Are You Sure (October 5)

Viking 2 Orbiter image of the Martian satellite Deimos taken from 1400 km. Deimos is about 14 km from top to bottom in this image. Date: 5 October 1977.

Are You Sure ...

• ... that the Viking 2 spacecraft conducted biology experiments in search of life on Mars, and that the results were surprising and interesting?

• ... that statesman and prelate Paolo Sarpi (14 August 1552 – 15 January 1623) was also an experimental scientist, a proponent of the Copernican system, and a friend and patron of Galileo Galilei?

• ... that the House of Malevecchio is responsible for nearly all of the crimes against mathematical constants committed during the Renaissance?

• ... that mathematician and philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi (16 May 1718 – 9 January 1799) was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, and the first woman appointed as a Mathematics Professor at a university?

• ... that mathematician Benjamin Peirce (4 April 1809 – 6 October 1880) made contributions to celestial mechanics, statistics, number theory, algebra, and the philosophy of mathematics; and that Peirce famously stated: "Mathematics is the science that draws necessary conclusions"?

—October 5, 2020

gnomonchronicles.com