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A tale of two tombstones: strange but true
Amazingly, the same monumental blunder struck memorials to two famous men 160 years apart
Captivated by the form of a ‘miraculous spiral’, a 17th century Swiss mathematician and a 19th century Scottish anatomist each asked for one to be carved on his tombstone — but their wishes failed to be granted.
Illustrious mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1655–1705) was so impressed by the beauty of the equiangular, or logarithmic, spiral that he wrote a treatise on it, entitled Spira Mirabilis (‘miraculous’ or ‘marvellous’ spiral), and wanted the Latin motto: Eadem mutato resurgo — ‘Although changed, I rise again the same’ — next to the carving on his gravestone.
The motto refers to the ‘self-similarity’ of this kind of spiral — the size of the spiral increases but its shape stays exactly the same with each successive curve, in both its involute and evolute, in a geometrical progression.
Appearing as a growth pattern throughout nature — the shell of the marine mollusc nautilus is a classic example — it was first described by the philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650), and although it was named by other mathematicians…
