Subject: Re: [HM] Calendrical questions
From: Sanford Segal (ssgl@math.rochester.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 02 2000 - 10:36:46 EST
[Roger Cuculiere]
>
> There is no Passover in the Islamic calendar. Any formula for this
> calendar is not sure, because this calendar is purely lunar, and each
> month (especially Ramadan) begins at a new moon, and this new moon
> has to be seen by a believer.
>
Exactly!! In fact Fraenkel mentions this difficulty in his
autobiography on the cited pages. For the 16-year old it was apparently
a mathematical challenge which he apparently solved. Please read what
Fraenkel says!!
One of the things that occasionally annoys me about this list is the
tendency of some people to declaim about things without "doing their
homework".
Sandy Segal
************************************************************************
[Sandy Segal]
>
> It is funny how rumors get started! With respect to (2) below,
> the necessary information is in Fraenkel's autobiography Lebenskreise.
> Shortly after his 16th birthday Fraenkel write his first published
> paper, which obtained a formula for the date of Passover in the Islamic
> calendar. This appeared in 1908 (Fraenkel was born in 1891). In autumn
> 1909 Fraenkel completed a far deeper calendrical study, which thanks to
> Alfred Loewy, who was not only a mathematician, but Fraenkel's uncle by
> marriage, appeared in Crelle. These publications leaned on the "Method
> of Gauss". (pp.76-77). Through a letter from Loewy and the Crelle paper
> (which was about the date of Easter), Fraenkel met Kurt Hensel (p.110).
> He wrote a dissertation with Hensel in ring theory and this also appeared
> in Crelle. Its title was "On Zero-Divisors and the Decomposition of
> Rings". He was awarded the doctoral degree in January 1914 summa cum
> laude (pp. 119-120).
> While Fraenkel's autobiography is not always historically reliable,
> I think we can trust it on the events of his life.
[John W. Dawson]
>
> (2) I understand that the doctoral dissertation of Abraham Fraenkel,
> the well-known set theorist, concerned a method for computing the date
> of Passover (presumably an improvement over the methods in use before).
> Has his method been published, and is it still the preferred one?
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