Historical Math and Science Blog

 I came across this paper by Leibniz a couple years ago while researching the experiments of Francis Hauksbee for my YouTube series on the Experimental History of Electricity . My Latin wasn't quite good enough to read the paper fluently, so I came back to it now and again to work through it once more, and judge my progress. The last hurdle was translating Leibniz's poem on phosphorus, an excerpt from a longer epicedium  (Latin mourning poem) for Duke Johannus Friderick. You can actually find my questions on both the prose and the poetry on sites like History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange, and the Latin subreddit. I'm very grateful for everyone's help and input. This translation was also notable for being the first where I turned to ChatGPT for helping to understand allusions, parse tricky Latin passages, and review my translations for errors. It rarely provided complete accuracy, but it was enough to get me unstuck, or correct misunderstandings I had. None ...

[Maxwell's] Treatise  was undertaken with the intention of presenting a connected account of the entire known body of electric and magnetic phenomena from the single point of view of Faraday. Thus is contained little or no mention of the hypotheses put forward on the Continent in earlier years by Riemann, Weber, Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, and others. It is by no means clear that the complete abandonment of these older theories was fortunate for the later development of physics. Stratton, preface to Electromagnetic Theory   (1941)  In the 50 odd years between 1820 and 1873, the study of electrodynamics went from a wholly new discovery to a mature and practicable field of work. This sort of development is rare in science - a field born and rapidly developed within two generations. I think perhaps only quantum theory and maybe chemistry have any claim to comparison with the swiftness and significance of this kind of revolution. But the familiar achievements of Maxwell, Gauss, Tho...

Three years ago (almost exactly) I wrote an answer on History of Science and Mathematics StackExchange trying to explain how Roger Cotes came up with the logarithm form of the Euler's formula. It was quite challenging to work through this problem, and it stuck with me for some time afterwards. A few months ago I was let go from my job, and suddenly found myself with enough free time to revisit this problem. The result was a new translation and commentary on the Logometria  of Roger Cotes. While there already exists a published translation by Ronald Gowing (Gowing, Roger Cotes - Natural Philosopher , Cambridge University Press. 1983.), this book is unfortunately a bit difficult to get a hold of, and the commentary is less comprehensive in covering the background to Cotes's work. So drawing on several original sources, I've written what I believe is quite an accurate reflection of the background matter, as well as improved explanations of just what exactly Cotes was talking ...

This is a translation of Gergonne's paper Recherche du cercle qui en touche trois autres sur un plan ; published in the Annales de Mathématiques pures et appliquées , tome VII (1816-1817), no. X, 1er avril 1817; pp. 289-303. ( Link ) In this paper, Gergonne demonstrates the applications of analytical geometry (i.e. coordinate geometry with algebra, the approach promoted originally by Descartes with his  Géométrie ). This approach was criticized for being too cumbersome, being dependent on a particular choice of coordinate system, and so being less general than pure (axiomatic) geometry. To combat this sentiment, Gergonne demonstrates a new solution to Apollonius's problem , derived entirely from algebraic considerations. This was a follow-up to a previous work, Mémoire sur le cercle tangent a trois circles donnés, et sur la sphère tangente a quatre sphères données  published in the  Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Turin , Vol. 22, 1813-1814 (1816), pp. 20-40...

This is a translation into English of Gauss's famous Theoria attractionis corporum sphaeroidicorum ellipticorum homogeneorum methodo novo tractata  published in the  Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis recentiores  in 1813 (Abbreviated variously as  Societ. Reg. Scient. , or Comm. Got. recent. ), a publication of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. It was also published in Werke  vol. V, pp. 1-22. See this link on HathiTrust .  This is a rough draft, it should be accurate but may have typos or awkward wording. I have plenty of notes to share to explain what's going on in more modern language, so I'll update this page as I go. I have typeset the original Latin and the English translation in LaTex, so I'll post the sources as usual.  English LaTex source Latin LaTex source ENGLISH LATIN

I've been experimenting with the practical side of the history of electricity for over a year now. In this post, I'd like to gather some resources and notes for how to best perform the various electrostatics experiments that are rarely described in any detail. This page is a work in progress. References For a look at the history of electricity , there are many treatments. I'd recommend of course looking at my YouTube channel; for authoritative contemporary and modern references see Priestley's History;  the Encyclopedia Britannica , 3rd edition (1797) or other editions for comparison; Heilbron's Elements of Early Modern Physics ; or Park Benjamin's History. Whittaker's History  is most concerned with theory and is not particularly well suited to practical history. For advice on performing electrical experiments , see: Encyclopedia Britannica , 3rd edition (1797). One of the most thorough yet concise contemporary treatments of electricity available, including...