MYSTERIES OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE - HIKARI Ltd
MYSTERIES OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE - HIKARI Ltd
MYSTERIES OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE - HIKARI Ltd
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154 Biographical Vignettes<br />
He discovered that if a triangle is moved so that one vertex moves along a line<br />
while another vertex moves along a second line then the third vertex describes<br />
an ellipse [322, p. 65] and this observation is the basis of a commercial instrument<br />
for drawing an ellipse using trammels [322, p. 66]. He observed that the<br />
angle between an emerging leaf and its predecessor, known as the divergence, is<br />
a constant and thereby explained the resulting logarithmic spiral arrangement<br />
[139, p. 4]. He was also the first to direct attention to “curves of pursuit” [41,<br />
p. 273]. His architectural studies led him to Leonardo’s Symmetry Theorem<br />
which states that all planar isometries are either rotations or reflections [327,<br />
pp. 66, 99]. The remainder of his mathematical discoveries concerned the areas<br />
of lunes, solids of equal volume, reflection in a sphere, inscription of regular<br />
polygons and centers of gravity [56, pp. 43-60]. His greatest contribution to<br />
geometry came in the latter area where he discovered that the lines joining<br />
the vertices of a tetrahedron with the center of gravity of the opposite faces<br />
all pass through a point, the centroid, which divides each of these medians in<br />
the ratio 3 : 1. These diverse and potent mathematical results have certainly<br />
earned Leonardo the title of Mathematician par excellence! He died at the<br />
castle of Cloux in Amboise, France, aged 67.<br />
Vignette 9 (Niccolò Fontana (Tartaglia): 1499-1557).<br />
Niccolò Fontana was a Mathematician, engineer, surveyor and bookkeeper<br />
who was born in Brescia in the Republic of Venice (now Italy) [144]. Brought<br />
up in dire poverty, he became known as Tartaglia (“The Stammerer”) as a<br />
result of horrific facial injuries which impeded his speech that he suffered in<br />
his youth at the hands of French soldiers. He was widely known during his<br />
lifetime for his participation in many public mathematical contests. He became<br />
a teacher of Mathematics at Verona in 1521 and moved to Venice in 1534 where<br />
he stayed for the rest of his life, except for an 18 month hiatus as Professor<br />
at Brescia beginning in 1548. He is best known for his solution to the cubic<br />
equation sans quadratic term (which first appeared in Cardano’s Ars Magna)<br />
but also is known for Tartaglia’s Formula for the volume of a tetrahedron.<br />
His first book, Nuova scienzia (1551), dealt with the theory and practice of<br />
gunnery. His largest work, Trattato generale di numeri e misure (1556), is<br />
a comprehensive mathematical treatise on arithmetic, geometry, mensuration<br />
and algebra as far as quadratic equations. It is here that he treated the “three<br />
jugs problem” described in Recreation 21 of Chapter 4. He also published the<br />
first Italian translation of Euclid (1543) and the earliest Latin version from the<br />
Greek of some of the principal works of Archimedes (1543). He died at Venice,<br />
aged 58.<br />
Vignette 10 (Johannes Kepler: 1571-1630).<br />
Johannes Kepler was born in the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt which<br />
is now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg