Thanks - I guess I was consulting an inaccurate reference--I'll leave
it up to you if you want to send correction to this source:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Euler-MascheroniConstant.html
Donna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 14-Jun-06, at 1:29 PM, John Randall wrote:
dly wrote:
Napier's constant which he denoted e in honour of Euler is given by
1x1 in J which similarly can be raised by powers of e
Napier never used e: in particular he did not have the notion of a
base
(plus he died about a century before Euler was born). Euler
himself first
used e in private correspondence in the 1720s. It first appeared
in print
around 1736. It is conjectured that either it is the first letter of
exponential or, more likely, the first available vowel (he used "a"
for
something else). It is unlikely he named it after himself.
(Not to be confused with Euler's constant which he denoted C and
Macheroni denoted γ=0.5772156649)
I'm not convinced Mascheroni used gamma, but I have not seen the
original
work (from 1790, where he also miscalculated it). The secondary
source
often cited for this is from the 1870s. Cajori's book on mathematical
notation claims Mascheroni used A. Other notations persisted
through the
19th century.
Best wishes,
John
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