Log24

For fans of "Meet Joe Black" …

That April 11, 2025, post suggests . . .

An image reproduced here on December 11, 2018 
("Carried Away") —

" The subject is justified by its usefulness
rather than as a 'rite of passage.' ”.

— The late Martin Muldoon reviewing a book,
From Vector Spaces to Function Spaces:
Introduction to Functional Analysis with Applications ,
by Yutaka Yamamoto (SIAM, 2012)

Such an introduction is properly a rite of pure mathematics —
the passage in the title from vector spaces to function spaces.

That passage is one of mathematical beauty.
Usefulness is Hiroshima.

Muldoon reportedly died on August 1, 2019.

This journal on that date had a post titled 

Different Meanings:  For Whom the Bell .

The "Bell" in that post was the author of a New York Times  book review.
I prefer a Stephen King bell —

(Continued from yesterday's posts, "Object of Beauty"
and "Amy's Shadow")

A winner of a Nobel Prize for X-ray crystallography stands
at the head of the New York Times  obituary list today.

In memoriam —

Some further background:

The Times  follows yesterday's egregious religious error
with an egregious scientific error:

"The technique developed by Dr. Karle and Herbert A. Hauptman,
called X-ray crystallography, is now routinely used by scientists…."

Karle was reportedly born in 1918, Hauptman in 1917.

Wikipedia on the history of X-ray crystallography:

"The idea that crystals could be used as a 
diffraction grating for X-rays arose in 1912…."

The Nobel Foundation:

"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1914 was awarded to
Max von Laue 'for his discovery of the diffraction of
X-rays by crystals.'"

"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1915 was awarded jointly to
Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg 
'for their services in the analysis of crystal structure
by means of X-rays.'"