Timeline for Mathematical "urban legends"
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 23, 2011 at 22:12 | comment | added | Orbicular | I hear a similar story a few years ago, where a student proved exciting theorems about holomorphic functions with compact support. | |
| Jan 27, 2011 at 0:58 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | By the way, in my version, the student was specifically studying the Banach space of such functions, and was eventually told that he was studying $\mathbb{R}$. | |
| Jan 25, 2011 at 10:26 | comment | added | Ian Morris | I've heard this many times, and the question of which spaces these functions are defined on has always been omitted; presumably it is a manifold. I actually spend quite a lot of time working with non-trivial functions defined on compact totally disconnected spaces which are Hoelder with an exponent higher than $1$. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:46 | comment | added | Dick Palais | As I commented above, I heard the story (with Lipschitz instead of Holder) back in the 1950s, so it is a really old legend. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:35 | comment | added | Gerhard Paseman | My (over 15 year old) recollection places this story in a previous millenium. Gerhard "Not As Old As Dirt" Paseman, 2011.01.24 | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:22 | comment | added | Willie Wong | I heard this story in the fall of 09 at a conference in Florida. But I can't remember who told it to me. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:15 | comment | added | Steve Huntsman | I have also heard this example, it seems to be more common than the one in the OP's question. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 22:00 | comment | added | Daniel Litt | I heard this story from Andras Vasy a few days ago. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 21:27 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | This was the first urban legend I thought of when I read the question. I heard it during grad school, probably in 2004 or 2005, but I don't recall from whom. I had the impression it was already a well-established legend. | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 21:20 | comment | added | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | That is a scary story: it paints a picture of mathematical education of extreme sadness! | |
| Jan 24, 2011 at 21:17 | history | answered | Qiaochu Yuan | CC BY-SA 2.5 |