click to enlarge
click to enlarge
click to enlarge HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEONHARD EULER
APRIL 15, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Happy Birthday, dear Leonhard Euler! We were singing in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, together with more than 70 guests attending our celebration of the 300th anniversary of the famous Swiss mathematician. An impressive age to remember, someone might say. And a very impressive work that was done by Leonhard Euler! Dr. Sam Vandervelde who is currently coordinating the Mandelbrot math competition, organizing a math circle at Stanford, showed us a informal and capturing presentation.
Did you know that it was Leonhard Euler who invented the symbol of pi? And of course the “e” stands for Euler’s number! Regarding the broad outline of his achievements that include not less than 866 publications, Sam Vandervelde took us on a journey through the life of the most productive mathematician in the history of mankind.
The second guest speaker – Paul Doherty, a member of the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute, showed us how to count vertices, edges and faces of geometrical bodies. We were all together cutting loops of papers and counting the edges of a soccer ball and experienced in a hands-on way the work of one of Switzerland’s greatest scientists
After all the singing and counting we deserved some delicious cup cakes and Swiss chocolates and had the time to wonder around the informative poster exhibit. That made this great Birthday party complete! Thank you, Sam and Paul for making this afternoon such an exciting happening!