his famous Integral Formula has blighted the youth of many young mathematicians in their Complex Analysis course! I recall one of my high school colleagues annually wearing a T-shirt with this formula imprinted on it on the day of the math finals. I don't believe it gave away any answers to her students!
Anyhow, we did have two winners in this week's contest. I intentionally did not announce this edition of the contest in a post as I wanted to see who would notice the new image in the sidebar! BTW, I certainly didn't expect my Technorati rating or Social Ranking to spike because of this and I was not disappointed!
Winners:
TC
Lynx
Here are TC's 'punny' comments:
Hi Dave,
It is not as if you had exhausted most others that you had to pick a
'residual' mathematician :-)
I first thought it might be L'Hospital.
Interesting anecdote:
Lagrange advised Cauchy's father that his son should obtain a good
grounding in languages before starting a serious study of mathematics.
Here's Lynx's comment/anecdote about Monsieur Cauchy:
The mathematician is Augustin-Louis Cauchy.
A quote by him (courtesy of www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac
Said in 1847
Also, according to Agnesi to Zeno Over 100 Vignettes from the History of Math by Sanderson Smith, he was a teacher at the Ecole Polytechnique. While Evariste Galois was trying to gain admission, Cauchy lost a paper written by the young man.
He was a staunch Catholic and, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org
According to this website (http://web01.shu.edu/projects
Okay, that's enough. I'm done researching for now. Thanks for an evening of entertainment.
Posted by Dave Marain at 5:51 AM 6 comments
Labels: Cauchy, contest, famous mathematicians, history of mathematics
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Mystery Math Idol Week of 12-3-07
As much as I revere Archimedes, life is a series of hellos and goodbyes (Billy Joel has a way with words). Again, if you think you know who the famous woman in the sidebar is, email me at "dmarain at g-mail dot com".
Please do not put your answer in the comments section of this post - we do not want to give it away until the contest is over! I will give up to 48 hours depending on how many emails I receive.
Don't forget to include some curious, fascinating or esoteric fact relating to her mathematical career or some compelling personal anecdote. From what I've read of her, the possibilities are many! Please cite your sources (link) for verification.
If I don't get a response within 12 hours, I will post a hint either in the sidebar or in this post.
Hopefully, this time, one cannot right-click, ctrl-click or view source to find her name!
I know those of you with advanced search skills will find her fairly quickly, but, remember, the name is not enough!
Happy Hunting!
Posted by Dave Marain at 5:44 AM 0 comments
Labels: contest, famous mathematicians, history of mathematics
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
A New Feature: Name That Mathematician (and more...)
Update2: Only one submission thus far (and a good one!) so I will give our readers another day to email me some fascinating fact about 'A'! Ironically, Isabel, over at God Plays Dice, has a humorous post on attaching names to faces of current mathematicians. What are the odds! As with all experiments, we'll see how this challenge is responded to before making it a regular feature!
Update: Mathmom, reminded me that one can right-click on a PC and see the name of the image file. Working on a MAC, I forgot that. Well, this first picture might be a freebie, but you still need to wow me with some esoteric fact about him! Next time, I'll rename that file!! I also removed the personal info requirement (again, thanks to mathmom's astuteness!).
Starting today, we are introducing a different kind of challenge. Look at the image near the top of the sidebar. Here are the rules (read these carefully before submitting):
DO NOT NAME THE FAMOUS MATHEMATICIAN IN A COMMENT! (If you did already, I will delete it!).
Instead, send me an email at "dmarain at gmail dot com" with the following information:
(a) The name of the person
(b) One fascinating fact about her/him; it doesn't have to be what made that person famous -- I'm looking for the unusual or curious here, be it mathematical or something personal...
(c) Please cite your source for this fact (include the link) - I need to verify its authenticity
I will choose the top responses received within 24-48 hours of the time the picture first appears. Earlier submissions may receive higher ranking than later submissions. I will announce the winners in a couple of days and, of course, include the fascinating facts as well.
Note: I realize that students today have extraordinary online research skills (although one cannot enter an image in Google!), but, remember, the winners are not only determined by giving a name. Feel free to share this with students. They can enter too!
Posted by Dave Marain at 7:48 AM 2 comments
Labels: contest, famous mathematicians, history of mathematics