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Huh? A Model of Space, Infinity and Flow |
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Working Draft Copyright (c) 2005 - 2007 Jim Imboden |
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Chapter 13 History of the Formula
"History as a
discipline can be characterized as having a collective
forgetfulness about women."
I am not a historian and in school I only did enough to get by, but when I started reading the history of Maria Agnesi (pronounced on-yA-zee) I started to realize some of the treasures of the past. Maria Agnesi was a child prodigy who at the age of nine wrote a letter to the Pope trying to persuade him that women should have the save opportunity for a higher education as men. (In her time women were not allowed to attend college). At 20 years of age she started writing Instituzioni analitiche a book on mathematics and calculus to help teach her younger brother. The book was published and considered by many of her contemporaries to be the most comprehensive textbooks on calculus of that time.
Two people before her studied the curve:
· Pierre Fermat; many references to the curve will mention him but not much detail is given
· Guido Grande; he studied the curve and gave it the name "versiera", in Italian meaning the rope that turns the sail. Translated to Latin is “versoria”
Figure 13-1 is a timeline for the period which all three lived. You can click on each persons picture for more history on that person.
Figure 13-1
I think Guido Grande could see that something strange was happening when you took the curves calculations to extreme values and that he could see the tail of the curve snap from one extreme to the other. If you have ever been sailing you can understand why he called the curve "versiera; the rope that turns the sail".
Maria Agnesi kept the name Guido Grande called the curve “versiera” in her book Instituzioni analitiche, but John Colson made an error in the translation of Maria Agnei’s book calling it avversiera, meaning “witch” or wife of the devil.
Maria Agnesi’s contribution was a way to think about the curve or model. This curve with very strange properties now had a visual aspect to it. See Figure 13-2
Figure 13-2 There is a website dedicated to Maria Agnesi was and what she accomplished: http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sgray/Agnesi/
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