Christian Mathematician

Christian Mathematicians – Riemann

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By Steve Bishop

(Disclaimer: The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of GodandMath.com. Guest articles are sought after for the purpose of bringing more diverse viewpoints to the topics of mathematics and theology. The point is to foster discussion. To this end respectful and constructive comments are highly encouraged.)

Bernhard Riemann 1826-1866

 George Fredrick Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) was on born 17th September 1826 at Breselenz in Hanover. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor. Bruce White comments:

During his life, [Riemann] held closely to his Christian faith and considered it to be the most important aspect of his life. At the time of his death, he was reciting the Lord’s Prayer with his wife and passed away before they finished saying the prayer.

Riemann influenced the development of geometry, complex analysis, partial differential equations as well as Einstein who developed his idea of general relativity from Riemann’s geometry. As Hawking (2005, p. xi) puts it: “Albert Einstein could not have completed his general theory of relativity had it not been for the geometric ideas of Bernhard Riemann.”

One biographer commented that Riemann served Christ outside the pulpit as his father had served Christ in the pulpit.

He is perhaps most ‘famous’ for the Riemann Hypothesis – which states: “All non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one half.” John Derbyshire (Prime Obsession, John Henry Press, 2003) describes it as the “great white whale of mathematical research” (p. x) . There is even a prize of one million dollars for a proof or disproof of it.

Cauchy-Riemann equations, Riemann surfaces and the Riemann mapping theorem are all named after him. He also gave his name to the following:

  • bilinear relations
  • conditions
  • form
  • function
  • integral
  • invariant
  • matrix
  • problem
  • sphere
  • zeta function
  • and a lunar crater (although he doesn’t appear to have been celebrated on a postage stamp!)

He died aged 40 after a long bout of pleurisy at Selasca Italy. Kneller (1911) writes:

Riemann’s metaphysical ideas, derived in part from Th. Fechner, are often bold even to singularity, and by times are merely fantastic, but they detract in no way from his religious fervour. His death, as related in the biographical sketch prefixed to his collected works, gives sufficient token of this.

References

Derbyshire, John (2003) Prime Obsession, John Henry Press

Hawking, Stephen ed. (2005) God Created the Integers Persus Books.

Kneller SJ, Karl Alois (1911) Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Nineteenth Century London: B. Herder.

White, Bruce (nd) ‘Bernhard Riemann’

 http://www.math.twsu.edu/history/Men/riemann.html

 Further resources

Mathematical papers of Riemann, mostly in German, can be found here http://www.emis.de/classics/Riemann/ and here http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Riemann/Papers.html

Riemann, Bernhard (2004), Collected Papers, Kendrick Press

Steve Bishop is the compiler of A Bibliography for a Christian Approach to Mathematics and the author of several articles on the relationship between faith and math. Look for future posts from him in this series on Christian Mathematicians.

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Christian Mathematicians – Cauchy

joshwilkerson7 Comments

By Steve Bishop

(Disclaimer: The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of GodandMath.com. Guest articles are sought after for the purpose of bringing more diverse viewpoints to the topics of mathematics and theology. The point is to foster discussion. To this end respectful and constructive comments are highly encouraged.)

 Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857)

“The life of Augustin Cauchy … offers a perfect model of Christian virtue, as well as of supreme intellectual activity.  He was one of the most eminent mathematicians that France has produced, and his nobility of character was not less remarkable than his genius for mathematics,” wrote the French physicist Jean Baptiste Biot (1774-1862) cited in Kneller (1911, p. 57).

Cauchy declared: “I am a Christian, that is to say, I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ …” Kneller (1911, p. 43).

Augustin Louis Cauchy was born in Paris in 1789 during the French Revolution. His family moved for safety to Arcueil. He was a sickly child and suffered from malnourishment. In Aucueil he met Laplace and Lagrange. On the family’s return to Paris he enrolled as a student at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he studied engineering.

From 1810 he served as an engineer in Napoleon’s army. He had to give up this role due to ill health and sought an academic job, without success, in Paris. In 1816 he became professor of the Ecole Polythechnique and was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. At the Ecole Polytechnique he attempted to reform the mathematics syllabus.

In 1825 he set up his own mathematical journal Exercises des Mathematiques.

