Timeline for Mathematical "urban legends"
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 11, 2013 at 0:15 | comment | added | Louigi Addario-Berry | While there is no mention of the purported letter to Erdos, he does say that in the following few days, while assigned to the wood-yard, he proved Turán's theorem. | |
| Sep 11, 2013 at 0:12 | comment | added | Louigi Addario-Berry | It turned out that the officer-Joseph Winkler by name- was an engineer. In his youth he had placed at a mathematical competition; in civilian life he was a proofreader at the printing shop where the periodical of the Third Class of the Academy (Mathematical and Natural Sciences) was printed and had seen some of my manuscripts. He could do no more than assign me to a wood-yard where big logs, necessary to railroad building, were stored, classified according to their diameter; my task was merely to show incoming groups the place where they could find those logs with the prescribed width. | |
| Sep 11, 2013 at 0:11 | comment | added | Louigi Addario-Berry | Here is the text from "A note of welcome". In September 1940 I was called in for the first time to labor-camp service. We were taken to Transylvania to work at railway building. Our main work was carrying railway ties. It was not very difficult work but a spectator could of course easily recognize that most of us-I was no exception-did it rather awkwardly. One of my more expert comrades said this at one occasion quite explicitly, even mentioning my name. An officer was standing nearby, watching our work. When hearing my name, he asked the comrade whether or not I was a mathematician. (Contd) | |
| Jan 31, 2011 at 1:01 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | Now I have found an unimpeachable source for Szego's story; Turan himself wrote it up in "A note of welcome," J Graph Theory 1 (1977) 7-9. | |
| Jan 31, 2011 at 0:36 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | I've tracked down the incident I read about. It's in Szego's preface to Hungarian Problem Book I, which was volume 11 in the New Mathematical Library. It's too long to write out here. Szego doesn't give a source, doesn't claim all the details are accurate, and doesn't name the mathematician. In short, X was in a forced labor camp circa 1940, the supervisor recognized his name from Hungarian problem-solving competitions, and gave him more lenient treatment. The story is also quoted in Rosemary Schmalz, Out Of The Mouths Of Mathematicians, MAA 1993 | |
| Jan 28, 2011 at 22:37 | comment | added | Kevin O'Bryant | Perhaps we should consider "urban legends" as parasites (or symbiotes) on the mathematical ecosystem. They certainly mutate and (as Gerry indicates) perhaps even have sex. | |
| Jan 28, 2011 at 22:06 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | Turan was in forced labor camps during much of the second war. This sounds like an incident I read about that took place in one of those camps. I wonder if we haven't had a conflation of two dictatorships. | |
| Jan 28, 2011 at 14:29 | history | edited | Kevin O'Bryant | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
deleted 4 characters in body
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| Jan 28, 2011 at 14:22 | history | answered | Kevin O'Bryant | CC BY-SA 2.5 |