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I first stumbled over the term crackpottery on MO and as I am not a native English speaker, I had first assumed that the meaning were pots for making crack, i.e. the drug of the name crack.

Question:

can the first uses of the term "crackpottery" in the context of math papers be traced back to a specific mathematician and/or location or event?

Underwood Dudley apparently coined/popularized the term Trisectors for mathematical cranks in 1983 in the March issue of the Mathematical Intelligencer, by asking "What to do when the Trisector comes?".
So is it customary to use the term "Trisectors" for the cranks and "crackpottery" for their works?

I would also appreciate answers with little stories about when you first heard the term "crackpottery" being used in a talk or lecture.

If this question is felt to be off topic, please vote to close it.

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    $\begingroup$ I rather like this question, but yeah, it seems pretty far off topic. $\endgroup$
    – Nik Weaver
    Commented Feb 15, 2022 at 4:48
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    $\begingroup$ "Pot" is an old colloquialism for "head", so a "crackpot" is someone with a cracked head. There are plenty of examples from the 1800s. An older version, going back at least to the 16th century, is "crackbrain". None of this answers the mathematical question. $\endgroup$
    – Brendan McKay
    Commented Feb 15, 2022 at 5:11
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    $\begingroup$ Not sure if it counts as a "math paper", but Paul Halmos mentioned crackpot inventors and crank experiments in his 1958 piece "Innovation in mathematics" in Scientific American. $\endgroup$
    – Jukka Kohonen
    Commented Feb 15, 2022 at 8:28
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    $\begingroup$ I think the question belongs in hsm.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – Gerald Edgar
    Commented Feb 15, 2022 at 12:35
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    $\begingroup$ There's some interesting historical information here about the related term "circle-squarer" which apparently goes back to ancient times. $\endgroup$
    – Timothy Chow
    Commented Feb 15, 2022 at 17:56

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