MATHEMATICS: A JEWISH LEGACY
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The influence of Jewish mathematicians on scientific
progress in our world began well before the remarkable
1241 Century achievement of the almost legendary
Abraham ibn Ezra. As early as about 150 C.E., a
Rabbi Nehemiah was believed to have written The
Treatise of Measures, an enduring work whose
mathematical theories and systems helped advance
science through to medieval times.
But it was ibn Ezra to whom a singular honor
goes. He led several other Spanish Jewish colleagues in
bringing Arabic numerals, the decimal system and the use
of the zero (all originating in India) to Christian culture.
That event was a milestone in the history of Western
civilization.
More recently, the mantle of mathematical
distinction has been passed to such greats as Nikolay
Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1792-1856), the Russian-born,
founder of non-Euclidean geometry. He was said to be
the most outstanding mathematician his country ever
produced. And although short-lived, the German
professor Karl Gustav Jacobi (1804-51) proposed a
lifetime of valuable mathematical theories in seven
volumes published by the Prussian Academy of Science.
In addition, the British professor of mathematics James
Joseph Sylvester (1814-97) did brilliant work on the
theory of numbers and created an imaginative and
inventive theory of algebraic forms before his
appointment to Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.
(1876). While here, he effectively spurred higher
mathematics education in colleges and universities, and
both founded and edited the American - Journal of
Mathematics.
Equally notable was F.G.M. Eisenstein (1823-
54) whose work in algebra and in the theory of numbers
was hailed by fellow German Carl Gauss considered by
many as among the greatest modern mathematicians who
ever lived. "He belongs to those talents who are born but
once in a century," Gauss wrote of Eisenstein. What's
more, Albert Einstein owes a debt of gratitude to several
pre-eminent contemporaries: to Russian Hermann
Minkowski (1864-1909) ; his former teacher and
developer of the space-time description he applied to his
theory of relativity, and to Italian Tullio Levi-Civita
(1873-1941) whose tensor analysis was a vital key to
formulating that theory.
Although they may sound abstruse, the
revolutionary theory of sets and concepts of the infinite
advanced by Georg Cantor (1845-1918) brought a new
mode of thinking and reasoning into the discipline. The
leading mathematical philosopher of his day, Bertrand
Russell, wrote of the German professor: "In mathematics,
my chief obligations, as is indeed evident, are to Georg
Cantor..."
-- Saul Stadonauer
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