Lobachevsky

[struggle4progress]

... I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research' ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQHaGhC7C2E

[Lionel Mandrake]

1. A biography of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lobachevsky.html

states the following:

"we know that Gauss himself discovered non-euclidean geometry but told very few people, only his closest friends. Two of his friends were Farkas Bolyai, the father of János Bolyai (an independent discoverer of non-euclidean geometry), and Bartels who was Lobachevsky's teacher. This coincidence has prompted speculation that both Lobachevsky and Bolyai were led to their discoveries by Gauss. M Kline has put forward this theory but it has been refuted"

In other words, Lobachevsky did not plagiarize Gauss (or anybody else), Tom Lehrer's wickedly funny song to the contrary notwithstanding.

On the other hand, Tom Lehrer's equally funny song about Wernher von Braun is right on target.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs

BTW, a couple of German tunes are quoted in the piano accompaniment. Do you recognize them?

[struggle4progress]

2. Actually, the comments, that Gauss makes about the work of Bolyai János, make Gauss

sound like an absolute dick: Gauss says something like Well, of course, I actually discovered this many years ago but I kept my discovery to myself because I thought there would shitstorm

Bonola's old book Non-Euclidean Geometry contains translations of the work by Bolyai and Lobachevsky. It also contains a strange anecdote about Bolyai János: he was apparently a cavalry officer, who did not get along well his fellow officers, with the result that a dozen or so simultaneously challenged him to duel, which he accepted, under the condition that he be allowed to practice on violin briefly between matches -- and this being acceptable to his challengers, he left them all lying on the dueling field

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. pauca sed matura

Concerning Gauss's personality, Wikipedia says:

"Gauss was an ardent perfectionist and a hard worker. He was never a prolific writer, refusing to publish work which he did not consider complete and above criticism. This was in keeping with his personal motto pauca sed matura ('few, but ripe'). His personal diaries indicate that he had made several important mathematical discoveries years or decades before his contemporaries published them."

This is part of the reason he sat on his results in non-Euclidean geometry.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

[hifiguy]

3. I make sure zey go up

Don't care vhere zey come down
Zat's not mein department
Says Wernher von Braun.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. "For targeting information,

you'll have to check with the Wehrmacht. That's a whole different bureaucracy."

"It's completely out of our hands", say the engineers. :shrug:
"We just design the rockets and employ slave laborers to build them."