Word: bisects
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Mathematician Edward Kasner, 59, of Columbia University, is one of the mythical baker's dozen of savants who were supposed to be the only men in the world able to understand the Einstein theory of relativity. At Harvard's Tercentenary celebration in 1936, he showed how to bisect a "horn angle" (an angle formed by two curves tangent to each other), a problem which had stumped mathematicians for 2,000-odd years. His fun: talking to children...
This is the season for trisecting angles and other such exercises. This is how you do it: Construct an angle, any angle. Bisect it. At a point, any point, on the line of bisection, draw lines to sides of angle and perpendicular to bisector. You have now got a straight angle within the original angle. Using the point as center and length of equal perpendiculars as radius, describe a semi-circle upon the straight angle and within the original angle. Trisect the straight angle by trisecting the semi-circle. The points of trisection of the straight angle will also trisect...