Eric W. Weisstein | |
---|---|
Born | Bloomington, Indiana, U.S. | March 18, 1969
Alma mater | Cornell University (BA) California Institute of Technology (MS, PhD) |
Known for | MathWorld , CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics , ScienceWorld |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Planetary astronomy, physics, mathematics |
Institutions | Wolfram Research |
Doctoral advisor | Dewey Muhleman |
Eric Wolfgang Weisstein (born March 18, 1969) is an American scientist, mathematician, and encyclopedist who created and maintains the encyclopedias MathWorld and ScienceWorld. In addition, he is the author of the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics . He works for Wolfram Research.
Weisstein holds a Ph.D. in planetary astronomy, which he obtained from the California Institute of Technology's Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences in 1996 as well as an M.S. in planetary astronomy in 1993 also from Caltech. Weisstein graduated cum laude from Cornell University with a B.A. in physics and a minor in astronomy in 1990. During his summers away from Cornell, Weisstein participated in research at the Arecibo Observatory, a radio telescope facility in Puerto Rico operated by Cornell. As a graduate student, Weisstein also participated in research at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. During his time at Goddard, Weisstein participated in the development of hurricane visualization software. In 1996 Weisstein published his doctoral thesis titled Millimeter/Submillimeter Fourier Transform Spectroscopy of Jovian Planet Atmospheres, which was completed under faculty advisor Dewey Muhleman and in association with Eugene Serabyn, who is now a member of the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Upon completion of his doctorate, Weisstein became a research scientist at Caltech in January 1996 and continued work in the field of submillimeter spectroscopy. He collaborated with Eugene Serabyn and published several papers. Six months later, he moved to the University of Virginia's Department of Astronomy in Charlottesville where he remained for three years to continue his research.
In 1995, Weisstein converted a Microsoft Word document of over 200 pages to hypertext format and uploaded it to his webspace at Caltech under the title Eric's Treasure Trove of Sciences. After Weisstein transferred to the University of Virginia to continue his work in astronomy, he continued to refine his fledgling encyclopedia. In November 1998, Weisstein made a deal with the CRC Press to publish his encyclopedia in book format as the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics . A year later, in 1999, Weisstein accepted the position of encyclopedist at Wolfram Research, Inc. (WRI). MathWorld was ready to be unveiled in December 1999 with nearly 13,000 entries, most of them written by Weisstein, encompassing a variety of disciplines, including algebra, geometry, calculus, discrete mathematics, topology, number theory, statistics, and the foundations.
MathWorld became involved in a legal dispute with the CRC Press in March 2000. The CRC Press claimed MathWorld violated the copyright on the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics . During the dispute, a court order shut down MathWorld for over a year starting October 23, 2000. According to Eric Weisstein's personal site, he restarted MathWorld on November 6, 2001. [1] This ultimately led to the creation of PlanetMath. [2] Wolfram Research, Stephen Wolfram, and Eric Weisstein settled with the CRC Press for an undisclosed financial award and several benefits. Among these benefits are the inclusion of a copyright notice of the CRC Press at the bottom of all webpages in MathWorld and legal rights to reproduce MathWorld in a book format again.
ScienceWorld, also known as Eric Weisstein's World of Science, was unveiled to the general public in January 2002. ScienceWorld includes more than 1,000 entries in many fields of science including astronomy, chemistry, physics and biographies of scientists.
In 2014, he became a member of the Global Digital Mathematics Library Working Group of the International Mathematical Union. [3]
Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of objects in outer space. Historically, celestial mechanics applies principles of physics to astronomical objects, such as stars and planets, to produce ephemeris data.
PlanetMath is a free, collaborative, mathematics online encyclopedia. Intended to be comprehensive, the project is currently hosted by the University of Waterloo. The site is owned by a US-based nonprofit corporation, "PlanetMath.org, Ltd".
MathWorld is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library grant to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Wolfram Research, Inc. is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include WolframAlpha, Wolfram SystemModeler, Wolfram Workbench, gridMathematica, Wolfram Finance Platform, webMathematica, the Wolfram Cloud, and the Wolfram Programming Lab. Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram is the CEO. The company is headquartered in Champaign, Illinois, United States.
Robert Benjamin Leighton was a prominent American experimental physicist who spent his professional career at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His work over the years spanned solid state physics, cosmic ray physics, the beginnings of modern particle physics, solar physics, the planets, infrared astronomy, and millimeter- and submillimeter-wave astronomy. In the latter four fields, his pioneering work opened up entirely new areas of research that subsequently developed into vigorous scientific communities.
The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) was a 10.4-meter (34 ft) diameter submillimeter wavelength telescope situated alongside the 15-meter (49 ft) James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) at Mauna Kea Observatories. Beginning in 1986, it was engaged in submillimeter astronomy of the terahertz radiation band. The telescope closed on September 18, 2015.
Edgar van Tuyll was the chief quantitative strategist of Pictet & Cie, where he worked from 1995 to 2017. He has been extensively quoted by the media for his prediction of the 2000 Dot-com bubble crash and of the bull market beginning in March 2003. He is among the minority of strategists expecting a US recession in 2007–2008. His website Links to unsolved problems, prizes and research is top ranked by Google for list of unsolved problems in mathematics and physics. He is the author of several entries in the "CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics", Chapman & Hall, 2002. He is the grandson of Antti Johannes Rantamaa.
Peter Goldreich is an American astrophysicist whose research focuses on celestial mechanics, planetary rings, helioseismology and neutron stars. He is the Lee DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics at California Institute of Technology. Since 2005 he has also been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Asteroid 3805 Goldreich is named after him.
Calculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of contemporary mathematics education. Calculus has widespread applications in science, economics, and engineering and can solve many problems for which algebra alone is insufficient.
Edward Taylor Pegg Jr. is an expert on mathematical puzzles and is a self-described recreational mathematician. He wrote an online puzzle column called Ed Pegg Jr.'s Math Games for the Mathematical Association of America during the years 2003–2007. His puzzles have also been used by Will Shortz on the puzzle segment of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. He was a fan of Martin Gardner and regularly participated in Gathering 4 Gardner conferences. In 2009, he teamed up with Tom M. Rodgers and Alan Schoen to edit two Gardner tribute books.
Heiko Harborth is Professor of Mathematics at Braunschweig University of Technology, 1975–present, and author of more than 188 mathematical publications. His work is mostly in the areas of number theory, combinatorics and discrete geometry, including graph theory.
The Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) is a proposed 25 metres (82 ft) diameter telescope that is intended to reveal the cosmic origins of stars, planets, and galaxies with its submillimeter cameras and spectrometers enabled by superconducting detector arrays. The telescope was originally called the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope, but due to lack of funding the 25 metre telescope is currently on hold.
PlanetPhysics was a virtual community with several Internet sites supported by a non-profit organization registered in the USA in an open science, open data, peer-to-peer review mode that aimed to help make physics, and related mathematics, knowledge much more accessible, as well as to further develop physical, logical, computational and mathematical physics concepts.
CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics is a book by American author Eric W. Weisstein.
Guido Münch Paniagua was a Mexican astronomer and astrophysicist.
In mathematics, the theta operator is a differential operator defined by
A tetradicnumber, also known as a four-waynumber, is a number that remains the same when flipped back to front, flipped front to back, mirrored up-down, or flipped up-down. The only numbers that remain the same which turned up-side-down or mirrored are 0, 1, and 8, so a tetradic number is a palindromic number containing only 0, 1, and 8 as digits. The first few tetradic numbers are 1, 8, 11, 88, 101, 111, 181, 808, 818, ....
Eric Glen Blackman is an American astrophysicist and professor.