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SNIP For example, vegetarians used to be referred to as Pythagoreans after the ancient Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, who remains well known for his Pythagorean theorem, among other things. But before he was the bane of every high school kid's existence, Pythagoras was considered the "father of vegetarianism," according to the online exhibit "America's Hidden Meals: The History of Vegetarianism in the US." Citing ethical concerns, Pythagoras and his followers didn't eat animals, according to the virtual exhibit. As a result, before his kind was referred to as vegetarians, they were called Pythagoreans. After Pythagoras died in 495 BC, the movement...

A professor of mathematics at Williams College, in a sworn affidavit, flagged nearly 100,000 ballots in Pennsylvania after analyzing election data and phone interviews. Steven Miller, who specializes in analytic number theory and sabermetrics, said that one instance of possible fraud involved potential votes that weren’t counted and another instance involved ballots that may have been requested by a person other than the GOP-registered voter. “I estimate that the number of ballots that were either requested by someone other than the registered Republican or requested and returned but not counted range from 89,397 to 98,801,” Miller said in the sworn...

Israeli mathematician Isaac Ben-IsraelTop Israeli mathematician Isaac Ben-Israel predicted in mid-April (April 15) that the deadly COVID-19 virus peaks after around 40 days independent of the society locking down their economy or not. Via Ned Nikolov. A leading Israeli math Prof. compared the evolution of #COVID19 epidemics in different countries and found that the virus follows the same pattern regardless of the mitigation measurements adopted by Governments, i.e. an economic lockdown has NO effect!https://t.co/Dv2nh9hNv5— Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. (@NikolovScience) April 15, 2020 The Times of Israel reported: A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates...

Voevodsky’s friends remember him as constitutionally unable to compromise on the truth — a quality that led him to produce some of the most important mathematics of the 20th century. Vladimir Voevodsky at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. In math as in life, Vladimir Voevodsky played by his own rules. Voevodsky, a Russian-born mathematical prodigy, produced a string of daring insights in the 1990s that revolutionized one of the central fields of mathematics and established him at the pinnacle of his profession. His work continues to reverberate today. On Sept. 30, Voevodsky died in Princeton, New Jersey, at...

A Japanese mathematician claims to have solved one of the most important problems in his field. The trouble is, hardly anyone can work out whether he's rightSometime on the morning of August 30 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki quietly posted four papers on his website. The papers were huge—more than 500 pages in all—packed densely with symbols, and the culmination of more than a decade of solitary work. They also had the potential to be an academic bombshell. In them, Mochizuki claimed to have solved the abc conjecture, a 27-year-old problem in number theory that no other mathematician had even come...

Mathematician Andrew Hicks was in his Drexel University office, puzzling over some problem he can no longer recall, when colleague Ron Perline walked in with a challenge. Fresh from his morning bicycle ride from Germantown, Perline was unhappy with the rearview mirror mounted on his handlebars. Its tiny surface was curved, reflecting a wide-angle view of the road behind him, but the image was badly distorted. Could math provide the path to better reflection? Perline asked. Indeed it could. Eight years and numerous calculations later, Hicks is now testing a prototype mirror - for a car, not a bike -...

A Mathematician's View of Evolution Granville Sewell Mathematics Dept. University of Texas El Paso The Mathematical Intelligencer 22, no. 4 (2000), pp5-7 Copyright held by Springer Verlag, NY, LLC In 1996, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe published a book entitled "Darwin's Black Box" [Free Press], whose central theme is that every living cell is loaded with features and biochemical processes which are "irreducibly complex"--that is, they require the existence of numerous complex components, each essential for function. Thus, these features and processes cannot be explained by gradual Darwinian improvements, because until all the components are in place, these assemblages are...

Maths genius declines top prize Photos of the reclusive genius are rare Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards. Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain, at a ceremony in Madrid on Tuesday. In 2002, the mathematician claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture. So far, experts working to verify his proof have found no significant flaws. There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would...

Grigory Perelman a no-show for his Fields Medal.Four mathematicians were today due to collect gold medals and glory in Madrid, Spain, having been declared winners of the 2006 Fields Medals — referred to as the 'Nobel prizes' of mathematics. But only three turned up. Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who was widely expected to be one of this year's winners (see 'Maths 'Nobel' rumoured for Russian recluse'), was indeed honoured at the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians. But after a round of applause, president of the International Mathematical Union John Ball said "I regret that Dr...

Saunders Mac Lane, one of the country's leading mathematicians and a professor at the University of Chicago for nearly four decades, has died. He was 95. He died April 14 in San Francisco after a long illness, according to a statement released Thursday by the university. In a landmark paper he co-authored with Samuel Eilenberg in 1945, Mac Lane developed new ways of thinking about mathematics _ introducing what are known as "categories," "functors" and "natural transformations," the statement said. "A very great deal of mathematics since then would quite literally have been unthinkable without that language," University of Chicago...