John Klein wrote: >Tangentally: > >I've been reading Asimov's Book of Facts. (No, I don't know why. I >suspect many of them are urban legends, and some are out of date >(the book was published in the late seventies).) This one struck me as >somewhat appropos for this list. > >----- > >The 19th-century mathematician Janos Bolyai, who generally shares the >credit for having discovered non-Euclidean geometry, specialized in the >violin and the dueling sword, in the true tradition of the Hungarian >aristocrat. He once fenced with 13 swordsmen, one after the other, >vanquishing them all and playing the violin between bouts. Bolyai gave up >work in mathematics when he felt embarassment and humiliation at the >disclosure that a little earlier Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1835), the >famous German mathematician and astronomer, had had the same ideas about >non-Euclidean geometry but hadn't published. > What a pitty!. Just 4 swordsmen more and he would achieved to be a dzurlod! And he was Fenar... ups, Hungarian. _________________________________________________________________ Dale vida a tu correo. Con MSN 8 podrás incluir fotos y textos increibles. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=es-es&XAPID=517&DI=1055