"It has the very commendable aim of contributing towards stressing the cultural side of mathematics. ...there appears the widespread interchange of the definitions of excessive and defective numbers. ...it is stated that Euclid contended that every perfect number is of the form 2n-1(2n -1). It is true that Euclid proved that such numbers are perfect whenever 2n - 1 is a prime number but there seems to be no evidence to support the statement that he contended that no other such numbers exist. ...it is stated that the arithmetization of mathematics began with Weierstrass in the sixties of the last century. The fact that this movement is much older was recently emphasized by H. Wieleitner... it is stated that the arithmos of Diophantus and the res of Fibonacci meant whole numbers, and... we find the statement that in the pre-Vieta period they were committed to natural numbers as the exclusive field for all arithmetic operations. On the contrary, operations with common fractions appear on some of the most ancient mathematical records."
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Academics from the United StatesMathematicians from the United StatesNon-fiction authorsPeople from LatviaHistorians of mathematics
Original Language: English
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G. A. Miller, Review of Number: The Language of Science (1931) Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 37, Number 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tobias_Dantzig
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Tobias Dantzig
Tobias Dantzig (February 19, 1884 – August 9, 1956) was a mathematician of Baltic German and Russian American heritage. His son, George Dantzig, is a key figure in the development of linear programming.
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