[ExI] Euler day

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se>
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2013 2:55 AM
> Subject: [ExI] Euler day
 
Spike writes:

>>  I try to imagine what emotions must Euler have felt when he discovered that
>>  e^i*pi = -1.  That must have been such a mind-blowing discovery.  It is
>>  astonishing enough to learn of it today, but what must it have been like to
>>  be the first person to discover it?

Anders writes:
 
> Dunham's book is great fun, because it shows just how wild Euler's 
> approach was. This was no holds barred math, long before boring epsilon-delta 
> formalists made calculus tame and safe. Infinite degree polynomials! Sums of 
> products of sums! Limits nobody would expect to converge!
> 

I concur. I have heard it said that mathematical discoveries are named after the second person to prove them lest almost every theorem be named after Euler. :-)

Stuart LaForge
 
"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." - William Shakespeare