15th December

On this day in 1612, Simon Mayr was the first to observe the Andromeda galaxy through a telescope, although of course he had no notion that he was observing a distant system of stars. He described it in the preface to his Mundus Jovialis of 1614 as, 'like the flame of a candle seen through horn'.

The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 1983.