Experimental Blog #116

Comments on "In Pursuit of the Unknown - 17 Equations That Changed the World" by Ian Stewart

Besides 6 equations described by Robert P. Crease in his book, "The Great Equations" commented on in blog #98 on January 22, 2012{in that book and blog those equations were #s 1,3,5,6,7, and 9}, Ian Stewart writes about:

In the 17th century:
#s 2. The logarithimic equation of Henry Briggs and John Napier.
    3. The calculus equation of Isaac Newton.

In the 18th century:
#s 5. The equation of the square root of negative 1, which led to imaginary and complex numbers.
    6.The equation about faces, edges, and vertices of polyhedra by Leonhard Euler.
    7. The equation of normal distribution, about patterns of chance by Abraham De Moivre.
    8. The wave equation of Jean Le Rond d'Alembert.

In the 19th century:
#s 9. The {Joseph}Fourier transform equation, which has many applications in extracting and
         compressing information.
    10.The fluid mechanics equation of Claude-Louis Navier and George Stokes.

In the 20th century.
#s 15. The Information Theory equation of Claude Shannon.
    16. The "Chaos theory" equation of Robert May. This equation describes "deterministic chaos -
          apparently random behavior with no random cause" ... "apparent randomness may conceal
          hidden order."
    17. The "Midas formula" of Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, who was awarded the Nobel
          Prize in economics along with Robert Merton in 1997. This equation has been very important
          in world finance and speculation.