17 equations that changed the world ( Well, I understand the first)

[packman]

[Claustrum]

1. The famous one is actually #13 relativity Emc2

I know a few more because I studied electrical engineering in college so Calculus and Fourier Transform are mandatory.

[keithbvadu2]

2. A relatively new guy on the block

[Tetrachloride]

3. I have some knowledge of 7 of these.

Number 3 is easier than most people think. Even my mother who never took algebra appreciated the gist of it after I explained it without big words or equations.

[captain queeg]

5. I remember visiting a EE in his office one time

I recognized a Fourier transform on his notes on the table. I thought WTF there’s people who actual use this shit? I had some exposure in class but never understood them.

[Mosby]

4. Number 5 isn't real, though.

So it shouldn't count.

[lastlib]

6. That's just your imagination.......

I C whut U Did There.......

[NNadir]

7. Be rational.

First science t-shirt I bought for my son when he was in elementary school. He loved it.

[airplaneman]

8. I thought it was just imaginary n/t.

[Cicada]

9. Pythagoras Theorem known long before him, proof from fire remains

I took a history of math class where our teacher brought in photos of clay tablets from Mesopotamia. They had been in the library at Alexandria. When the library was burned down during an invasion the tablets were baked and thereby made permanent, to be discovered later. Some of the tablets were clearly educational materials giving numbers from triangles of different sizes where two lengths of sides were entered and then the length of the third side had to be calculated from the pythagoras theorem. Except the tablets from carbon dating were created long before Pythagoras was born. So Pythagorean was not the first discoverer of his famous geometric theorem. It was taught to children in Mesopotamia long before him.

[hunter]

10. Calculus: Newton or Leibniz?

The calculus controversy ( German: Prioritätsstreit, "priority dispute" ) was an argument between the mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over who had first invented calculus. The question was a major intellectual controversy, which began simmering in 1699 and broke out in full force in 1711. Leibniz had published his work first, but Newton's supporters accused Leibniz of plagiarizing Newton's unpublished ideas. Leibniz died in disfavor in 1716 after his patron, the Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714. The modern consensus is that the two men developed their ideas independently.

--more--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculus_controversy

My first significant exposure to calculus was Newton's dot notation.

The notation use in this chart belongs to Leibniz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#Newton's_notation

I'd argue equations 7 (Gauss) and 11 (Maxwell) are most fundamental to our modern understanding of the universe.