This article explores the origins of mathematics in practical problem-solving and its evolution into a powerful tool shaping modern science, particularly physics. It highlights the contributions of mathematicians like William Rowan Hamilton and Bernhard Riemann whose work laid the foundation for groundbreaking theories.
While mathematics may be viewed as an abstract creation, its origins lie in the physical world. The need to count animals and share food supplies led to the development of the concept of numbers.
Having emerged from the need to solve practical problems, mathematics has developed powerful and general methods that serve the needs of the physical sciences. Mathematics now pervades our world: it is central in engineering, technology, communications and, to a growing extent, in medicine and biology. A general understanding of the subject helps us to negotiate the modern world.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity is founded upon Riemannian geometry, developed by Bernhard Riemann around 1850, and greatly extended by Italian mathematicians Ricci and Levi-Civita as tensor calculus. The Hamiltonian plays a central role as an operator acting on the quantum wave function. After French aristocrat and physicist Louis de Broglie suggested that all matter has the properties of waves, Erwin Schrödinger, in a sparkling act of prestidigitation, replaced the variables in Hamilton’s function by operators and derived the famous equation that underlies quantum mechanics.
Mathematics Physics Science History William Rowan Hamilton Quantum Mechanics General Relativity
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