Simon Stevin

Simon Stevin (1548/49 – 1620) was a Flemish mathematician and engineer. He was active in a great many areas of science, both theoretical and practical, but may be best known for his translation of various mathematical terms into common Dutch language, making it the only European language in which the word for mathematics ('wiskunde') was not derived from the Greek (via Latin). Portrait by an unknown artist, library of University of Leiden. ... Portrait by an unknown artist, library of University of Leiden. ... Events Mary I of Scotland sent to France Births September 2 - Vincenzo Scamozzi, Italian architect (died 1616) September 29 - William V, Duke of Bavaria (died 1626) Francesco Andreini, Italian actor (died 1624) Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher, astronomer, and occultist (burned at the stake) 1600 (died 1600) Honda Tadakatsu, Japanese general... Events July - Ketts Rebellion Francis Xavier arrives in Japan. ... Events September 6 - English emigrants on the Mayflower depart from Plymouth, England for the future New England and arrive at the end of the year. ... Flemish (in Dutch, Vlaams) can either refer to Anything belonging to Flanders (the Flemish nation) or to its inhabitants, the Flemings. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Look up engineer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Dutch ( (help· info)), sometimes referred to as Netherlandic in English, is a Low Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium. ... Mathematics is often defined as the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

Biography

Stevin was born in Bruges, Flanders (now Belgium). Of the circumstances of his life very little is recorded; the exact day of his birth and the day and place of his death (The Hague or Leiden) are alike uncertain. It is known that he left a widow with two children; and one or two hints scattered throughout his works inform us that he began life as a merchant's clerk in Antwerp, that he travelled in Poland, Denmark and other parts of northern Europe, and that he was intimate with Prince Maurice of Nassau, who asked his advice on many occasions, and made him a public officer—at first director of the so-called "waterstaet" (the government for water affairs), and afterwards quartermaster-general. Sometimes referred to as the Venice of the North, Bruges has many waterways that run through the city. ... Arms of The Hague The Hague (with capital T; Dutch: officially s-Gravenhage, commonly Den Haag) is the third-largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 472,087 (January 1, 2005) (700,000 in the larger metropolitan area) and an area of approximately 100... Leyden redirects here. ... The Cathedral of our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp) in the Handschoenmarkt, in the old quarter of Antwerp is the largest cathedral in the Low Countries and home to a number of triptychs by Renaissance Belgian painter Rubens. ... Maurice of Nassau (in Dutch Maurits van Nassau) (14 November 1567–23 April 1625), Prince of Orange (1618–1625), son of William the Silent and Princess Anna of Saxony, was born at the castle of Dillenburg. ...

In Bruges there is a Simon Stevin Square which contains his statue by Eugen Simonis.

Discoveries and inventions

His claims to fame are varied. His contemporaries were most struck by his invention of a so-called land yacht, a carriage with sails, a little model of which was preserved at Scheveningen till 1802. The carriage itself had been lost long before; but we know that about the year 1600 Stevin, with Prince Maurice of Orange and twenty-six others, made use of it on the seashore between Scheveningen and Petten, that it was propelled solely by the force of the wind, and that it acquired a speed which exceeded that of horses. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Scheveningen pier Scheveningen is part of Den Haag, the Netherlands. ... --69. ... 1597 1598 1599 - 1600 - 1601 1602 1603 |- | align=center colspan=2 | Decades: 1570s 1580s 1590s - 1600s - 1610s 1620s 1630s |- | align=center | Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century |} // Events January January 1 - Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Years Day February February 17 - Giordano Bruno burned at the...

Philosophy of science

Another idea of Stevin, for which even Hugo Grotius gave him great credit, was his notion of a bygone age of wisdom. The goal to be aimed at is the bringing about of a second age of wisdom, in which mankind shall have recovered all its early knowledge. The fellow-countrymen of Stevin were proud that he wrote in their own dialect, which he thought fitted for a universal language, as no other abounded like Dutch in monosyllabic radical words. Hugo Grotius Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; Delft, 10th April 1583 - Rostock, 28th August 1645) worked as a jurist in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. ...

