10/19/2012

October 19: A Little Book of Arithmetic on the Antichrist

A German mathematician and monk named Michael Stifel - a friend and associate of Martin Luther's - wrote in "A Little Book of Arithmetic on the Antichrist: A Relevation of Revelation" (1532) that on October 19, at 8am, in the year 1533, the apocalypse would strike. When the prediction failed, he was forcibly taken to nearby Wittenburg by angry peasants and sued. 20 years later Stifel would retract the calculation in another pamphlet.

Martin Luther himself is reported to have believed the apocalypse would fall later than Stifel predicted, but still before the year 1600.

As a parting note, in Stifel's mathematical life he coined the term "exponent"; created the algebraic convention of representing multiplication without a symbol (IE, 2x = "two times x"); and furthered the study of negative numbers, which he still referred to at the time as "numeri absurdi".

No comments:

Post a Comment