Paul Tannery: The Tobacco Engineer Who Changed the History of Math

Paul Tannery: The Tobacco Engineer Who Changed the History of Math

The more I read, the more I dis­cov­ered a man whose intel­lec­tu­al habits felt sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern. He ques­tioned accept­ed nar­ra­tives, exam­ined pri­ma­ry sources, and deeply learned the math­e­mat­ics he was study­ing. And the part that gets me is that he treat­ed the peo­ple of antiq­ui­ty not as leg­ends, but as human beings deserv­ing of care­ful understanding.

HOLIDAY PUZZLE 2025!

HOLIDAY PUZZLE 2025!

UPDATE!! AS OF DECEMBER 18, NO ONE HAS SUBMITTED CORRECT ANSWERS! SO THANKS TO DAVID T. AT ASU, THE PUZZLE HAS BEEN GIVEN AN EXTENSION TO DECEMBER 31, 2025!  Wel­come to Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! It’s Decem­ber and that means it is Puz­zle Month. Hi, I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak. I’m a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor with a back­ground in math, sci­ence, and jour­nal­ism. This year,

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Hypatia The Sum of Her Life is now on sale!

The sto­ry of her life is an intrigu­ing one! She was a math­e­mati­cian, an astronomer, a philoso­pher, and a polit­i­cal advi­sor, yet she was bru­tal­ly mur­dered by church monks. For thou­sands of years, her death over­shad­owed her accom­plish­ments. But, even­tu­al­ly, the truth of her life final­ly sur­faced in the his­to­ry books.  Dam­as­cius wrote that Theon raised Hypa­tia with dikaeosyne (jus­tice) and

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