Saturday, November 09, 2002 |
Birthdate of Hermann Weyl
Result of a Google search Nov. 9, 2002... Searched the web for weyl symmetry . Category: Science > Math > Algebra > Group Theory
Quotation from Weyl's Symmetry: "Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect." In honor of Princeton University, of Sylvia Nasar (see entries of Nov, 6), of the Presbyterian Church (see entry of Nov. 8), and of Professor Weyl (whose work partly inspired the website Diamond Theory), this site's background music is now Pink Floyd's
Updates of Friday, November 15, 2002: In order to clarify the meaning of "Shine" and "Crazy" in the above, consult the following --
To accompany this detailed exegesis of Pink Floyd, click here for a reading by Marlon Brando. For a related educational experience, see pages 126-127 of The Book of Sequels, by Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sarah Durkee, and Sean Kelly (Random House paperback, 1990). Speaking of sequels, be on the lookout for Annie Dillard's sequel to Teaching a Stone to Talk, titled Teaching a Brick to Sing. | ||||||
| 4:44 am |
Friday, November 08, 2002 |
Religious Symbolism In memory of Steve McQueen ("The Great Escape" and "The Thomas Crown Affair"... see preceding entry) and of Rudolf Augstein (publisher of Der Spiegel), both of whom died on November 7 (in 1980 and 2002, respectively), in memory of the following residents of The Princeton Cemetery
and of the long and powerful association of Princeton University with the Presbyterian Church, as well as the theological perspective of Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols, I offer the following "windmill," taken from the Presbyterian Creedal Standards website, as a memorial:
The background music Les Moulins de Mon Coeur, selected yesterday morning in memory of Steve McQueen, continues to be appropriate. "A is for Anna." | ||
| 3:33 am |
Thursday, November 07, 2002 |
16 Years Ago Today: Endgame
Metaphor for Morphean morphosis, At the end there is a city Black the knight upon that ocean, In the shadows' see a bishop The knight said "Move, be done. It's over." Dabo claves regni caelorum. By silent shore -- Steven H. Cullinane, November 7, 1986 Accompaniment from "The Thomas Crown Affair": Lyrics by Eddy Marnay: Comme une pierre que l'on jette | |
| 5:24 am |
Wednesday, November 06, 2002 |
The Times They Are A-Changin' Trivia quiz on tonight's "West Wing" -- What do you feed a stolen goat? | |
| 10:00 pm |
Wednesday, November 06, 2002 |
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| Who is Sylvia? What is she? |
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From A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar:
Prologue
Where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
-- WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
John Forbes Nash, Jr. -- mathematical genius, inventor of a theory of rational behavior, visionary of the thinking machine -- had been sitting with his visitor, also a mathematician, for nearly half an hour. It was late on a weekday afternoon in the spring of 1959, and, though it was only May, uncomfortably warm. Nash was slumped in an armchair in one corner of the hospital lounge, carelessly dressed in a nylon shirt that hung limply over his unbelted trousers. His powerful frame was slack as a rag doll's, his finely molded features expressionless. He had been staring dully at a spot immediately in front of the left foot of Harvard professor George Mackey, hardly moving except to brush his long dark hair away from his forehead in a fitful, repetitive motion. His visitor sat upright, oppressed by the silence, acutely conscious that the doors to the room were locked. Mackey finally could contain himself no longer. His voice was slightly querulous, but he strained to be gentle. "How could you," began Mackey, "how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof...how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you...?"
Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. "Because," Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously."
What I take seriously:
Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis, by George F. Simmons, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963
An Introduction to Abstract Harmonic Analysis, by Lynn H. Loomis, Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1953
"Harmonic Analysis as the Exploitation of Symmetry -- A Historical Survey," by George W. Mackey, pp. 543-698, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, July 1980
Walsh Functions and Their Applications, by K. G. Beauchamp, Academic Press, New York, 1975
Walsh Series: An Introduction to Dyadic Harmonic Analysis, by F. Schipp, P. Simon, W. R. Wade, and J. Pal, Adam Hilger Ltd., 1990
The review, by W. R. Wade, of Walsh Series and Transforms (Golubov, Efimov, and Skvortsov, publ. by Kluwer, Netherlands, 1991) in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, April 1992, pp. 348-359
Music courtesy of Franz Schubert.
2:22 pm