Yes, Euler lives on, even beyond his likeness on the Swiss ten franc note ... Mira's writing a report for her 7th grade math class on the great man and his achievements. For some reason, "Euler's e" is one of the disconnected bits of St John's knowledge that lingers stubbornly in my brain pan -- enigmatic, portentous, threatening to slip off into oblivion but somehow tenaciously hanging on -- Why?
Any stories, gags, riddles, insights, explanations concerning Mr Euler and his e are most welcome. Paper's due next week.
1 comment:
This is totally a question for Firestone. (Come home Papa! It seems like a long time since you've been gone!)
I was at my sister's for Passover seder with three engineers, one of whom was a math major, a schoolteacher and two of us Auerbachs (and we are a notorious race of know-it-alls) and yet was not able to come up with a single Euler story! The e that's named after him is a transcendental number like pi that has something to do with exponents and powers and that trigonometric stuff that falls between my forgotten high school math and my forgotten St. John's mathematics minor.
A quick search on the web revealed that he published more papers than anyone, like, ever, that he slowly lost his vision but that he was, blind or sighted, able to perform legnthy complex calculations in his head. I think the thing most worth knowing is that he was Swiss and, like Bircher-Muesli or Vita Murfen, the best of his kind.
Post a Comment