The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some t…

- W. W. Rouse Ball

Biot, who assisted Laplace in revising it [The Mécanique Céleste] for the press, says that Laplace himself was frequently unable to recover the detai…

- W. W. Rouse Ball

Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writi…

- W. W. Rouse Ball

Babbage ... gave the name to the [Cambridge] Analytical Society, which he stated was formed to advocate 'the principles of pure d-ism as opposed to t…

- W. W. Rouse Ball

Foreshadowings of the principles and even of the language of [the infinitesimal] calculus can be found in the writings of Napier, Kepler, Cavalieri, …

- W. W. Rouse Ball

Throughout his life Newton must have devoted at least as much attention to chemistry and theology as to mathematics.

- W. W. Rouse Ball

'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'

- W. W. Rouse Ball

For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he [Gauss] used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix s…

- W. W. Rouse Ball

De Morgan was explaining to an actuary what was the chance that a certain proportion of some group of people would at the end of a given time be aliv…

- W. W. Rouse Ball