Mathematicians

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1982: Europa - Historical Events - Celsius (Design and Engraving - Lars Sjööblom)

Andreas Celsius and his temperature scale.  I remember when the UK changed from Fahrenheit to Centigrade learning the rhyme - "5, 10 and 21/ winter, spring and summer sun". Now I automatically think in Celsius, just as well as we had summer temperatures in spring this year. 

1994: International Congress of Mathematicians (Design - Burkard Waltenspul)

A gathering of big brain mathematicians first took place in Switzerland in 1897 and this stamp celebrates the August 1994 congress with a portrait of Jakob Bernoulli (1655-1705) painted by his brother Nicolas which hangs in the University of Basel (where he was Professor of Mathematics). It also shows a modern formulation of his law of large numbers and its pictorial representation.  He travelled throughout Europe learning about the latest discoveries and had a lifetime of correspondence with leading mathematicians so he would have been ecstatic if the Congress of Mathematicians had existed in his day.  He was an early proponent of Calculus and sided with Leibniz in the Newton-Leibniz controversy as to who invented it first (eventually declared a draw) 

1996: 350th Anniversary Birth of Leibniz (Design - Elizabeth von Jonota-Bzowski)

Here is the polymath himself, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and a mathematical diagram.

1977: 200th Birth Anniversary of Carl Friedrich Gauss

Moving from portraits we come to the numbers taking centre stage and Gauss's Plane of Complex Numbers.  Gauss was called the Prince of Mathematics for the range of his discoveries.

1992: 500th Birth Anniversary of Adam Riese (Desing - Harry Scheuner)

The German mathematician Adam Riese ran a mathematical school and published textbooks.  In one of his textbooks, intended for apprentices and craftsmen, he described numerical calculations with Indian/Arabic numerals which I'm guessing these flowing numbers are from.  Unusually for the time his books were not in Latin but in German and they have been through many editions.

1995: UPU Bern Postmark Cover

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Numbers - count on See It On A Postcard for more