Geometry and physics

Stevin was the first to show how to model regular and semiregular polyhedra by delineating their frames in a plane. Stevin also distinguished stable from unstable equilibrium. He proved the law of the equilibrium on an inclined plane, using an ingenious and intuitive diagram showing a necklace of evenly spaced beads draped over an inclined plane. [1] The diagram is said to have been inscribed on his tombstone, leading the physicist Richard Feynman to remark to his students, "If you get an inscription like that on your tombstone, you are doing fine!" Geometry (Greek γεωμετρία; geo = earth, metria = measure) arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. ... A Superconductor demonstrating the Meissner Effect Physics (from the Greek, φυσικός (physikos), natural, and φύσις (physis), nature) is the science of the natural world dealing with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces. ... In mathematics, there are three related meanings of the term polyhedron: in the traditional meaning it is a 3-dimensional polytope, and in a newer meaning that exists alongside the older one it is a bounded or unbounded generalization of a polytope of any dimension. ... Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) (surname pronounced FINE-man; in IPA) was one of the most influential American physicists of the 20th century, expanding greatly the theory of quantum electrodynamics. ...

He demonstrated before Pierre Varignon the resolution of forces, which, simple consequence of the law of their composition though it is, had not been previously remarked. Pierre Varignon Pierre Varignon ( born in 1654 in Caen - died on December 23, 1722 in Paris) was a French mathematician. ...

He discovered the hydrostatic paradox that the downward pressure of a liquid is independent of the shape of the vessel, and depends only on its height and base.

He also gave the measure of the pressure on any given portion of the side of a vessel. He had the idea of explaining the tides by the attraction of the moon. In 1586 he demonstrated that two objects of different weight fall with the same speed. 1586 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ...

Music theory

Stevin was the first author in the West (1585, simultaneously with, and independently of, Chu Tsai-Yu in China) to give a mathematically accurate specification for equal temperament. He appears to have been inspired by the writings of the Italian lutenist and music theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei), a onetime pupil of Gioseffo Zarlino. Equal temperament is a scheme of musical tuning in which the octave is divided into a series of equal steps (equal frequency ratios). ... Vincenzo Galilei (1520 – July 2, 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei. ... Galileo Galilei Galileo Galilei (Pisa, February 15, 1564 – Arcetri, January 8, 1642), was an Italian physicist, astronomer, and philosopher who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. ... Gioseffo Zarlino (January 31 or March 22, 1517 – February 4, 1590), was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. ...

Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping by double entry may have been known to Stevin as clerk at Antwerp either practically or through the medium of the works of Italian authors like Luca Pacioli and Gerolamo Cardano. He, however, was the first to recommend the use of impersonal accounts in the national household. He practiced it for Prince Maurice, and recommended it to Sully, the French statesman. Painting of Luca Pacioli, attributed to Jacopo de Barbari, 1495 (controversial attribution: see the hereinafter external links). ... Gerolamo Cardano or Jerome Cardan or Girolamo Cardan (September 24, 1501 - September 21, 1576) was a celebrated Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer, and gambler. ... Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (December 13, 1560 – December 22, 1641) was the doughty soldier, French minister, staunch Protestant and faithful right-hand man who enabled Henry IV of France to accomplish so much. ...

Decimal fractions

His greatest success, however, was a small pamphlet called De Thiende ('the tenth'), first published in Dutch in 1586, and not exceeding seven pages in the French translation. A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). ...

Decimal fractions had been employed for the extraction of square roots some five centuries before his time, but nobody before Stevin established their daily use; and so well aware was he of the importance of his innovation that he declared the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures and weights to be only a question of time, in which he proved right.

His notation is rather unwieldy. The point separating the integers from the decimal fractions seems to be the invention of Bartholomaeus Pitiscus, in whose trigonometrical tables (1612) it occurs and it was accepted by John Napier in his logarithmic papers (1614 and 1619). For the crater, see Pitiscus (crater). ... Events January 20 - Mathias becomes Holy Roman Emperor. ... John Napier John Napier (1550–April 4, 1617) was a Scottish mathematician, physicist and astronomer. ... Events April 5 - In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe. ... Events May 13 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason. ...

Stevin printed little circles round the exponents of the different powers of one-tenth. The fact that Stevin meant those encircled numerals to denote mere exponents is evident from his employing the very same sign for powers of algebraic quantities. He does not even avoid fractional exponents, and is ignorant only of negative exponents. from meta Image made by user:Branko. ...

Stevin wrote on other scientific subjects—optics, geography, astronomy—and a number of his writings were translated into Latin by W. Snellius (Willebrord Snell). There are two complete editions in French of his works, both printed at Leiden, one in 1608, the other in 1634. Willebrord Snell. ... Events March 18 - Sissinios formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia May 14 - Protestant Union founded in Auhausen. ... Events Moses Amyrauts Traite de la predestination is published Curaçao captured by the Dutch Treaty of Polianovska First meeting of the Académie française The witchcraft affair at Loudun Jean Nicolet lands at Green Bay, Wisconsin Opening of Covent Garden Market in London English establish a settlement...

