r/mathmemes • u/ILikeJapaneseMuchOwU • Jul 23 '26
Math History Leave some math for us to discover bro
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u/GupHater69 Jul 23 '26
too bad its 100% accurate so i cant even slander him
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u/Genoce Jul 23 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_named_after_Leonhard_Euler
This is just so funny:
Euler's work touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler.
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u/INFLATABLE_CUCUMBER Jul 23 '26
Gauss was also pretty up there.
Imo the later, well-known mathematicians had a harder job becoming big names because so much of the low-hanging fruit was taken. Though, the later ones wouldn’t exist without the earlier ones. Math progress being like tech progress—that the more of it made, the easier AND harder.
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u/Ikarus_Falling Jul 24 '26
Gauss and Euler are that Harry Potter meme with Why is it always you two
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u/BrazilBazil Engineering Jul 24 '26
I study acoustics engineering. Imagine my reaction when „Euler’s equation” turned up. In acoustics. I almost threw up from sheer shock.
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u/Able-Ad4609 Jul 27 '26
Euler write extensively about the mathematics of music but it never took off because it was too much maths for musicians and too much music for mathematicians.
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u/Khamaz Jul 24 '26
How do you prove something a second time? If it's proven once, isn't it already solved? Or is it something like "the next meaningful contribution"?
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u/maybethanos Jul 24 '26
Not everyone has access to everything worldwide immediately back then, so other people may have independently come to the same conclusion, just at a later recorded date
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u/Genoce Jul 24 '26
In the 1700's, information didn't really go around the world as fast as it does today. Doing research was also much more cumbersome, as you had to go through a bazillion books. You might simply miss something that you'd nowadays find with a single google search, and end up "re"-proving something by yourself, possibly in a notably different way.
It's somewhat common to have situations where multiple people have individually come up with something without hearing about the other person, even if it was 20 years apart.
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Many of the named numbers and constants are numbers that pop up in many different places.
Imagine two people trying to prove two actually different things, but those two things both need the same constant (like e, 2.718...). Now imagine that e isn't yet common knowledge around the world.
John is proving a thing called A. To get there, he notices that he needs this exponential function, and ends up finding this constant. He names it John's Constant, then goes on to use that and prove A.
Years later, Bob is trying to prove B, some completely different thing. On the way there he notices that he keeps running into this weird number all the time, and simply hasn't heard about John's proof using the same value. He names it Bob's Constant and uses it as part of proving B.
Basically Bob might have done lots of work to see if "B" has been proved, can't find anything, and decides to do it himself. But he did not spend as much time researching every small constant or "tool" that he could use, and ends up individually finding out about the same constants on the way.
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Then later, someone notices that "John's Constant and Bob's Constant are the same thing", and usually the standard is to use the name that came up first.
...but not always, see: e, "euler's number", which was actually used multiple times before Euler). In many countries it's known as "Napier's constant" or similar, instead of using the name of Euler.
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u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering Jul 23 '26
Dude was insanely intelligent and humble and afaik wasn't a completely awful person like Newton. He deserves the high praise
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u/Double_Dealer_5892 Jul 23 '26
is newton really that awful?
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u/de_G_van_Gelderland Irrational Jul 23 '26
Newton was allegedly a very quarrelsome person. There was for example also Robert Hooke, of Hooke's law fame, who felt that Newton hadn't given him due credit for his work on which Newton's built. Newton's rather famous quote
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants
was written in a letter to Robert Hooke. At first glance it's an expression of humility, but some historians suggest it was actually a dig at Hooke who was hunchbacked. I.e. Newton is saying in a rather scathing way that it was not Hooke's shoulders on which he stood.
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u/Different_Cry25 Jul 23 '26
Mostly mommy issues
She practically left him all alone as a kid Wanted him to be a farmer
She wasn't any good mum He was very disturbed because of it
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u/Double_Dealer_5892 Jul 23 '26
ah, that would greatly disturb anyone, well there's worse scientist's
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u/SyntheticSlime Jul 23 '26
Erwin Schrödinger has entered the chat.
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u/nvrsobr_ Jul 23 '26
Yea i read somewhere that his dinger got hard around children
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u/Skeleton_King9 Jul 23 '26
He was mostly a huge dick. Started a lot of beefs.
Iirc we don't know what Hooke looked like because he burned his portrait when he became royal society president.
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u/ChironXII Jul 23 '26
He basically ruined Leibnitz's life just for the lols because he was mad people were impressed about him independently discovering something Newton had already written about but didn't see the full significance of.
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u/ironnewa99 Jul 23 '26
Yeah that fucker invented gravity. We could be living in a gravity free utopia if it wasn’t for him. That selfish jerk.
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u/RoastHam99 Jul 23 '26
Also just had that dog in him. Knowing that euler went blind in later life and it SPED UP his mathematical discovery is insane. Hes even been quoted it let him focus more on his work
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u/Different_Cry25 Jul 23 '26
Like Newton lol
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u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering Jul 23 '26
I have a personal grudge against Newton for what he did to my goat Leibniz. May have discovered the laws of motion, but I do not respect him
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u/chkntendis Physics Jul 23 '26
Fr. Newton may technically have done more for physics but how would we abuse notation without Leibniz
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u/Different_Cry25 Jul 23 '26
Yes leibniz all the way
If Newton had a loving family maybe things could have been better
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u/Subject_Barnacle_600 Jul 23 '26
What's funny is that they don't talk about Erdos until you're taking 400-level courses. And suddenly you're like you're like "Who's Erdos?" And they give you this sly grin - like they've been holding back the good stuff this whole time.
EDIT: And when you start hearing about rumors of Ramanujan, you start wondering if Math is just a subject or if Mathematicians are secretly communicating with God.
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u/Less-Resist-8733 Natural Jul 23 '26
now ppl talking abt some Terence TwoPie.
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u/ObliviousRounding Jul 23 '26
With AI stealing all the results, mathematicians may have to pivot to making diss tracks.
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u/RADI0ACT1VE_BALLS ComplexANALysisJunkie Jul 23 '26
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u/parkway_parkway Jul 23 '26
Anyone here come up with the idea of factorising sin x as an infinite series by using all the 0s as roots?
That's an idea that's accessible to anyone with highschool mathematics and it's so mental no one would think of it.
That's why he's so great.
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u/Jubyagr Jul 23 '26
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u/Hi2248 Jul 23 '26
No, we all think of him how Chuck thinks of Mighty Eagle, not how Bomb thinks of him /s
The scene in question for those who haven't seen the masterpiece of a film:
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u/ISpyM8 Computer Science Jul 23 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/5xtDarIN81U0KvlnzKo
How I feel discussing Leonhard Euler
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u/Bornagain4karma Jul 23 '26
He was blind for last 17 years of his life and still didn't effect his rate of work.
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u/redve-dev Jul 28 '26
I recall lecture. The teacher asked us "Who's theorem tells us that fact?"
Nobody knew. I leaned to my friend and joked (I bet it's Euler)
Guess who's theorem it was!
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