X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Eric Temple Bell


Continuity thesis

(A standard history of mathematics, according to Franklin (E. T. Bell's The Development of Mathematics, 1940), says that "Leonardo's published jottings on mathematics are trivial, even puerile, and show no mathematical talent whatever.") The invention of printing he compares to television, which produced "a flood of drivel catering to the lowest common denominator of the paying public, plus a quantity of propaganda paid for by the sponsors".

Dobinski's formula

The number on both sides of the formula has come to be called the nth Bell number Bn, after the later work of Eric Temple Bell.



see also