In the early 1600's, arguably the biggest obstacle to scientific progress was ... arithmetic. Scientists spent months doing longhand computations to test their ideas. But then, a new invention changed everything: logarithms. My new video, out now: youtu.be/lhdmMqSmg5g

Looking forward to tonight's event at @momath.bsky.social at 6:30 with @stevenstrogatz.com and Alex Kontorovich! A screening of my video about the Archimedes Palimpsest, followed by a Q&A. Details here: momath.org/archimedes/

If you're in NYC, come say hi on 4/30 at 6:30! I'll be at @MoMath for a screening of my video about the Archimedes Palimpsest, followed by a Q&A with me, @stevenstrogatz.com and @AlexKontorovich. momath.org/archimedes youtu.be/ZXNIgHov0Nk

New video! 2300 years ago, Aristarchus used very clever math to find relative sizes and distances of the sun, moon, and earth. His math led him to heliocentrism, but the evidence raised an unanswerable question and his idea was discarded for centuries.

A prayer book, destroyed by mold, sold for $2 million at an auction in 1998. Underneath the prayers, scraped off and written over, was the only copy of the one letter that Archimedes wrote to his friend to reveal his private method for finding properties of curved shapes. youtu.be/ZXNIgHov0Nk