As an ardent Catholic and royalist, Charles X’s abdication in 1830 meant Cauchy lost his prestigious positions and following a self-imposed exile he took up a professorship in Turin. He later tutored Charles X’s son in Prague.

In 1838 he was able to return once again to France and to the Ecole Polytechnique. He then took up a position in 1848 at the Sorbonne. He died in 1857 from a fever.

Cauchy had a powerful influence over the development of complex analysis. Ioan James describes him as “the greatest French mathematician of his time.” (James, 2002, p. 81)

There are a number of mathematical ideas named after him including: The Cauchy-Riemann equations, Cauchy integral theorem, Cauchy integral formula, determinant, distribution, horizon, problem, product, sequence, surface, and at least two theorems.

References

Kneller SJ, Karl Alois. 1911. Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Nineteenth Century London: B. Herder.

James, Ioan. 2002. Remarkable Mathematicians: From Euler to von Neumann. Cambridge University Press, 2002

Biographies

Belhoste, Bruno. 1991. Augustin-Louis Cauchy: A Biography. New York: Springer.

Steve Bishop is the compiler of A Bibliography for a Christian Approach to Mathematics and the author of several articles on the relationship between faith and math. Look for future posts from him in this series on Christian Mathematicians.

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Christian Mathematicians – Babbage

joshwilkerson8 Comments

By Steve Bishop

(Disclaimer: The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect those of GodandMath.com. Guest articles are sought after for the purpose of bringing more diverse viewpoints to the topics of mathematics and theology. The point is to foster discussion. To this end respectful and constructive comments are highly encouraged.)

Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Charles Babbage was the son of Benjamin and Betsy Plumleigh Babbage. He was born in London. But soon moved to South West England. His father was warden of a church in Teignmouth, Devon. His grandfather was the major of Totnes, Devon. They were a rich family and so Charles was educated at top schools. He was a sickly boy and this interrupted some of his schooling. At one small private school he taught himself mathematics from books in the large school library.

In 1810 he went to study at Trinity College Cambridge, where he, Herschel and others formed the Analytical Society. Babbage later transferred to Peterhouse College, Cambridge.

When he got married to Georgina Whitmore in 1814 at Teignmouth, Babbage contemplated ‘going into the Church’. He didn’t because, as he wrote to Hershel: ‘this will not accord sufficient propriety (for a curacy is all I should get).’!

Babbage is best known for his calculating machines; the difference machine and the analytical machine. These machines paved the way for modern computing.

Babbage’s analytical machine – completed after Babbage’s death.

Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837), wrote:

“The object of these pages … is to show that the power and knowledge of the great Creator of matter and mind are unlimited.”

In it he describes God as a great programmer.

On miracles, he wrote (1837):

“The object of the present chapter [VIII Argument from laws intermitting on the nature of miracles] is to show that miracles are not deviations from laws assigned by the Almighty for the government of matter and mind; but that they are the exact fulfillment of much more extensive laws than those we suppose to exist.”

He draws parallels with the operation of his calculating machine and suggests that

“… these speculations have led to a more exalted view of the great Author of the universe than we have yet possessed.”

Babbage also created a table of logarithms, contributed to cryptology. Invented the cow catcher – a frame to clear the railway tracks in front of trains – and was the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University from 1828-1839. He helped found the Astronomical Society and the Statistical Society.

He died in London aged 79 on 18th October 1871. He is buried in Kelsal Green cemetery, London.

He was celebrated on a British first class stamp, to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society

Selected publications

A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives (1826)

Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108, 000 (1827)

Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830)

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832)

Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837) http://www.archive.org/stream/ninthbridgewate00babbgoog#page/n11/mode/2up

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Bibliography

Hyman, Anthony. 1982. Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer. Princeton/ Oxford University Press.

Weblinks

http://history-computer.com/Babbage/Babbage.html

http://www.charlesbabbage.net/

Obituary http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Obits/Babbage.html

A project to build Babbage’s analytical machine http://plan28.org/

Steve Bishop is the compiler of A Bibliography for a Christian Approach to Mathematics and the author of several articles on the relationship between faith and math. Look for future posts from him in this series on Christian Mathematicians.

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