jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods) (09/09/84)
# "and Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski was his name..." -- Tom Lehrer
On G. Spencer Brown:
Yet another mathematical fraud ala Arnold squared. Mr. Brown lost
respect after a bogus proof of the Four Color Conjecture. The notation
in his Laws of Form tract doesn't explain much, and, as a variant of Boolean
algebra, is about as powerful.
On Tom Lehrer:
I (and others) wish master parodist Lehrer would come out of hiding
at U. C. Santa Cruz (where he is a mathematician in residence) and lampoon
these perennial bozos. He'd have so much fun. Last ditty I've seen exude
from his pen was a fin-de-siecle-style tone poem entitiled "For Every Epsilon
there is a Delta" published in the American Mathematical Monthly about
a decade ago.
-- James A. Woods {hplabs,hao,philabs}!ames!jaw (jaw@riacs.ARPA)
P.S.
Not every discredited mathematician runs away tail-between-legs.
C.f. the very interesting story of the Bieberbach conjecture (a comeback
for 52 year old Louis de Branges), now appearing in the 7 Sept. Science.