Historical Math and Science Blog

 Because I am myself a student of Latin, I've found it helpful to make a lot of learning resources. It would be silly to keep it all to myself, so here I will share some bilingual versions of Euler's writing that I've been working on. They're nothing much, just the first few pages of three papers, with some vocab lists, but it should be a start for anyone interested in mathematical Latin in the 18th century.  E532 De Serie Lambertina Vocabulary/Dictionary is available here  (.odt format) Bilingual translation (my own translation) is available here E43 De Progressionibus Harmonicis Observationes Vocabulary/Dictionary is available here (.odt format) Bilingual translation (Alexander Aycock) is available here E25 De Summatione Innumerabilium Progressionum Bilingual translation (Ian Bruce) is available here  (Note: I left in some plain text at the end by accident) The dictionaries were created automatically from my PYWORDS program, generated as Markdown, which was then c...

It's really satisfying to be able to read the original, handwritten, disorganized notes of old mathematicians and scientists. Finding such handwritten material is difficult: it's often only available for in-person examination in libraries, and unless you're willing to travel to make some scans of the works, you'll be in a tough spot. Even still, there's a reasonable amount of material that has  been scanned, and I recommend seeking out such samples. The main purpose of this article, however, is to provide resources for actually reading old handwriting, from the 1800s back to the medieval period. And of course, I'll be focusing on everyday handwriting, and at least that used for correspondence, notes, and manuscripts.  My intention here is to emphasize points that may be unfamiliar when reading old handwriting, mostly in English, and not  to provide a historical account of handwriting.  Working Backwards: Familiar Handwriting and Penmanship Today's handwritin...

 Today while I was looking at a translation of the mammoth Mécanique céleste  of Laplace, I found a biography of the man who made the translation, Nathaniel Bowditch. This was exciting, because I was dying to know what kind of person not only translates thousands of pages of dense, mathematical and physical French, but provides detailed notes explaining reasoning throughout. It's easy to wonder, how could anyone  achieve something like that? What kind of time and dedication would be required?  The life of Bowditch is summarized neatly on Wikipedia , and much more detail is given in the introduction to Volume 4 of his translation of the Mécanique Céleste. I highly recommend learning more about him, for he is one of the most interesting people I've ever stumbled upon.