Neologisms

Stevin thought Dutch to be an excellent language for scientific writing, and he translated a lot of the mathematical terms to Dutch. As a result, Dutch is the only Western European language that has a lot of mathematical terms that do not stem from Latin, including its name, which in Dutch is called wiskunde.

His eye for the importance of having the scientific language be the same as the language of the craftsmen may show from the dedication of his book De Thiende ('The Disme' or 'The Tenth'): 'Simon Stevin wishes the stargazers, surveyors, carpet measurers, body measurers in general, coin measurers and tradespeople good luck.' Further on in the same pamphlet, he writes: "[this text] teaches us all calculations that are needed by the people without using fractions. One can reduce all operations to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with integers."

The words he invented evolved: 'aftrekken' (subtract) and 'delen' (divide) stayed the same, but over time 'menigvuldigen' became 'vermenigvuldigen' (multiply, the added 'ver' has no meaning) and 'vergaderen' became 'optellen' (add).

Also the Dutch word for diameter is an example: 'middellijn', lit.: line through the middle.

He was so eager to promote the Dutch language that he invented a name for the Dutch government department of public affairs: the department of Waterstaat. This is very often incorrectly understood as the department of Water State, but actually made up from the words 'wat' 'er' 'staat', meaning of what has been erected, more freely translated: of what exists.

This name became so well used that in France there is still a government authority that has the literal name 'Waterstaat'.

The word 'zomenigmaal' (quotient lit. 'that many times') has become the perhaps less poetic 'quotiënt' in modern day Dutch.

Publications

Amongst others, he published:

• Tafelen van Interest (Tables of interest) in 1582;
• Problemata geometrica in 1583;
• La Theinde (The tenth) in 1585 in which decimals were introduced in Europe;
• La pratique d'arithmétique in 1585;
• L'arithmétique in 1585 in which he presented a uniform treatment for solving algebraic equations;
• De Beghinselen der Weeghconst in 1586;
• De Beghinselen des Waterwichts (Principles on the weight of water) in 1586 on the subject of hydrostatics;
• Vita Politica. Named Burgherlick leven (Civil life) in 1590;
• De Sterktenbouwing (The construction of fortifications) published in 1594;
• De Havenvinding (Position finding) published in 1599;
• De Hemelloop in 1608;
• Wiskonstighe Ghedachtenissen (Mathematical Memoirs). This included earlier works like De Driehouckhandel (Trigonometry), De Meetdaet (Practice of measuring), and De Deursichtighe (Perspective);
• Castrametatio, dat is legermeting and Nieuwe Maniere van Stercktebou door Spilsluysen (New ways of building of sluices) published in 1617;
• De Spiegheling der Singconst (Theory of the art of singing).

Events January 15 - Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to Poland February 24 - Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1583 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. ... 1585 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. ... Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which, as the name suggests, combines abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with geometry. ... 1586 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ... Hydrostatics, also known as fluid statics, is the study of fluids at rest. ... Events March 14 - Battle of Ivry - Henry IV of France again defeats the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne. ... Fortifications (Latin fortis, strong, and facere, to make) are military constructions designed for defensive warfare. ... Events February 27 - Henry IV is crowned King of France at Rheims. ... There are several traditions of navigation. ... Events Swedish King Sigismund III Vasa is replaced by his brother Charles IX of Sweden. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Trigonometry Trigonometry (from the Greek trigonon = three angles and metro = measure) is a branch of mathematics dealing with angles, triangles and trigonometric functions such as sine, cosine and tangent. ... Various meters In classical physics and engineering, measurement generally refers to the process of estimating or determining the ratio of a magnitude of a quantitative property or relation to a unit of the same type of quantitative property or relation. ... Look up perspective in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A sluice is a water channel that is controlled at its head by a gate. ...

External links

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson. Simon Stevin at the MacTutor archive.
• [2] contains an HTML version (including hyperlinks to explanations) of De Thiende and its translations into English, French and Swedish, and scans of these books
• [3] contains a lot more information about Simon Stevin
• [4] is the text of the Catholic Encyclopedia about Stevin. The author can hardly conceal his admiration, and for the rest the article is mostly a bibliography of Stevin's work.
• [5] is a short essay on Simon Stevin by S. Abbas Raza at 3 Quarks Daily

BITCH!111 ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.

Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

Trivia

The study association of mechanical engineering at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, W.S.V. Simon Stevin is named after Simon Stevin. In Stevin's memory, the association has called it's bar "De Weeghconst" and owns a self-built fleet of land yachts. The Eindhoven University of Technology (in Dutch: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven or TU/e, and formerly Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven or THE) is a technical university located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...