The lion

Ah, I recognize the lion as his claw.

(Referring to Newton).

Johann Bernoulli

INFINITUM. Mathematical appointments

As we comment another day in the post on the cicloide, this curve has given place to many histories and disputes between mathematician. The phrase of this post was the end of one of them.

The lion

In 1696 Johann Bernoulli raised to the members of Royal Society two problems (at last related to the cicloide). He them was considering to be so complicated that it gave a term of six months for the presentation of the solutions and offered as I reward a valuable book of his personal collection to the one who was solving two problems. After these six months only Leibniz had solved the first one of them. In view of the results Bernoulli it gave another six months of term … but everything was still equal: neither no new solution of the first one nor no solution for the second one.

Immediately after this Leibniz suggested him to make to come these problems to Newton. This one had already spent his best moment and for it, as it seems, Bernoulli saw in this mailing a way of ridiculing him (Bernoulli was partial to Leibniz in the dispute on the invention of the calculation).

The case is that the problems came to Newton's hands one evening … and in the dawn of the same day it had already solved them. On the following morning he sent to Royal Society his solutions, but without be identifying. Bernoulli only needed to throw a glimpse to them to recognize the lion as author of the same ones.