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Given the vast number of new papers / preprints that hit the internet everyday, one factor that may help papers stand out for a broader, though possibly more casual, audience is their title. This view was my motivation for asking this question almost 7 years ago (wow!), and it remains equally true today (those who subscribe to arXiv feeds, MO feeds, etc., may agree).

I was wondering if the MO-users would be willing to share their wisdom with me on what makes the title of a paper memorable for them; or perhaps just cite an example of title they find memorable?

This advice would be very helpful in helping me (and perhaps others) in designing better, more informative titles (not only for papers, but also for example, for MO questions).

One title that I find memorable is:

The response to this question has been quite huge. So, what have I learned from it? A few things at least. Here is my summary of the obvious: Amongst the various "memorable" titles reported, some of the following are true:

  1. A title can be memorable, attractive, or even both (to oversimplify a bit);
  2. A title becomes truly memorable if the accompanying paper had memorable substance
  3. A title can be attractive even without having memorable material.
  4. To reach the broadest audience, attractive titles are good, though mathematicians might sometimes feel irritated by needlessly cute titles
  5. Titles that are bold, are usually short, have an element of surprise, but do not depart too much from the truth seems to be more attractive in general. 5.101 Mathematical succinctness might appeal to some people---but is perhaps not that memorable for me---so perhaps such titles are attractive, but maybe not memorable.
  6. If you are a bigshot, you can get away with pretty much any title!
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    $\begingroup$ I'd have put in "A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting" as an answer, but that's carrying a joke too far I think. $\endgroup$
    – J. M. isn't a mathematician
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 15:19
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    $\begingroup$ Entertaining as this list may be, I seriously doubt that it will be a useful prescriptive guide as to how to title one's papers. Editors' and readers' tastes also change over the years $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 19:35
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    $\begingroup$ Since this question seems to have turned into a big list of "memorable/amusing paper titles," ignoring the primary question "what makes the title of a paper memorable?", perhaps it might be helpful to re-ask that question but without the loophole "...or perhaps just cite an example of title they find memorable". $\endgroup$
    – Mike Shulman
    Commented Nov 1, 2010 at 0:23
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    $\begingroup$ I have now caught a duplicate answer for the second time in as many days on this thread. To me this casts doubt on the usefulness of this thread, but I acknowledge that I have a long-standing bias against these types of questions, which from previous discussions on meta seems not to be shared by most people $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Nov 2, 2010 at 1:19
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    $\begingroup$ For some reason no further answers can be posted, so let me share with you Continuing horrors of topology without choice by C. Good and I.J. Tree, and related to that Horrors of topology without AC: A nonnormal orderable space by E.K. van Douwen, Disasters in topology without the axiom of choice by K. Keremedis, Disasters in metric topology without choice by E. Tachtsis. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Brandenburg
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 14:26

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Speaking of Milnor and such things, have we already done [Edit: Kervaire-Milnor's] "Groups of Homotopy Spheres"?

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  • $\begingroup$ That's is a really lovely title. $\endgroup$
    – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez
    Commented Jul 11, 2011 at 15:23
  • $\begingroup$ +1; In his Abel lecture, Mike Hopkins remarks that Milnor's papers often have this kind of elegant concision: The title almost says it all and by the time you end the first paragraph, you have already learnt a couple of mind-blowing theorems and/or conjectures... (BTW, maybe your answer should at least mention the late Kervaire...) $\endgroup$
    – Maxime Bourrigan
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 22:35
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Fractured Fractals And Broken Dreams. Self-similar Geometry through Metric and Measure. Guy David, Stephen Semmes.

http://www.oup.com.au/titles/academic/maths/9780198501664

This is the most unusual title of a book which I have ever come across. I discovered this while randomly browsing through books in the library and got hooked. I was an undergraduate then and it had a strange attraction to me, even though I could not figure out anything that was written in it then.

I was not the only one!

Our university used to put out a list of courses (in the good old days) which were going to be offered and students would choose from it. Some of us managed to add the name of this book against the fractal geometry course as a course material. A record number of students enlisted.

Within a week a record number of them wanted to opt out. So there were inquiries: it turned out most of the students cited that they found the title of the book mentioned in the course material attractive which prompted them to enlist.

(We had found in the previous year that the instructor did not care about teaching, insist on taking class at 8 in the morning and would religiously take attendance for 10 minutes, by the end of the class half the class would be snoring. The assignments were to be submitted on A4 paper, we were supposed to write on one side with appropriate margin.

It was a case of a pun / warning which had gone horribly wrong. )

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    $\begingroup$ Stephen Semmes has a real gift for choosing titles for books. Two other ones : "Where the Buffalo Roam : Infinite Processes and Infinite Complexity" (posted here : arxiv.org/abs/math/0302308) and "A graphic apology for symmetry and implicitness" (written w/ Alessandra Carbone). $\endgroup$
    – Andy Putman
    Commented Nov 1, 2010 at 19:42
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    $\begingroup$ "...it had a strange attraction to me..." boom boom! $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts ♦
    Commented Nov 2, 2010 at 2:35
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How to Gamble If You Must by Lester E. Dubins & Leonard J. Savage

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The weird and wonderful chemistry of audioactive decay, by John Conway.

