31st March

Mathematicians who were born or died on 31st March

Mathematicians born on this day:

1596 : Descartes
1730 : Bézout
1795 : Louis Richard
1806 : Kirkman
1848 : Korteweg
1917 : Eckmann
1921 : Lob

Mathematicians who died on this day:

1624 : Lavanha
1727 : Newton
1877 : Cournot
1920 : Bachmann
1971 : Youden
2001 : Geoffrey Walker
2003 : Coxeter

Click here for a poster of René Descartes and here for a poster of Thomas Kirkman and here for a poster of Isaac Newton

A quotation for today

Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727)

I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Quoted in D Brewster, Memoirs of Newton

Another quotation by one of today's mathematicians

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JOC/EFR August 2005 The URL of this page is:	School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Day_files/Day331.html