The n-body gravitational problem is the mathematical formulation of a question that has fascinated and puzzled astronomers for millennia: How can we predict the motion of the moon and the planets? According to Isaac Newton's theory of grav...

Negative is a term in mathematics that usually means "opposite." An electron's charge is called negative not because it is "below" but because it is opposite that of a proton. A surface with negative curvature bulges in from the point of v...

Relations between the forces acting on a body and the motion of the body, formulated by Isaac Newton. The laws describe only the motion of a body as a whole and are valid only for motions relative to a reference frame. Usually, the referen...

Nicolas Bourbaki does not exist. This name is used as a pseudonym for a group of mainly French mathematicians who started publishing collectively in 1939 (the year of birth given above). The stated aim of the Bourbaki group is to produce a...

The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was the founder of the heliocentric ordering of the planets. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on Feb. 19, 1473, in Torun about 100 miles south of Danzig. He belonged to a family of merchant...

The Danish physicist Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962) formulated the first successful explanation of some major lines of the hydrogen spectrum. The Bohr theory of the atom has become the foundation of modern atomic physics. Niels Bohr w...

Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is the first mathematician to publicly publish a system of non-Euclidean geometry. Although Karl Friedrich Gauss preceded him in the late 18th century and János Bolyai had devised a similar (though less...

Any theory of the nature of geometric space differing from the traditional view held since Euclid's time. These geometries arose in the 19th century when several mathematicians working independently explored the possibility of rejecting Eu...

In statistics, a frequency distribution in the shape of the classic bell curve. It accurately represents most variations in such attributes as height and weight. Any random variable with a normal distribution has a mean (&see; mean, median...

Branch of mathematics concerned with properties of and relations among integers. It is a popular subject among amateur mathematicians and students because of the wealth of seemingly simple problems that can be posed. Answers are much harde...

A numeration system, or numeral system, is an orderly method in which each numeral of the system is associated with a unique number. Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) is recognized as having given the first generalized treatment of positional num...

Numerical integration involves calculation of an integral by numerical techniques. An integral is a mathematical representation of an area or generalization of an area and is one of the fundamental objects of calculus. The word quadrature ...