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  • $\begingroup$ I've always wanted to read this paper, but I can't find it anywhere. $\endgroup$
    – Ryan Reich
    Commented May 6, 2011 at 3:22
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    $\begingroup$ J.H. Conway, The weird and wonderful chemistry of audioactive decay, in: Open Problems in Communication and Computation, T.M. Cover and B. Gopinath, eds., Springer, 1987, pp. 173–188. If your library doesn't have it, get it through interlibrary loan. $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble
    Commented May 8, 2011 at 15:17
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“Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics” by Bob Coecke / arXiv:quant-ph/0510032v1

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There was the fuss about The Yellow Cake, a joint paper of Saharon Shelah and Andrzej Roslanowski. (Wayback Machine)

They also co-authored several other funnily titled papers, amongst them are such names as:

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    $\begingroup$ How can we talk about sweetness without mentioning Saccharinity? shelah.logic.at/files/859.pdf :) $\endgroup$
    – Haim
    Commented May 9, 2011 at 8:17
  • $\begingroup$ Hello hello, this is a test! $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila ♦
    Commented Oct 20, 2021 at 20:22
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Al Capone and the Death Ray by R. C. Lyness

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    $\begingroup$ Wow. If you have access to JSTOR: jstor.org/stable/3606559 $\endgroup$
    – Gil Kalai
    Commented Nov 4, 2010 at 15:47
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    $\begingroup$ The abstract says, in part, "After illustrating some of the methods by which difficult-looking results can be obtained simply, I shall obtain a simple-looking result with difficulty and ask for an easier way of getting it." $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 11:32
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De Weger and Pinter wrote this paper entitled:

$$210 = 14 \times 15 = 5 \times 6 \times 7 = \binom{21}{2} = \binom{10}{4}$$

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  • $\begingroup$ . . . which reminds me that $\displaystyle \binom{3003}1 = \binom{78} 2 = \binom{15} 5 = \binom {14} 6. \qquad$ $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 1:01
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Simmons, F. W., When Homogeneous Continua Are Hausdorff Circles (or Yes, We Hausdorff Bananas), Continua, Decompositions, and Manifolds, University of Texas Press (1980) pp. 62-73. I think it's a reference to this song.

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I always like the title "Homology flows, cohomology cuts" by Chambers, Erickson and Nayyeri, which makes analog (a general technique indeed) to the well-known theorem (for graph theorists) "Maximum flows, minimum cuts".

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A Tale of Two Sieves by Carl Pomerance

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The following is not quite as arresting as the other titles listed, but Stallings has a paper in Inventiones entitled "The topology of finite graphs". It's a pretty gutsy title, but what's even more impressive is that it is a fairly good description of what the paper contains (namely, a totally new approach to studying questions about subgroups of free groups using finite graphs; this is totally different from the classical approach using covering spaces of graphs)!

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Theorems for free! by Philip Wadler

From the abstract: ... This provides a free source of useful theorems, courtesy of Reynolds' abstraction theorem for the polymorphic lambda calculus.

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"What is infinity factorial (and why might we care)?"

The only downside is that it isn't actually typed up, but rather is hand-written and scanned, but the result of $\infty! = \sqrt{2\pi}$ is still rather intriguing.

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Here are a few that jump to my mind.

Young person's guide to canonical singularities by Miles Reid, 1985.

Twenty-five years of 3-folds—an old person's view by Miles Reid, 2000.

Tendencious survey of 3-folds, by Miles Reid, 1985 (same book, Bowdoin -- Algebraic Geometry, as the first one).

On the ubiquity of Gorenstein rings by Hyman Bass, 1963. This also seems to be the first paper with the word ubiquity in the title (via a mathscinet search).

Another one that jumps to my mind is the various Pathologies papers of Mumford.

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  • $\begingroup$ A little late: When I was recent PhD (about 40 years ago), I wrote a paper, Propinquity of Gorenstein rings (referring to some classes of Gorenstein subrings being close together), answering a question in ... ubiquity .... The paper was accepted by Hy, and appeared in JPAA. Subsequently, I found out that the question had already been answered, by Sally. So I thought about writing a paper entitled Iniquity of Gorenstein rings, but couldn't find any suitable results. $\endgroup$
    – David Handelman
    Commented Dec 19, 2017 at 18:31
  • $\begingroup$ I notice that 'tendencious' is in the original, not a typo here. Is this some pun (as compared to the usual spelling 'tendentious')? $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Jun 26, 2019 at 16:36
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I like Cliff Taubes's simple titles: "Gr -> SW", "SW -> Gr", and "SW = Gr". (Okay, they each also have a subtitle, but the first part is enough to tell the reader exactly what the paper is about.)

