Portraits of Famous Philosophers Who Were Also Mathematicians.

Time of Philosophers, Time of Physicists, Time of Mathematicians

Is presentism or possibilism compatible with Relativity ? This question has been much debated since the argument first proposed by Rietdijk and Putnam. The goal of this text is to study the implications of both special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics, on presentism, possibilism, and eternalism. We put the emphasis on the implicit metaphysical preconceptions underlying each of thes...

Mathematicians Versus Philosophers in Recent Work on Mathematical Beauty

Who Were the Maya ?

12 volume 54, number 1 expedition he ancient maya created one of the world’s most brilliant and successful civilizations. But 500 years ago, after the Spaniards “discovered” the Maya, many could not believe that Native Americans had developed cities, writing, art, and other hallmarks of civilization. Consequently, 16th century Europeans readily accepted the myth that the Maya and other indigeno...

How famous is a scientist? —Famous to those who know us

– Following a recent idea, to measure fame by the number of Google hits found in a search on the WWW, we study the relation between fame (Google hits) and merit (number of papers posted on an electronic archive) for a random group of scientists in condensed matter and statistical physics. Our findings show that fame and merit in science are linearly related, and that the probability distributio...

Who were Fabry and Pérot?

In 1897 Charles Fabry and Alfred Pérot published their most important article on what we now call the Fabry–Pérot interferometer. Despite the great importance of this instrument for present-day research in physics and astrophysics, its inventors are almost completely unknown to most physicists. This article presents brief accounts of the life and work of Fabry and Pérot, who at the beginning of...