Magnificent mathematics as a sum of global mathematical efforts
By: Ishfaq Ahmad Chopan
Mathematics is something which not only has the highest relevance to our day to day life but influences all businesses and interferes every aspect of our universe in one or the other way.
For an ordinary man, it is counting, measurement architecture and the knowledge guiding an individual as how to logically perform a given set of tasks/jobs in a way that we have maximum profit from minimum resources or efforts in shorter or optimum period of time. In the larger context, we observe that mathematics has influenced every sphere of our modern world whether it may be our management, production, statistics, Engineering, Mechanics, Dynamics, Astronomy, Computer science, Economics, Medical Science, Thermodynamics and much more.
Of course Mathematics has no prescribed language but I believe a beautiful part of mathematics is its language which is rather its algorithmic form of solving the problems in a specific pattern using the available data, relationships and formulas. In fact mathematics is something that ensures that problems can be solved.
As far as the evolution of mathematics is concerned we can find use of arithmetic, algebra, geometry in as early as 3000 BC by Babylonians and Egyptians for the calculations and astronomy. But one can unequivocally suppose that mathematics has influenced our universe from its origin because mathematics is counting, logic, craft, sketch, art and architecture and human race could have never survived without all this.
It is very much present in our lives and some of the techniques used by common men in architecture, graphics, scaling, finance and management are vividly visible.
When we celebrate mathematics as a knowledge resource which has got a very great depth and superb history of development and large application field, then how can we underestimate the role of the legendary mathematicians like Archimedes, Euclid, Aryabhatta, Al-khwarzmi, Fredrich Gauss , Issac Newton, Leibniz, Neils Abel, Rene Desserts, Euler, Ramanujan, pascal and many more who sacrificed their lives for the development of mathematics.
These mathematicians have been the extraordinarily geniuses in various mathematical, scientific and philosophical fields who used their capabilities in solving and explaining various problems to mankind and explored new chapters of knowledge and learning. Development of mathematics is rather a chain of efforts by mathematicians across the globe.
We have a list of ancient and Modern mathematicians from India, France, Arabia, Greece, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and other parts of world.
The history records about the death of ancient great Greek mathematician Archimedes who was attacked by a Roman soldier when he was busy with certain designs on sand and he was so engrossed in his work that he had nothing to say to his attacker than to warn him against ‘disturbing circles’.
Talking about 19th century Norwegian Mathematician Neils Abel who died just at the age of 26 due to TB in poverty. His contributions were such that another French mathematician Charles Hermite proposes that “Abel has left enough work to keep the mathematicians busy for five hundred years”. That is how Norway today provides a famous prize named Abel prize in the memory of Neils Abel for some outstanding work in the field of mathematics.
The 18th century great Swiss mathematician who is regarded as one of the most prolific mathematician in history named Euler who solved the historically notable Konigsberg bridge problem which latter laid the foundation of a new mathematical field called “graph theory” and also introduced an amazing and a very compact identity called ‘Euler identity’ involving five core mathematical constants. A relationship what another physicist Richard Feymann calls ‘the most remarkable formula ever developed’. Even though after turning completely blind at the age of 60, he still published over 400 mathematical papers. His prolific publications continuously were published for almost 30 years after his death due to the huge quantity of work he had produced. In fact his contribution to mathematics is unparalleled.
How can we underestimate the independent development of modern calculus by sir Issac Newton and Leibniz in England and Germany which revolutionized mathematical world. It is today that our architecture, Astronomy, Thermodynamics, Economics, demography, Computer science etc largely depending on calculus.
The subject has got a magnificent history and a decent application part for various social and practical orientated subjects and problems. But it is mandatory that proper teaching and learning of this subject at various levels is ensured and more and more mathematical exposure is guaranteed.
Writer is a columnist and currently pursuing Msc mathematics from Central University of Kashmir. ([email protected])
