Related reading —
"I closed my eyes and saw the number 137—
so very close to the reciprocal of alpha—
on the chest of the runner in Van Cortlandt Park.
Should I start the story there? "
— Alpert, Mark. Saint Joan of New York
(Science and Fiction) (p. 103).
Springer International Publishing. Kindle edition.
Cover detail:
See as well St. Joan in this journal.
Evariste Galois, 1811-1832 (Vita Mathematica, V. 11)
Awarded 5 stars by Christopher G. Robinson (Cambridge, MA USA).
See also other reviews by Robinson.
Galois was shot in a duel on today's date, May 30, in 1832. Related material for those who prefer entertainment to scholarship—
"It is a melancholy pleasure that what may be [Martin] Gardner’s last published piece, a review of Amir Alexander’s Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs & the Rise of Modern Mathematics, will appear next week in our June issue." —Roger Kimball of The New Criterion, May 23, 2010.
Today is, incidentally, the feast day of St. Joan of Arc, Die Jungfrau von Orleans. (See "against stupidity" in this journal.)
""Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
("Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.")
— Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) German poet, playwright, critic,
Die Jungfrau von Orleans [The Maid of Orleans], Act III, sc. vi (1801)
To be fair and balanced, we also offer a contrary view–
"Weird Science—Why Editors Must Dare to be Dumb,"
by K.C. Cole, Columbia Journalism Review, 2006
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The Fano Plane
by Ed Pegg Jr.,
“One thing in the Fano plane that bothered me for years (for years, I say) is that it had a circle – and it was described as a line. For me, a line was a straight line, and I didn’t trust curved or wriggly lines. This distrust kept me away from understanding projective planes, designs, and finite geometries for a awhile (for years).”
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— Schiller,* quoted as
the epigraph to the
chapter on Galois in
Men of Mathematics,
by E. T. Bell
Related material:
Galois Geometry
* From Die Jungfrau von Orleans
(The Maid of Orleans), Act III, sc. vi.
Today is the feast of that Jungfrau.
Click on picture
for details.
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