When J. P. Morgan was queried about how much the maintenance of the steam yacht he used to commute between Manhattan and New Jersey cost him, his legendary reply was, 'If you have to ask, you can't afford it".
Analogously, if you have to look up the history of congruences in a Wikipedia article, you should advance what you find there very tentatively. Euler, another great mathematician, did have some notions of the mathematics of cycles; he would hasve had something interesting to say about any topic her turned his mind to; but Gauss is the founder of the modern theory of congruences. Examples of this kind abound. Archimedes, certainly the greatest mathematician of antiquity, had some notions of the calculus; but its inventor was Newton (if you are anglophone) or Leibniz (if not). Precursors are of course important. As Newton himself put it, "I was able to see so far because I stood on the shoulders of giants". John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
