On Robin J.Wilsons' book: "Stamping through Mathematics"
In July 2001 a long awaited book on mathematical stamps appeared. On page iii there is a stamp of Ernest Rutherford [see the bottom of this page] with a nice quote underneath:"All science is either physics or stamp collecting". The author is Robin Wilson, the Stamp Corner editor of the Mathematical Intelligencer and, by the way, the son of Harold Wilson, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom. It is aimed at a large audience extending far beyond the mathematical (or philatelic) communities. All teachers who like to illustrate the influence of mathematical ideas and applications throughout history, in a visually attractive way, should consider buying this book, or, as I did, ask for it as a birthday present. Here are a few specimens adapted to my personal taste and the contents of my private stamp collection.
William Caxton's: "The Game and Playe of Chesse"
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The English merchant William Caxton learned the printing trade in Cologne and Bruges and installed the first printing press on British soil in 1476, near Westminster Abbey. He translated, into English, the 1473 printed Latin edition of the popular (though moralizing) chess treatise: "De moribus hominum et de officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum", by the Dominican monk Jacobus de Cessolis from Rheims.On the personal side, with my friends and classmates Gerrit-Jan Hoevers and Harry Bunt we made up half the school-team of the Thorbecke Lyceum in Utrecht, which reached the Dutch secondary school chess championship final, but lost it 2.5 to 3.5. The next year we started our mathematics and physics studies at Utrecht University.
Maps and Globes
Gerard de Cremere (1512-1594), well-known by his latinized name Mercator, was not only a map and globe maker, but a distinguished philosopher, mathematician and technician as well. Not far from Rupelmonde [his place of birth near Antwerp] the hogeschool of Ghent has a campus named after him, while in Duisburg, the town he found refuge in before the inquisition, the university bears his name.
Gerardus Mercator
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Johannes Praetorius was Professor of Mathematics at the Leucorea zu Wittenberg
joined in 1816 with the university of Halle, whose most famous mathematician is Russian-born Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory. His 1883 device reads: "The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom".
Feel free to replace the word "mathematics" to one of your own choice.
Benjamin Franklin,
one of the founding fathers of the USA and usually known for his work in electrostatics and his lightning experiments,
did some work in pure mathematics as well. But he himself wouldn't have called it work.
For an interesting historical account on his magic squares and circle, you may wish to
read Paul Pasles' recent paper in the
American Mathematical Monthly:
"The lost squares of Dr.Franklin: Ben Franklin's missing squares and the secret of the magic circle",
Amer.Math.Monthly, 108, June-July 2001.
Franklin & Jefferson
[try a mouse move over their stamps]
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Abraham Hortels [or Ortels], from Antwerp, better known as Ortelius, was the first map maker to compile a modern atlas, the famous "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum" from 1570, to be superseded, some thirty years later by Mercator's three-volume set. The next century would see the light of the famous Blaeu printing company in Amsterdam under Willem Janszoon [who started his career as an instrument and globe maker] and his sons Cornelis and Joan[Willem's stamp links to a site devoted to the twelve volume French edition of Joan's "Atlas Major" from 1667]. Finally, the bookkeeper, mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin, from Bruges, popularized the decimal system in the low countries through his book: "De Thiende, leerende door ongehoorde lichticheyt allen rekeningen afveerdighen door heele ghetalen sonder ghebrokenen ". He added several new words to the Dutch language, such as: "Wiskunde" for "Mathematics", "Meetkunde" for "Geometry" and now obsolete, but still in use when I was at school, "Stelkunde" for "Algebra". Later he became the main scientific advisor and military engineer of Maurice of Orange [during the eighty years war of Dutch independance from Spain].
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Around 1590 Willem Blaeu worked as a laboratory assistent of Tycho Brahe
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map of Twente
from our library facsimile copy of Johan Bleau's 1663 grand atlas |