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    $\begingroup$ They tell the reader who is familiar with the subject. I cannot even tell what subject they are about. $\endgroup$
    – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 17:20
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    $\begingroup$ That's true, but I figured any readers looking at papers by that particular author would know what they're about. And everyone in this field certainly knows that author, so there would never be any confusion. $\endgroup$
    – Spiro Karigiannis
    Commented Oct 31, 2010 at 18:33
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Bob Thomason's "Beware the Phony Multiplication on Quillen's $A^{-1}A$".

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You can find in Serre's Œuvres (volume IV) an article titled $\Delta = b^2 - 4ac$. (Wayback Machine)

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Not math, but Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow is hard to beat

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    $\begingroup$ It's not a title, though, is it? Do I foresee a new question about memorable lists of authors? $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 5:08
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    $\begingroup$ That one is sort of a cruel example, as it was due to Gamow's sense of humor that Bethe was invited; he did not even have anything to do with it. Alpher was just a student at the time and felt afterwards that his contribution was drowned out by the bigshot names. (This is all just paraphrased from the Wikipedia article.) $\endgroup$
    – Ryan Reich
    Commented Nov 16, 2010 at 11:17
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Great Expectations: The Theory of Optimal Stopping,
Yuan Shih Chow, Herbert Ellis Robbins, David Siegmund
Houghton Mifflin, 1971

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Another one: MR1274760 (95d:30040) Carleson, Lennart(S-RIT); Jones, Peter W.(1-YALE); Yoccoz, Jean-Christophe(F-PARIS11) Julia and John. (English summary) Bol. Soc. Brasil. Mat. (N.S.) 25 (1994), no. 1, 1–30.

The preprint wad even more memorable title: In Carleson and Gamelin's book on complex dynamics it was referred to as: When is Julia John?

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I hope it is OK to mention "A Disorienting Look at Euler's Theorem on the Axis of a Rotation" even if I am a joint author, particularly if I admit that none of the authors thought up the cute title---it was the editor. (The cute part is the somewhat subtle use of "disorienting", namely we prove Euler's Theorem for orthogonal transformations that are not proper---i.e., don't preserve orientation.) You can download it here:

http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3542&pf=1

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I have always found the book title "Prolegomena to a Middlebrow Arithmetic of Curves of Genus 2" by Cassels and Flynn to be quite memorable.

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A mathematical theory of the guillotine, by Plero Villaggio, Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis (1990) Vol. 110, pp 93-101.

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Andrew Ranicki and the late John Roe were writing

Surgery for Amateurs

A spectacularly funny title, I think.

The incomplete, but very nice, notes can be found online. Thanks again to Nigel Higson for his lovely talk remembering John Roe in the UK Virtual Operator Algebras Seminar.

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    $\begingroup$ Does "Virtual" modify "Operator", or "Algebra", or "Seminar"? $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 22:29
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    $\begingroup$ @Gerry Myerson: the seminar is virtual, not the operator algebras. :) $\endgroup$
    – Jon Bannon
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 14:04
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There's an algebra book called "Rings and Ideals". I thought of a subtitle: "Marriage during the Revolution".

I remember reading Jacobson's "Basic Algebra I" on the bus on the way to university, and someone noticing it and thinking it was a high-school level text.

Similarly, Serre(?) has a difficult book about number theory, titled simply "Arithmetic".

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  • $\begingroup$ +1 for the subtitle. This reminds the course given by C. Foias in Orsay: Contractions et dilatations, which could have been given in the Department of Obstetrics. However, I regret the adjective difficult. Jean-Pierre (=?) wrote a concise book, which is so usefull that it is still used by our students after fifty years. $\endgroup$
    – Denis Serre
    Commented Apr 6, 2011 at 15:32
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    $\begingroup$ In the same vein of elementary-looking books, Weil's Basic Number Theory is unbeatable. $\endgroup$
    – lhf
    Commented Apr 6, 2011 at 17:38
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    $\begingroup$ And what about Lurie's Higher Algebra? $\endgroup$
    – ACL
    Commented Jun 15, 2011 at 6:40
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However the question is about papers but it is worth mentioning the title of Ketonen's PhD thesis: "Everything You Wanted to Know About Ultrafilters But Were Afraid to Ask" !

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Kevin Buchin, Maike Buchin, Christian Knauer, Günter Rote, Carola Wenk, How Difficult is it to Walk the Dog?, In: Abstracts of the 23rd European Workshop on Computational Geometry, Graz, March 2007, pp. 170-173.

"Walking the dog" refers to finding parametrizations $a : [0,1]\to C$ and $b : [0,1]\to D$ of two curves $C$ and $D$ such that $\max_{t\in[0,1]} \|a(t) - b(t)\|$ is as small as possible -- or at least smaller than a given cutoff value. The metaphor is a person walking along curve $C$ while keeping a dog on a leash walking along curve $D$. The famous "simultaneous mountain climbers" puzzle has a cameo.

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