Thanks to Vaibhav Devanathan, I have a huge notepad file filled with wonderful anecdotes of scientists and mathematicians albeit in a very haphazard manner, with parts of text transposed from one part to another. To add to my travails, most anecdotes need to be set into prose too; many of them are just points exchanged in e-mails. Nevertheless, some of these anecdotes (or urban legends) are truly remarkable and I feel they are worth the effort of deciphering. But since the task is formidable, I am going to do it bit by bit; so this should be a 3-4 part series starting the current one.
1. A mathematician bought bread once a day from his local baker. The bread was supposed to weigh 1 kilo but afer a year of record keeping the mathematician found a nice normal distribution with mean 950 gr. He called the police and they told the baker to behave himself. One year later the mathematician reported to the police that the baker had not reformed. The police confronted the baker and he said "How could that dastardly math guy have known that we always gave him the largest loaf?
The mathematician then showed the police his record for this year which was again a bell shaped curve with max at 950 gr. but truncated on the left side. The mathematician was none other than Henri Poincare.
2. The Hungarain mathematician Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history was always making jokes about how old he was. (He said, for example, that he is two and a half billion years old, because in his youth the age of the Earth was known to be two billion years and later was known to be 4.5 billion years.)
He observed one day that the audiences at his talks had been getting larger and larger, to the point where they filled halls so big that his old and feeble voice could not be heard. Erdos speculated as to the cause of this. "I think," he said, "it must be that everyone wants to be able to say "I remember Erdos; why, I even attended his last lecture!"
3. Paul Erdos had his own peculiar language. The following is the glossary of terms that he employed and what they actually meant.
1. A mathematician bought bread once a day from his local baker. The bread was supposed to weigh 1 kilo but afer a year of record keeping the mathematician found a nice normal distribution with mean 950 gr. He called the police and they told the baker to behave himself. One year later the mathematician reported to the police that the baker had not reformed. The police confronted the baker and he said "How could that dastardly math guy have known that we always gave him the largest loaf?
The mathematician then showed the police his record for this year which was again a bell shaped curve with max at 950 gr. but truncated on the left side. The mathematician was none other than Henri Poincare.
2. The Hungarain mathematician Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history was always making jokes about how old he was. (He said, for example, that he is two and a half billion years old, because in his youth the age of the Earth was known to be two billion years and later was known to be 4.5 billion years.)
He observed one day that the audiences at his talks had been getting larger and larger, to the point where they filled halls so big that his old and feeble voice could not be heard. Erdos speculated as to the cause of this. "I think," he said, "it must be that everyone wants to be able to say "I remember Erdos; why, I even attended his last lecture!"
3. Paul Erdos had his own peculiar language. The following is the glossary of terms that he employed and what they actually meant.
- Supreme Fascist = God (Also abbreviated as SF. A person who hides Erdös's socks, glasses, Hungarian passport and kept the best equations to himself)
- straight from the book = beautiful, elegant proof (book of the SF)
- boss = woman
- slave = man
- captured=married
- liberated = divorced
- recaptured= remarried
- epsilon = child, or a little
- to preach = to deliver a math lecture
- to exist = to do math
- to die = to stop doing math
- trivial being = someone who does not do math
- Joe (USSR) = for Joseph Stalin
- Sam = USA
- Sam and Joe show = international news
- On the long wavelength = communist (red)
- On the short wavelength = fascist (opposite of red)
- noise = music
- poison = alcohol
- my brain is open = I am ready to do mathematics
- when was it alive? = what kind of meat is that?
4 comments:
Poincare's funda is brilliant!
Ha, nice to see that you liked the anecdotes.
My father recently discovered a book filled with more such anecdotes. It should be great fun to read, especially if you're in Bombay after 17th July (which is when I return). Are you?
Yes, yes I would be in Bombay around that time. And the fact that I would love to borrow that book from you goes without saying :). Thanks!
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