WikiBites #5
🧮 🇪🇺 About that time when some politicians met to solve a math problem and came out with a new international organization
🏛 THE BIRTH OF EU
The history of the European Union began in 1952 with the Treaty of Paris signed by Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which gave birth to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC): a community aimed at facilitating the exchange of goods between member countries in order to facilitate post-war reconstruction.
The positive effects of this collaboration led the six States to sign the Treaty of Rome in 1957, with which they created the European Economic Community (EEC), an organization with wider objectives than the ECSC, in particular a common commercial and agricultural policy.
The Community gradually expanded and in 1992 the Maastricht Treaty was signed, giving birth to the European Union, with the aim of creating a single market (characterized by the free movement of goods and people) and a monetary union.
🔬 A 358 YEARS-LONG CHALLENGE
Pierre de Fermat was a French magistrate and mathematician. However, since he was an amateur mathematician, he published his ideas very rarely: they are mostly known from the correspondence exchanged with other mathematicians or from the notes he used to take on the books he studied.
Despite being only an amateur mathematician, he achieved remarkable results: for example, he is known for his principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem. In particular, the latter fascinated and challenged mathematicians for more than 300 years.
Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation
a^n + b^n = c^n
for any integer value of n greater than 2. The proposition was first noted by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 in the margin of a copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica: Fermat wrote that he had a proof but that it was too large to fit in the margin (so there was no evidence of this proof).
Since then, mathematicians strived for finding a solid solution (many academies offered monetary prizes, but of course nobody managed to win) until 1994 (358 years later!) when Andrew Wiles, a Princeton Mathematician, published his 200 pages long (!) solution.
🎨 PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR - LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY (1880-1881)
The Luncheon of the Boating Party depicts a group of Renoir's friends on a balcony overlooking the Seine, showing a typical Impressionistic scene of friends sharing a convivial lunch. Despite its apparent spontaneity, the painting was quite certainly revised and assembled in Renoir's studio.
Among the subjects depicted there is also Aline Charigot, Renoir's future wife, represented in the bottom-left corner.
Except for being a masterpiece of impressionism, this painting represents the shift that was occurring at the time in French society: the representation of men and women from different social classes reflects how social boundaries were progressively blurring, giving birth to the new bourgeoisie.