BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: MATHEMATICS

DR. EDWARD KASNER

"...to the man on the street Professor Kasner will long 
be remembered as the man who gave the world the 'google.
 The google, a name invented by Kasner's nine year old 
nephew, is just another example of how mathrmaticd uses 
'easy words for hard ideas.' The definition is simple: 
1 followed by 100 zeros, more graphically it is 1,000,
000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,
000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000.,000."
"To elucidate a little, Kasner explains the number of 
rain drops falling on New York City in a century is much 
less than a google."

Current Biography 1943
**
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) , STARRING RUSSELL CROWE AS 
JOHN FORBES NASH,JR.

"From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity,
 John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career 
and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful
 and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years 
of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize.
—Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures

Depths of Depravity?

•	The equations seen on the classroom chalk boards 
are actual equations written by the real-life John Nash.
	
	IMBd Trivia

**

WHAT IS A HAPPY NUMBER?

It is a happy number, meaning that repeatedly summing 
the squares of its digits eventually leads to 
1.

FROM A LETTER FROM Francisco Carvalho TO THE AMERICAN POET JOEL SOLANCHE

"There is a limerick story about the famous topologist John Milnor. In the break room at Princeton one afternoon,
a bunch of graduate student were attempting to compose limericks about every faculty member in then math department. It soon became apparent  that the greatest difficulty was presented by Christos Papakyriakopoulos, a Greek mathematician famous for his 
proofs of Dehn’s lemma and other results in 3-manifold 
topology. Milnorn listened to the students’ conversation 
but said nothing. After he left, the following was found inscribed on his napkin:

The perfidious lemma of Dehn
Was every topologist’s bane
‘Til Christos D. Pap-
akyriakop-
oulos proved it without any strain.

**
ABOUT THE NUMBER 1,720

In 1918, the mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy got into a London cab with the identification number 1,720. "At  
the time he was on his way to visit his ailing colleague Srinivasa Ramanujan in the hospital, and he mentioned the 'boring' cab number when he arrived. He told Ramanujan he
 hoped it wasn't a bad omen. Ramanujan immediately 
contradicted his friend. 'It is a very interesting 
number: it is the smallest number expressible as a 
sum of two cubes in two different ways.'"

Manon Bischoff. "The Most Boring Number" in 
Scientific American (June 2023)
**
"The formula for water is H2O and the formula for an 
ice cube is H20 squared."
                                     Lily Tomlin
**
THE INTERACTIVE THEORUM ASSISTANT

"One math gadget is called a proof assistant, or interactive theorum prover ("Automath" was an early incarnation in the 1960s). Step by step, a mathematician translates a proof into code, then a software program checks whether the reasoning is correct. Verifications accumulate in a library, a dynamic canonical reference that others can consult. This type of formalization provides a foundation for mathematics today..."

Stobhan Roberts. "A Complex Operation" in The New York Times  



JOHN VON NEUMANN

'While not nearly as well-remembered as fellow European emigree and scholar Albert Einstein, John von Neumann was also a certifiable genius who made an enormous imprint on the world around him. Born in 1903 in Budapest, Hungry, his turbo-charged intellect was apparent by the early stages of grade school. Von Neumann could converse in ancient Greek and multiply two eight-digit numbers in his head by age 6 and within two years he was already learning calculus. His dad tried to dissuade his son from a career in mathematics over fears that it was an unsustainable career, but von Neumann not only proved he could make a comfortable living in the field, he also showed his training could be applied to the development of game theory, personal computers, weather forecasting, and other real-world applications."

INTERESTING FACTS WEBSITE (May 17, 2023)
https://www.interestingfacts.com/child-prodigies/YqkYuVuKogAHE31Z?liu=a28bbdc7f2e0154569dc36b4f43a3c0e&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1794330409
**
 #41
"Oh don't bother me!" said the Duchess. "I never could abide figures."

This is the poetry of numbers,
Of 6's & 11's
Five & seven say nothing.

Alice, Alice, with all your tricks,
Wpill you ever escape from P.S.6?
Your telephone nunber is Butterfield 8.
If you concentrate extremely hard,
You'll certainly remember your library card:
           5G-87638.
Keep it up, Alice, you're doing fine:
High School registration # - 00059.
Selective service number: 6--09-52-605,
        "Hardly a man is now alive.":
Zip Code: 10032
Voter registration certificate: 322433
Membership card for the Museum of 
           Modern Art: 665567
Code name: 007

Louis Phillips
from CELEBRATIONS & BEWILDERMENTS 
World Audience Publishers (2018)
Available on Amazon