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On This Day

  • 4-30-1777

    Carl Friedrich Gauss, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, born in Brunswick, Germany. His mother couldn't remember his birthdate, but she could relate it to a movable religious feast. To confirm the date of his birth Gauss developed a formula for the date of Easter.

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    Carl Friedrich Gauss

  • 4-30-1916

    Claude Shannon, inventor of mathematical information theory, born in Michigan. In his seminal 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," he introduced the word "bit" for binary digit.

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    Claude Shannon

  • 4-30-1989

    Gottfried Kothe died in Frankfurt, Germany. He worked on set theory, ring theory (with Emmy Noether), functional analysis, and topological vector spaces.

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    Gottfried Kothe