"Holding onto the last of the summer fruit
on the last day of September…" — Lilyjcollins
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
For Gideon Summerfield
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
At Play in the Field
For Bent Larsen, Danish chess Grandmaster, who died on Thursday, September 9, 2010—
See also "Patrick Blackburn, meet Gideon Summerfield" in Building a Mystery.
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Thursday, September 9, 2010
Breakthrough
A film director's obituary in today's New York Times—
"Mr. Donner broke through as a director in 1963 with a low-budget black-and-white film of ’s play 'The Caretaker,' with , Donald Pleasence and . Since he couldn’t find traditional backing for the film, a group of well-wishers that included , , and financed it."
A lower-budget version:
All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.
See also "Patrick Blackburn, meet Gideon Summerfield" in Building a Mystery.
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Building a Mystery
Notes on Mathematics and Narrative, continued
Patrick Blackburn, meet Gideon Summerfield…
From a summary of a politically correct 1995 feminist detective novel about quilts, A Piece of Justice—
The story deals with “one Gideon Summerfield, deceased.” Summerfield, a former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University, “is about to become the recipient of the Waymark prize. This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same prestige as the Nobel. Summerfield had a rather lackluster career at St. Agatha’s, with the exception of one remarkable result that he obtained. It is for this result that he is being awarded the prize, albeit posthumously.” Someone is apparently trying to prevent a biography of Summerfield from being published.
The following page contains a critical part of the solution to the mystery:
Compare and contrast with an episode from the resume of a real Gideon Summerfield—
Head of Strategy, Designer City (May 1999 — January 2002)
Secured Web agency business from new and existing clients with compelling digital media strategies and oversaw delivery of creative, production and technical teams…. Clients included… Greenfingers and Lord of the Dance .
For material related to Greenfingers and Lord of the Dance , see Castle Kennedy Gardens at Wicker Man Locations.
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Sunday, December 10, 2006
Sunday December 10, 2006
On This Date
“… in 1896 Alfred Nobel,
the inventor of dynamite and
founder of the Nobel prizes,
died in San Remo, Italy,
at age 63.”
— “Today in History,”
by The Associated Press
… And the Nobel Prize
for Bullshit goes to…
for Bullshit goes to…
David Titcher,
author and co-producer of
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear.
First Runner-up —
A Piece of Justice.
From a summary of the novel:
The story deals with “one Gideon Summerfield, deceased.” Summerfield, a former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University, “is about to become the recipient of the Waymark prize. This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same prestige as the Nobel….”
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Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Wednesday December 6, 2006
Mathematical Imagery
From the current
American Mathematical Society
“Mathematical Imagery” page:
“Rosie Lee Tompkins, a renowned African-American quiltmaker whose use of dazzling color and vivid geometric forms made her work internationally acclaimed despite her vehement efforts to remain completely unknown, was found dead on Friday at her home in Richmond, Calif. She was 70.” —Margalit Fox, NY Times 12/6/06
Tompkins was found dead
on December 1, 2006.
on December 1, 2006.
From Log24 on that date:
That entry contained an excerpt from
Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word—
“What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, ‘to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.’ I read it again. It didn’t say ‘something helpful’ or ‘enriching’ or even ‘extremely valuable.’ No, the word was crucial….”
Related material:
Diamond Theory
and a politically correct
1995 feminist detective novel
about quilts,
From a summary of the novel:
The story deals with “one Gideon Summerfield, deceased.” Summerfield, a former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University, “is about to become the recipient of the Waymark prize. This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same prestige as the Nobel. Summerfield had a rather lackluster career at St. Agatha’s, with the exception of one remarkable result that he obtained. It is for this result that he is being awarded the prize, albeit posthumously.” Someone is apparently trying to prevent a biography of Summerfield from being published.
The following page contains
a critical part of the solution
to the mystery:
a critical part of the solution
to the mystery:
Meanwhile, back in real life…
It is said that the late Ms. Tompkins
liked to work while listening to the
soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever.”
“It’s just your jive talkin’
you’re telling me lies, yeah
Jive talkin’
you wear a disguise
Jive talkin’
so misunderstood, yeah
Jive talkin’
You really no good”
These lyrics may also serve
to summarize reviews
of Diamond Theory written
in the summer of 2005.
For further details, see
Mathematics and Narrative.
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Friday, June 16, 2006
Friday June 16, 2006
For Bloomsday 2006:
Hero of His Own Story
"The philosophic college should spare a detective for me."
— Stephen Hero. Epigraph to Chapter 2, "Dedalus and the
Beauty Maze," in Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, S. J.,
Yale University Press, 1957 (in the Yale paperback edition of
1963, page 18)
"Dorothy Sayers makes a great deal of sense when she points out
in her highly instructive and readable book The Mind of the Maker
that 'to complain that man measures God by his own measure is
a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience;
he has no other yardstick.'"
— William T. Noon, S. J., Joyce and Aquinas (in the Yale paperback
edition of 1963, page 106)
Related material:
- Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh
-
Jill Paton Walsh's detective novel A Piece of Justice (1995):
"The mathematics of tilings and quilting play background
roles in this mystery in which a graduate student attempts
to write a biography of the (fictitious) mathematician
Gideon Summerfield. Summerfield is about to posthumously
receive the prestigious (and, I should point out, also fictitious)
Waymark Prize in mathematics…but it soon becomes clear
that someone with evil intentions does not want the student's
book to be published!By all accounts this is a well written mystery…
the second by the author with college nurse Imogen Quy playing
the role of the detective."— Mathematical Fiction by Alex Kasman,
College of Charleston
- Quilt Geometry, by Steven H. Cullinane
AD PULCHRITUDINEM TRIA REQUIRUNTUR:
INTEGRITAS, CONSONANTIA, CLARITAS.