Stories, Sayings and Jokes
See also: Mathematical joke| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Mathematicians |
Mathematical folklore may also refer to unusual (and possibly apochryphal) stories or jokes involving mathematicians or mathematics that are told verbally in mathematics departments. Compilations include tales collected in G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology and (Krantz 2002); examples include:
- Galileo dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
- An apple falling on Isaac Newton's head to inspire his theory of gravitation.
- The drinking, duel and early death of Galois.
- Richard Feynman cracking safes in the Manhattan Project.
- Alfréd Rényi's definition of a mathematician - "a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems".
- The "turtles all the way down" story told by Stephen Hawking.
- Fermat's lost simple proof.
- If anyone were to successfully divide by zero, a massive paradox would form, destroying the known universe.
- The unwieldy proof and associated controversies of the Four Color Theorem.
Read more about this topic: Mathematical Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words sayings and/or jokes:
“What
One believes is what matters. Ecstatic identities
Between one’s self and the weather and the things
Of the weather are the belief in one’s element,
The casual reunions, the long-pondered
Surrenders, the repeated sayings that
There is nothing more and that it is enough....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?—as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)