A royal lady known by two different names in legendary history, literature, and romance, gave one of those names to a mathematical problem by virtue of her clever solution to marking out a territory for herself and her people. Who was she, what are both her names, and what is the problem in more contemporary terms?

voltaire11

Dido first queen and founder of Carthage. Also known as Elissa which is probably a Gk. rendering of the Phoenician Elishat. The mathematical problem is known as the 'Dido Problem' also known as the isoperimetric problem. "Eventually Elissa and her followers arrived on the coast of North Africa where Elissa asked the local inhabitants for a small bit of land for a temporary refuge until she could continue her journeying, only as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide. They agreed. Elissa cut the oxhide into fine strips so that she had enough to use it to surround an entire nearby hill, which was therefore afterwards named Byrsa "hide". (This event is commemorated in modern mathematics: The "isoperimetric problem" of enclosing the maximum area within a fixed boundary is often called the "Dido Problem" in modern Calculus of variations.) That would become their new home." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido Sep 22 07, 6:37 PM

lanfranco

Beautiful, voltaire. Alas, I have no oxhides in my vault, so I'll have to award you an ordinary silver mace. On the "isoperimetic problem": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoperimetry Sep 22 07, 6:51 PM