Missives impossible

• Autores: Stephen Ornes
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3157-3158, 2017, págs. 76-77
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Monday morning seemed a good time to upend the history of science. And Michel Chasles was poised to do it, armed with just two letters and four notes. It was July 1867, and Chasles, a mathematician at the Sorbonne, stood before the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. The documents threatened to dethrone Isaac Newton as the originator of the law of universal gravitation and install French mathematician Blaise Pascal in his stead. Chasles was a pre-eminent scholar. He had hammered out new geometry, won international awards and was a beloved geometer of genius. Chasles's supporters, typically lesser members of the academy, praised the sheer detail in the letters. Historians noted that the paper was aged and the ink chemistry consistent with the epoch. The academy published the text of the letters in its weekly proceedings. Italian historians jumped into the fray, noting a complete lack of other evidence that Galileo even knew French. In fact, all the letters Chasles presented were in French--a fact that didn't dissuade him or his supporters.