![]() They are, by the way, not the first to go back to Archimedes or his tomb monument. They define themselves in the present through the past, and by doing so they build up a foundation for the future. With the Fields medal the community of modern-day mathematicians refers to one of their most famous forerunners. Plutarch ( Marcellus 17.7) relates also that his tomb was adorned with his theorem of the sphere and cylinder and that, proud of his achievement, it was Archimedes himself who requested the theorem adorn his funerary monument. He died during the sack of Syracuse by the Romans in 212 BC, sadly killed by a Roman soldier according to Plutarch ( Marcellus 19.4-5) when he was working out a problem involving circles. 287-212 BC) was active in the Hellenistic period at the court of King Hieron II in Syracuse (275-215 BC) and is considered the greatest ancient mathematician. The medal has an impressive concentration of references to antiquity. The medal is in gold, and bears the monogram RTM, the signature of the artist Robert Tait McKenzie (1867-1938). The fields medal awarded to Martin Hairer by the International Mathematical Union on 13 August 2014. ![]() Archimedes had proven that both the volume and the surface area of the sphere were two-thirds that of the cylinder. The tablet is displayed on a laurel branch, and the branch is placed upon a background with Archimedes' theorem of the sphere and cylinder, a line drawing of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder. The reverse shows a tablet (a tabula ansata) with the Latin inscription CONGREGATI / EX TOTO ORBE / MATHEMATICI / OB SCRIPTA INSIGNIA / TRIBVERE (‘Gathered from the entire world, Mathematicians have awarded (this medal) for outstanding writing’). The obverse depicts Archimedes (in a post-World War I artistic style) and the Greek legend ΑΡΧΙΜΕΔΟΥΣ (‘of Archimedes’) and the Latin legend TRANSIRE SVVM PECTVS MVNDOQVE POTIRI (‘Exceed above oneself and grasp the world’). Would we claim immortality for our field of research as well? My answer is 'yes', and the medal itself provides an excellent example to underpin this affirmation. Theorems that were proven 2,000 years ago are still true.' This is food for thought within our own disciplines of Classics and Ancient History, including numismatics. Yet, there is a quote from Hairer which is, I believe, appealing to classicists: 'One advantage of mathematics is the immortality. This recognition is of highest international renown and the University can be proud of such a scholar.Īs a classicist I am light-years away from understanding SPDEs and adequately appreciating his dazzling theory of regularity structures. This month's 'coin of the month' is actually a medal: the Fields medal, displayed on the University's main home page, awarded by the International Mathematical Union to Martin Hairer, professor in mathematics at Warwick University, for his outstanding achievements in stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs). Numismatics does not only include the study of coins but also a range of coin-like objects, such as medals, tokens and other related items. Archimedes' Theorem of the Sphere & Cylinder: Martin Hairer's Fields Medal & Immortality of Science
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