The mathematican's apprentice
@mathapprentice.bsky.social
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Associate professor of mathematics at the University of Padua. French. I study vibes
Associate professor of mathematics at the University of Padua. French. I study vibes
![Placard from Padua's MUSEUM OF NATURE AND HUMANKIND
"THE STRANGE CASE OF PETRARCA'S SKULL
The poet Francesco Petrarca died on 19 July 1374 in Arquà, a town in the Euganean Hills of Padua, and he was buried there in a marble sarcophagus in front of the town's church.
In 1630, friar Tommaso Martinelli broke the sarcophagus and stole the bones of Petrarca's right arm. In 1813, historian Carlo Leoni decided to restore it, and, upon opening the sarcophagus, found Petrarca's skull well preserved.
In 1873, the study of the poet's remains was authorized under the direction of Giovanni Canestrini, but the scholar's plans were thwarted when "The skull, which for five centuries had resisted the destructive action of time, [...] had become so weak that on the 6th of December 1873, exposed to air, it spontaneously broke".
In 2003, the sarcophagus was reopened and studied by researchers from the University of Padua. Their anthropological analysis determined that the skull belonged to a female while the postcranial skeleton belonged to a male. Radiocarbon analysis of the skull established that the subject's death occurred around 1207, a century before Petrarch (1304-1374). In 2004, the University of Florence conducted a genetic analysis and confirmed with DNA that the skull was female and the postcranial skeleton was male."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:pmq2dlhmaolkgutk7y2izhv4/bafkreigxrpp7bfviamkjxo3gbuglnmikevrioqksnis4uolvi4kaysg23q)
![Oppenheimer obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Born.[29][30] After the oral exam, James Franck, the professor administering it, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me."[31] Oppenheimer published more than a dozen papers while in Europe, including many important contributions to the new field of quantum mechanics. He and Born published a famous paper on the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, which separates nuclear motion from electronic motion in the mathematical treatment of molecules, allowing nuclear motion to be neglected to simplify calculations. It remains his most cited work.[32]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:pmq2dlhmaolkgutk7y2izhv4/bafkreifvgce5sqwkneszei74pryt4skkqacy24ikyktpdjb5g3wq7fxcoy)
