On This Day
1562 – Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred books of the Maya.
Diego de Landa Calderón, O.F.M. (12 November 1524 – 29 April 1579) was a Spanish bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán.[1] Historians describe him as a cruel and fanatical priest who led a violent campaign against idolatry. In particular, he burned almost all the Mayan manuscripts (codices) that would have been very useful in deciphering Mayan script, knowledge of Maya religion and civilization, and the history of the American continent.
Born On This Day
1879 – Margherita Piazzola Beloch, Italian mathematician (d. 1976)
Margherita Piazzolla Beloch (12 July 1879 in Frascati – 28 September 1976 in Rome)[1] was an Italian mathematician who worked in algebraic geometry, algebraic topology and photogrammetry.
Biography
Beloch was the daughter of the German historian Karl Julius Beloch, who taught ancient history for 50 years at Sapienza University of Rome, and American Bella Bailey.[1]
Beloch studied mathematics at the Sapienza University of Rome and wrote her undergraduate thesis under the supervision of Guido Castelnuovo. She received her degree in 1908[1] with Lauude and “dignita’ di stampa” which means that her work was worthy of publication and in fact her thesis “Sulle trasformazioni birazionali dello spazio” (On Birational Transformations In Space) was published in the Annali di Matematica Pura ed Applicata.[citation needed]
Guido Castelnuovo was very impressed with her talent and offer her the position of assistant which Margherita took and held until 1919, when she moved to Pavia and the successive year to Palermo to work under Michele De Franchis, an important figure of the Italian school of algebraic geometry at the time.[1]
In 1924, Beloch completed her “libera docenza” (a degree that at that time had to be obtained before one could become a professor) and three years later she became a full professor at the University of Ferrara where she taught until her retirement (1955).[1]
Scientific Work
Her main scientific interest were algebraic geometry, algebraic topology and photogrammetry. After her thesis she worked on classification of algebraic surfaces studying the configurations of lines that could lie on surfaces. The next step was to study rational curves lying on surfaces and in this framework Beloch obtained the following important result:[2] “Hyperelleptic surfaces of rank 2 are characterised by having 16 rational curves.”
Beloch also made some contributions to the theory of skew algebraic curves.[3] She continued working on topological properties of algebraic curves either planar or lying on ruled or cubic surfaces for most of her life, writing about a dozen papers on these subjects.[4]
Around 1940 Beloch become more and more interested in photogrammetry and the application of mathematics, and in particular algebraic geometry, to it. She is also known for her contribution to the mathematics of paper folding:[5] In particular she seems to have been the first to formalise an origami move which allows, when possible, to construct by paper folding the common tangents to two parabolas. As a consequence she showed how to extract cubic roots by paper folding,[6] something that is impossible to do by rule and compass. The move she used has been called the Beloch fold.[7]
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for November 25 November 25, 2024Picture of the day Papaya fruits in a grocery store. Colatina, Espírito Santo, Brazil.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for November 24 November 24, 2024Picture of the day The Scroll of Eighty-Seven Immortals, drawn by an unknown painter, measuring 30cm high and 292cm wide, is a line-drawing Chinese figure painting. Drawn on a long silk scroll with lines, the painting depicts 87 taoist immortals, including three supreme gods with halo, ten divine generals, seven deities and 67 celestial maidens […]