A voyage to Vardø - A scientific account of an unscientific expedition

After the “Venus Transit Conference” that took place at the University of Tromsø from June 2 to June 3, 2012, participants were given the opportunity to either stay in Tromsø until the night of June 5–6, or to participate in a voyage to Finnmark, where the historical sites Vardø, Hammerfest, and the North Cape were to be visited. This voyage culminated in the observation of the 2012 transit of Venus at Vardø. This paper gives a detailed account of this voyage that lasted from June 3 to June 6, and emphasizes the historical, scientific, philosophical, educational and cultural involvement of the participants of the voyage and of the local population. The paper concludes with reflections on th…

On the Life of Galileo : Viviani’s Historical Account and Other Early Biographies Edited by Stefano Gattei

The equations: Icons of knowledge

Mathematical monuments in Finland

With “mathematical monuments” we mean either monuments for famous mathematicians and their achievements or works of art representing mathematical objects in public places. We present a panoply of such monuments in Finland for the purposes of the mathematical tourist visiting our country. As we are interested in symbolic representations of science, we take a broad view of the notion of “monument” and take into account also some minor artefacts, such as portraits, medals and stamps, and other semiotic signs, such as street names and commemorative plates, illustrating some highlights of the history of mathematics in Finland. Peer reviewed

The heavenly spheres regained

The first bourbaki autograph?

Collected works, volume 6

Cinq siècles de mathématiques en France

Quasisymmetric maps and string theory

Mathematical Constants I & II

Quasidisks and string theory

Abstract A heuristic model of non-perturbative bosonic string theory on the Bers universal Teichmuller space of normalized quasidisks is discussed. It is suggested that the infinite-dimensional analogue of the Polyakov energy might be the quasidisk area.

A short proof of a theorem of Ahlfors

In [1] Ahlfors proved that the Weil-Petersson metric of the Teichmfiller space is K~hler. A new proof was given by Fischer and Tromba [5] in a purely Riemannian setting of Teichmfiller theory [3]. We shall provide yet another proof that slightly shortens the argument of Fischer and Tromba. We begin with a brief review of the Fischer-Tromba approach to Teichmiiller theory [3-5]. Let M be a compact connected oriented 2-dimensional manifold without boundary.

Bourbaki. Une société secrète des mathématiciens

The amateur astronomer Anders Hellant and the plight of his observations of the transits of Venus in Tornio, 1761 and 1769

Anders Hellant was a versatile Swedish amateur scientist whose figure dominated eighteenth century intellectual life in Tornio, his little home town of some 500 inhabitants at the mouth of the Tornio river. My study is mainly based on the biographies published in Finnish (Bostr¨om 1918) and in Swedish (Tob´e 1991) but I have also consulted some original sources in Paris and in Stockholm. Hellant incarnated almost all by himself the inquiring scientific spirit of the Age of Enlightenment in Swedish Lapland. There is much to be said about his life and works, but here I focus on his observations of the Venus passages in 1761 and 1769. peerReviewed

Gerbert of aurillac: mathematician and pope

The Einstein field equation in a multidimensional universe

String theory [4] predicts that the universe has 10 or 26 dimensions. A salient problem is how the Einstein field equation should be written in terms of these revivified Kaluza-Klein cosmologies. The answer is by now well-known, yet nobody seems to have rewritten the seminal computation in [6] where an unnecessarily involved Euler-Lagrange variational method is employed and, curiously enough, no allusion to the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern theorem is made. We provide a more straightforward argument, which has been inspired by Hilbert's original derivation of the Einstein field equation [5].

My Life in the Shape of Maupertuis

The author recalls his learning process which led to the writing of a prize-winning doctoral thesis on abbe Reginald Outhier, a co-traveller of the mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis who was in Lapland in 1736–1737 measuring the shape of the Earth. He also recalls how he came to write many other books on Maupertuis and interpret his role as an actor both on screen and stage.

Miten syntyy luottamus, kun kulttuurit kohtaavat? : Liisa Salo-Lee ja ja Osmo Pekonen keskustelivat

Agora Centerissä on parhaillaan käynnissä luottamus-aiheinen monitieteinen tutkimushanke. Tutkimusverkostoon kuuluu tietotekniikan asiantuntijoita, psykologeja, sosiologeja ja yksi teologi. Keskeinen asema on viestintätieteellä, erityisesti kulttuurienvälisellä viestinnällä.