ext_27374 ([identity profile] ndrosen.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] stoutfellow 2008-01-24 03:41 am (UTC)

I recall from liner notes that Lobachevsky's name was chosen purely to fit the meter (and match someone's song about Stanislavsky). I had read about Lobachevsky (in E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, and possibly a little elsewhere before that) before I heard the Tom Leher song. Some time afterward, I commented to a college acquaintance that it wasn't really fair of Lehrer, since Lobachevsky had been not only a great mathematician, but apparently a very good man. He was surprised to learn that there really had been a Lobachevsky. I was surprised at him for that. We're all parochial in some way . . .

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