Abstract

[stoutfellow]

A week or two before a colloquium talk, posters go up announcing it. They include a brief description of the talk, usually a rather dry abstract.

I am strongly tempted to submit the following description for my talk:

"The first person to stumble on it refused to take it seriously.

The first person to take it seriously refused to discuss it in public.

The first person to discuss it publicly used a language few mathematicians understood.

The first person to discuss it in a well-known language got curb-stomped by the greatest mathematician of the age.

Here at SIUE, we teach it every fall.

This is the story of non-Euclidean geometry."

Comments

[graydon]

It's accurate, it's concise, it's not misleading due to concision, and it sounds interesting.

Unless "sounds interesting" is considered improper, can't see why you shouldn't use that description.

[ndrosen]

Was the language which few mathematicians understood Hungarian? Or would Bolyai have used Latin?

Maybe I ought to come to Indiana and attend your colloquium.

[stoutfellow]

No, it was Russian - Lobachevsky. Bolyai published in German. (Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire, and ambitious Hungarians Germanized as much as possible.)

Oh, and I'm in Illinois.

[ndrosen]

I stand corrected on several points. 8-)

[filkferengi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A

Tee hee.

[stoutfellow]

Y'know, I *knew* exactly which song you were linking to, sight unseen.

(It's a vile slander; Lobachevsky was, by all accounts, a genuinely good man. Lehrer chose him purely for the rhythm - NIK-o-lai i-VAN-o-vich Loba-CHEV-sky is my NAME.)

[desertvixen]

I like it!