Harlan J. Brothers
Harlan J. Brothers is an inventor, mathematician, and musician based in Branford, Connecticut.
Life and work
In 1997, while examining the sequence of counting numbers raised to their own power ( {an}=nn ), Brothers discovered some simple algebraic formulas [1] that yielded the number 2.71828..., the universal constant e, also known as the base of the natural logarithm. Like its more famous cousin π, e is a transcendental number that appears in a wide range of formulas in mathematics and physics.
Having no formal college-level mathematics education, he sent brief descriptions of his findings to the host of the National Public Radio show “Science Friday” and also to a well-known mathematician at Scientific American.
His communication with “Science Friday” led to a fruitful collaboration with meteorologist John Knox. Together they discovered over two dozen new formulas and published two papers on their methods. These methods subsequently found their way into the standard college calculus curriculum by way of a popular textbook on the subject.[2]
Brothers went back to school to study calculus and differential equations. He went on to publish methods for deriving infinite series that include the fastest known formulas for approximating e.[3]
In the summer of 2001, his professor, Miguel Garcia, introduced him to Benoît Mandelbrot and Michael Frame at Yale University. Brothers soon began working with them to incorporate the study of fractals into core mathematics curricula. His current research, begun in collaboration with Frame, is in the field of fractals and music.[4]
Brothers holds five patents and is a trained guitarist and composer.
See also
Publications
- 2012 "The Nature of Fractal Music." In: Benoit Mandelbrot - A Life in Many Dimensions, World Scientific Publishing, edited by Michael Frame (Fall, 2012).
- 2012 "Benoit Mandelbrot: Educator." With N. Neger. In: Benoit Mandelbrot - A Life in Many Dimensions, World Scientific Publishing, edited by Michael Frame (Fall, 2012).
- 2012 "Pascal's Prism." The Mathematical Gazette, Accepted for publication, July 2012.
- 2012 "Pascal's Triangle: The Hidden Stor-e." The Mathematical Gazette, Accepted for publication, March 2012.
- 2012 "Finding e in Pascal’s Triangle." Mathematics Magazine, Accepted for publication, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2012.
- 2010 "Mandel-Bach Journey: A marriage of musical and visual fractals." Proceedings of Bridges Pecs, 2010; pages 475-478.
- 2009. "Intervallic scaling in the Bach cello suites." Fractals, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2009; pages 537-545.
- 2008. "How to design your own pi to e converter." The AMATYC Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2008; pages 29–35.
- 2007. "Structural Scaling in Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3.” Fractals, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2007; pages 89-95.
- 2004. "Improving the convergence of Newton's series approximation for e.” The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2004; pages 34-39.
- 1999. "Novel series-based approximations to e.” With J. A. Knox. In: The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 30, No. 4, 1999; pages 269-275.
- 1998. "New closed-form approximations to the Logarithmic Constant e.” With J. A. Knox. In: The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998; pages 25-29.
References
- ^ H. J. Brothers and J. A. Knox, "New closed-form approximations to the Logarithmic Constant e.” The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998; pages 25-29.
- ^ R. Larson, B. Edwards, and R. Hostetler, Calculus With Analytic Geometry, Seventh Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
- ^ H. J. Brothers, "Improving the convergence of Newton's series approximation for e.” The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2004; pages 34-39.
- ^ Fractal Music Workshops, Brothers Technology website
Further reading
- Clifford A. Pickover. "The Möbius Strip," page 195. Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2006.
- Clifford A. Pickover. "A Passion for Mathematics," page 76. Wiley, New Jersey, 2005.
- Clifford A. Pickover. "Wonders of Numbers," page 4. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.
External links
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