My Expertise
Geometry; harmonic analysis
Fields of Research (FoR)
Lie Groups, Harmonic and Fourier Analysis, Mathematical PhysicsSEO tags
Biography
Born and raised in Canada, I now enjoy the warmer Australian life-style, but still like to visit my home country. I was educated at Adam Scott High School in Peterboro Ontario, Richmond Hill High School in Richmond Hill Ontario, University of Toronto (BSC 1979) and Yale University (PhD 1984). I taught at Stanford University (1984-1986) and the University of Toronto (1986-1989) before coming to UNSW (University of New South Wales), Sydney, in...view more
Location
School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
The Red Centre
Room 4108
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
The Red Centre
Room 4108
Contact
9385 7098
9385 7123
Publications
by Professor Norman J Wildberger
ORCID as entered in ROS
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3503-6495
Videos
Ancient Egyptian and Old Babylonian geometry had some important common features which are noticeably different from our modern geometry. They were larger motivated by the same kinds of problems, coming from surveying, building projects and making economic calculations. But a very important similarity they shared is their view towards an inclined plane: they did not use angles, and they also did not use our present day notion of "slope".
In this video Daniel and Norman explain some of the main aspects of OB geometry, touching base also with the Egyptian fascination with pyramid building, and the OB interpretation of quadratic algebraic problems using cut and paste geometry techniques. We also see clearly that they had a clear understanding of right triangles and Pythagoras' theorem--which they called the Diagonal Rule, and also knew how to generate what we call "Pythagorean triples", but which we really ought to start calling "Babylonian triples"! And it is quite clear that the understood "completing the square" techniques 3000 years before al Khwarizmi.
In this video Daniel and Norman explain some of the main aspects of OB geometry, touching base also with the Egyptian fascination with pyramid building, and the OB interpretation of quadratic algebraic problems using cut and paste geometry techniques. We also see clearly that they had a clear understanding of right triangles and Pythagoras' theorem--which they called the Diagonal Rule, and also knew how to generate what we call "Pythagorean triples", but which we really ought to start calling "Babylonian triples"! And it is quite clear that the understood "completing the square" techniques 3000 years before al Khwarizmi.