Word: mathematician
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...wouldn't otherwise reach. I'm not sure that his mixture of explicit summary and speculative essay is altogether a good thing. Newman's four-volume compilation of mathematical writings The World of Mathematics is a classic editorial feat; Mathematics and the Imagination (which Newman wrote with the late mathematician Edward Kasner) was, on the other hand, an original work that popularized lucidly some nontrivial aspects of mathematics. Echoes of both the editor and the expositor trail through the pages of this latest compendium: Newman, I think, is trying to have the best of two worlds in his essays...
...times the attempt comes off, but reading the less successful pieces can be trying. The author's most frequent peccadillo in these pages is a bland humanist sentimentality. He may conclude that a mathematician's work was wrong or that metaphysics taints Eddington's cosmology, and yet refuse to pass adverse judgment on the scientific value of his subject's work. I have in mind particularly his approach to Eddington: "His penchant for paradoxes, his gift for seductive images, his untenable philosophical interpretations of physical events, made him a prime target for clear thinkers." Yet, "he was a major benefactor...
...round. At lunch, Harris' father phoned. "You can do it, son," he rooted. "You've got it in you." Returning to the table, Harris laughed. "I've got it in me." he said. "Now if only I can get it out." After lunch the scholarly young mathematician clicked off a spectacular series of pars and birdies, won five straight holes to even it up at the 27th, and closed out the match to win 1 up on the 36th hole...
Ambiguities out of a Hat. Empson brought a mathematician's mind to literature. He studied mathematics for four years at Cambridge before he switched to English literature, found he could tick off literary analogies as effortlessly as the multiplication tables. Before long, his tutor recalled, Empson was plucking meanings from poems "like rabbits out of a hat." He was still only 24 when he published Seven Types of Ambiguity, which examined microscopically not only Shakespeare, but also much of English poetry, uncovering layer after layer of ambiguity in works that had been considered perfectly clear. Not even the simplest...
Drilled Minds. A for Andromeda is a novelized version of a seven-part TV serial which ran last year on BBC, where it won an impressive 80% of Britain's viewing audience. It was co-authored by TV Scriptwriter John Elliot and Mathematician Fred Hoyle. 46. Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge and a leading proponent of the theory of the expanding universe. Hoyle finds that writing science fiction (Ossian's Ride, The Black Cloud) is a "very useful relaxation" from work on his 15-year opus on astrophysics. Readers may find both interesting and irritating some Hoylean...