A recent post by @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears, published as a thong-in-check post, made me remember that back when there was no math notation, poetry was the OG way to express equations!
The most famous poem corresponds to the discovery of imaginary numbers by the mathematician Nicolo Tartaglia, who in 1539 sent his general solution for cubic equations to his fellow Cardano:
Which translates to:
  1. Quando chel cubo con le cose apressò (When the cube with the cosa beside it) -> x3+3x
  2. Se agualia à qualche numero difereto (Equals some other whole number) -> x3+3x=10
  3. Trouan dui altri differenti in esso (Find two other, of which it is the difference) -> u−v=10
  4. Cb'el lor produtto sempre sia eguale / Al terzo cubo delle cose neto (To put their product equal / To a third of the cosa, all cubed) -> u⋅v=(3/3)3=13=1
  5. El residuo poi suo generale / Delli lor lati cubi ben sottratti / varra la tua cosa principale (Then the difference / Of their cube roots, properly subtracted / Will be the value of your first unknown) -> x=3√u−3√v
There are many more examples I can share in future posts, each with their own surrounding story, of which Tartaglia's poem lacks no thrill (please see How Imaginary Numbers Were Invented).
Wow, I never heard of this. This is fascinating. It's already hard to read papers from the early 1950s due to lack of standard notation, must have been even harder to communicate ideas 500 years ago in this way.
The Veritasium story about not publishing a groundbreaking result to keep it as a wildcard is new to me too. I usually rush to get anything published, even when much less impactful. On a side note, this is one of the better Veritasium videos you linked there, anyone hesitating to watch it, please do.
One Cardano has contributed to society, after all.
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(Hoskinson should apologize on his knees for tarnishing such a great name...)
It's impressive what the mind is capable of under constraints. In the aerospace engineering field we still marvel at how the actual f*k where they able to send a men to the moon in the 60's with pen, paper and sliding rulers as calculators. I feel I can't breathe if I have to draw line having no CAD at hand.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @Athena 24 May
Incredible poem!
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Fascinating isn't?? Can't measure the brightness this people had to be able to abstract math in such a way, a true history jewel
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Mathematics is perfect and explains every aspect of our Universe
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